We decided to destroy the gravestone.

[ariad]

Reading a very old interview with Tetsuya Nomura about the then recently released Kingdom Hearts II. It's pretty amusing seeing what has changed since then:

Looks like Zexion has a lot of fans.
Probably because he’s quite enigmatic. He’s the only member who showed up with no weapons but it’s not because he doesn’t have his own weapon, it’s more of because he died without fighting so nobody knows what’s his weapon. I have an idea on what his weapon is and I might have a chance of showing it in the near future so I’ll keep it as a secret for now. That reminds me, in the World that Never Was, each XIII Organization member had a gravestone for them and each of those have a picture of their weapons and that’s when Zexion became a problem for us. “Eh, we’re gonna put a spoiler on Zexion’s weapon there!?” (laugh) That’s a bit too much so we decided to destroy the gravestone so that his weapon couldn’t be seen.

I'm a little disappointed that his weapon turned out to be a lexicon, but I remember how funny it was exploring the Proof of Existence before Re: Chain of Memories had come out. My sister and I thought, oh, now we can reminisce about each Organization member and their weaponry. But wait; what is that smashed thing? Oh, right. We don't know Zexion's weapon. :|

Previously you said “The members of the XIII Organization have something hidden in their names”, can you reveal the answer to us now?
Before this I’ve mentioned that when their names are spelt in Roman alphabets, there will surely be an “X”, right? The truth is that when the “X” is taken away, the alphabets that are left behind is an anagram of the members’ real names when they were humans. I actually wanted to insert an event scene showing how Roxas got his name. First the word “SORA” popped up and those letters were rearranged into “ROAS” and BAM, suddenly the “X” got inserted in the middle and he was told “Take this name….” Well, I had an image like that but it was something difficult to do time-wise so I gave up.

And then they did it and it looked exactly like that! :)

It was amazing on how the ending synchronized well with the song and movie.
The first KH’s ending also stuck well with the theme song, but this time it was a bit more difficult because the song started with soft piano keys. Before, the scene that synchronized with the start of the song was Sora letting go of Kairi’s hand but this time this two would hold each other’s hands. In the editting process, we were arguing on how many seconds we should show them holding hands. Someone said “Shouldn’t it look better if we show it longer?” but I said “No, we’re going to show it for just a split second” so we cut it short enough to just show them holding hands. The external editors told me “you’re a really cold person”, though. (laugh)

I NEVER NOTICED THAT PARALLEL.

The end is him talking about how he doesn't know if they'll do a "Final Mix" version because there's a disc space problem and also they already did so much with the original game that they don't know what to do. AND THEN THEY DID FINAL MIX AND IT WAS AMAZING and also not released internationally because the Final Mixes never are. (At least Re: Chain of Memories was.) I fully intend to play Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix one day. There's too much good stuff on there to pass up.