Mistwalker CEO and Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi met with American news outlet Bloomberg recently to discuss his upcoming game, Fantasian Neo Dimension, and to take a stroll down memory lane while at it.
Sakaguchi took a look back, noting both his successes and his failures at Square, and giving context for him leaving the company in 2001:
“I personally wanted to be more creative — roll up my sleeves, make more games.”
That realization led him to establish Mistwalker in 2004 and reach out to some of his contacts from his time at Square, including Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu and Chrono Trigger artist Akira Toriyama, Together, the trio worked on Blue Dragon, and Uematsu would continue to stick with Sakaguchi for Lost Odyssey and The Last Story– a Wii exclusive that found itself caught up in Operation Rainfall.
During the interview, Sakaguchi spoke up about the first two, Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey- making it clear that he had no intention of bringing the pair of Xbox 360 RPGs to modern consoles. When it came to Mistwalker’s now-defunct mobile game, Terra Battle, however, he showed interest in giving it a new lease on life somewhere down the line.
Despite having parted long ago, Sakaguchi has kept his faith in Square, repeating throughout the interview how Final Fantasy XIV has captured his attention and earned his respect. And by helping him out with his newest game, Square Enix has repaid him by closing the distance that used to exist between them. After decades, Hironobu Sakaguchi and Square Enix will finally be teaming up again to bring Fantasian Neo Dimension to PC and consoles, including the Nintendo Switch, this winter.
“Meanwhile, the legendary designer is working on another project. Although Sakaguchi had once thought that Fantasian might be his final game, he now says that he is finalizing the story for a new title with Mistwalker. The company recently filed a trademark for “Fantasian Dark Edge,” suggesting that a sequel is in the works, although he wouldn’t get into specifics. “We’ll say it’s something new, for now,” he said.”
Confirmed: FINAL FANTASY XVII will be a joint collaboration between Square Enix and Mistwalker with Sakaguchi leading the project! (lol, I wish, but sadly not likely.)
Sad to hear Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon won’t be released on modern consoles (I don’t even want remakes, just straight ports). Especially Lost Odyssey, love that one.
I wanted to like Terra Battle but just couldn’t really get into it, so it’s odd that that one is the one he’s considering. It didn’t do too well, did it? Maybe that’s why he wants to try and give it another go? If it’s released on consoles I might give it another chance and maybe give it a more fair assessment.
I wish he’d revive ASH: Archaic Sealed Heat, I wanted to go through that but it was a Japan exclusive.
Well I want a Chrono Trigger 2, Bushido Blade and also Musashi: Samurai Legend needs a 3rd game or remake/master
Poor Sakaguchi, he wanted to be successful outside of Square, but the games just did not take off (Lost Odyssey was a great game) and now he walked back to Square with his tail between his legs, they said we need better FFXIVARR+ numbers so we need you to play and love ffxivarr+. So he plays and pretends it’s an amazing game, when in reality it’s a FF circus that relies on crossovers and repetitiveness (same thing in every expansion, do a bunch of quests, then a dungeon, then a bunch of quests, then a primal, repeat from launch of FFXIVARR and keep doing it with every single expansion) and it became extremely obvious he was being forced to compliment FFXIVARR’s story…the story that’s so terrible that they trimmed the ARR main quests twice since launch and it’s still hated by almost everyone that plays the story, it’s so bad that they sell skip passes so you don’t have to suffer through FFXIVARR+’s beyond terrible story (Seriously, Yoshi-P is a trainwreck, worst mistake Square-Enix did was backstab Tanaka and give his FFXIV to Yoshi-P, never giving Tanaka a chance to repair things that gamers didn’t like about the original release, like the Fatigue system. The story in the original FFXIV was drastically better than ARR’s story, the amount of love Tanaka put in FFXIV versus the rushed repetitive and crossover crap Yoshi-P made resulted in an original FF game being converted into a FF circus (and not a very good circus, at all.)
In case you are wondering, I played ffxi since beta then launch, stopped playing once I had the Excalibur, the Aegis and the Masamune, now I use my own private server to play, ffxiv since beta then launch, played until the servers were taken down by Yoshi-P, then played FFXIVARR from alpha, beta and launch, still pay every month for 4 accounts on FFXIVARR+, have 9 housing properties (3 small, 3 medium, 3 large) and more gil (FFXIVARR+ ingame money) than most gamers will ever see, I even have a bunch of visually superior dated gear that you can’t even get in any way shape or form in the game at all and I own a bunch of Free Companies, all highly leveled. So before you think I don’t know what I’m talking about and am some noob complaining, I am beyond established in the game and I am telling you, the game really is terrible and it has been from the second Yoshi-P stole Tanaka’s game a decade ago.
I feel like Square Enix has had a LOT of missteps lately and they are moving towards remakes, because a lot of the industry has seen good success with theirs. They also saw their own success with the FFVII Remake. But, this may not be enough to save them… I’m honestly extremely worried for Square Enix’s future. I hope they can get it together.
FFXV is a mess because all the story content is spread thin between a movie, an anime, a prequel game, 4 DLC episodes, & a novel that covers the last 3 DLC episodes that were never made. Even the bloody demo had a very short exclusive story. The game might as well be called an unfinished mess. If all this content was in the game itself, it would have possibly been one of the best FF games. Also one of the longest, too.
As for FFXVI, I got no clue what they did to fuck that one up. If they screw up FFXVII next, clearly someone on the Final Fantasy team needs to bloody go because they suck at their job.
Y’all slept on Terra Battle. It was the only gacha game that ever hooked me