Fantasian Neo Dimension launched December 5 on PS5 and PS4. This Mistwalker RPG features the creative work of two industry icons, both legends in the genre. First, there’s composer Nobuo Uematsu, who has lent his talents to the game’s score, the last full game soundtrack he’ll produce solo, capping off an incredible 30-plus years of work. Last week, he walked us through just some of his favorite pieces.
Today, we talk to the second creative force involved, game producer and Mistwalker CEO Hironobu Sakaguchi. The creator joined us earlier this year on PS Blog to discuss the game’s PS5 release. Our new chat, which you can hear in full on the Official PlayStation Podcast later today, casts the net wider to discuss his thoughts on the RPG genre, his long term working partnership with Uematsu-san, and marking both Mistwalker’s 20th anniversary and PlayStation’s 30th.
Note: this interview is condensed for clarity and brevity. Hear the full conversation on the new Official PlayStation Podcast, launching later today.
Playstation Blog: You’re well regarded for your work in the RPG field, and RPGs are known for compelling team ups with disparate characters. For you, what makes a great character party?
Hironobu Sakaguchi: You want your cast of characters to have a wide range of both personality and diverse backgrounds, different character settings and stories. As they traverse this world and go on their adventure, I think seeing the shift and change in characters is one of the most attractive things you can experience as a player of an RPG.
On the game mechanics side, of course, which is equally important, specifically in Fantasian Neo Dimension, each character has their own rather unique set of attributes. Some characters might be more heavily skewed in defense, others might be more adept at magic, or some might do DPS, in the form of physical attacks. But that unique attribute or element that they bring to the table, in combat is going to become invaluable. So in Fantasian Neo Dimension, you can swap out your party and team members without consuming one of your turns, which makes your team composition and combat quite dynamic.
PSB: The game features wonderful, hand-crafted dioramas. Where did they end up? Did you adopt any for your own home?
Sakaguchi: The dioramas, rather unfortunately, over time, the paint will chip, and a lot of the clay will melt, and overall, they just simply will deteriorate over time. By the nature of how they’re crafted, so very few have kind of survived as is, and it’s impossible to store it. So the ones that have were either preserved and given to different players as a giveaway or presented to team members, core team members who worked on the game, and we did save a good portion of the props in each individual diorama, and those have been transformed into those gifts. But by and large, the so-called base, or a lot of the structural elements of these dioramas had to unfortunately be disposed of. So I would say most of the dioramas you see in Fantasian Neo Dimension are no longer in this world, and I understand that that might seem a little melancholy, and almost fleeting in a way, but there is some kind of poetic beauty in that as well.
PSB: Fantasian Neo Dimension includes select Final Fantasy tracks. Why those particular tracks, and how did you decide to pick them?
Sakaguchi: I don’t know how well known this is, but I am a huge Final Fantasy XIV fan, and I practically live in the world of FFXIV. And there are certain tracks the composer of FFXIV, Masayoshi Soken, composed that play respect to what Uematsu-san has done in previous [games]. You can tell it’s almost an arrangement of Uematsu-san’s melodies and different compositions.
As I was test-playing Fantasian, I had FFXIV running in the background, which I think was one of the battle scenes. And playing Fantasian, and hearing this music in my own environment, prompted me to think “wow, this is really, really cool, and I could feel the respect that was paid to the old Final Fantasy games”. And as a fan, it was a personally very, very fun experience. So I talked to [FFXIV] producer Yoshida-san and said, on a whim, hey, would it be possible to do something like this, to which I had a positive response.
And around that same time, there was, of course, Final Fantasy VII Remake, the Pixel Remaster series. So I felt that in a way, Uematsu’s tracks, of course, because he composed all of them, including Fantasian, synergized very well with the experience that is Fantasian. It felt very fun, and quite natural. And it is not often, I think, in one video game, you get to hear almost like this chronology of what Uematsu-san has done over the years, both old and new. And throughout the game, I think there is a lot of respect paid towards the music and the history of Final Fantasy.
PSB: Is it possible to sum up what your career, long collaborations with Uematsu-san mean to you?
Sakaguchi: Recently, I had the opportunity to take the stage with Uematsu-san at Tokyo Game Show, and it felt quite different from when we would interact with each other in private, being on stage, I think there was a different kind of honesty that came to the surface, one of which was whenever Uematsu-san composes something, he is very mindful of making sure the player emotion is guided and sculpted on the right track, and he tries to pull out a wide range of emotion from his players. But of all the emotion, it seems to be sort of that warmth or passion that humans can experience is one that particularly stood out and reminds us how nice it is to be human in the end.
So having worked and collaborated with Uematsu-san together for so long, perhaps it’s a little overly sentimental, but I think at its core, how we both feel and resonate, and this is something that, you know, we kind of bounced back and forth on stage at Tokyo Game Show, is that that sort of emotional component, the sentimental component. If you translate it to something perhaps a little more palatable, I think the product of video games is, of course, a digital experience. Yet even through this digital, inanimate object, you’re able to bring out this wide range of emotion in humans and remind us what it is and what it means to be part of this larger ecosystem.
PSB: Mistwalker celebrated the momentous milestone this year, 20 years since inception. Did you mark it in any particular way?
Sakaguchi: It’s interesting you bring that up, as I have been counting, and it is our 20th anniversary this year. I just thought to myself, Oh, perhaps he’s right. So when founding Mistwalker, I of course left Square Enix behind and formed this independent studio. Part of the reason being in Square Enix, a lot of my responsibilities has shifted from making games to managing and operating and almost running a business to which, of course, there were some elements of that that were fun, but I realized I wanted to live to create, and I think that’s what Mistwalker was intended to do, and that’s what I find the most enjoyable as part of the process of creating, creating games. So here we are, 20 years later, and I’m still able to create, and perhaps for years in the future, but the fact that Mistwalker has allowed me and our teams to be able to find a home for that creative energy, I think it really shows it’s done its job.
PSB: What would you like to see of the RPG genre in the years ahead?
Sakaguchi: Implementing and using the latest and cutting edge technology, I think, to maximize the expression and strive for that next level of what it means to deliver an experience or a story to a person is quite important to the RPG genre. And I think that that is something that is a common denominator or a through line for the entire Final Fantasy series at large. But of course, the RPG genre is more than just implementing and integrating the latest technology. There are different kind of mechanics and system improvements that can be made. Likewise the dioramas, or in this case, artistic expression, I think, is another field in which RPGs can kind of see itself moving into. That is something that we did in our case, instead of using exclusively the latest technology trying to express and depict the story through something that would allow players to feel that warmth that I mentioned a little earlier. All of these, I think, contribute to a step forward in a certain direction. And to do that, I think it’s more looking beyond just what the technology can do, but how you can deliver these stories. And in some ways, I think that’ll translate to a much more diverse catalog and portfolio of RPGs, which perhaps is how the genre should be.
PSB: You must have collected numerous keepsakes from across your titles, awards, etc, to a point that I imagine you have very little space at home anymore. Are there any particular keepsakes that stand out to you?
Sakaguchi: I really don’t have that many keepsakes. In fact, I throw most of them into storage somewhere, and tend to forget about them. But if there is any one item that perhaps stands above the others, I would say it’s that physical version of [the original] Final Fantasy. Because if I had not created that, I don’t think my creative career would have come nearly as far as it did in this so-called timeline. So I think giving birth to [the original] Final Fantasy and the subsequent franchise that it then spawned from is a huge, huge fork in my life.
PSB: PlayStation celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. What PlayStation games did you personally enjoy? Or what’s the first thing that comes to mind when you’re thinking about PlayStation?
Sakaguchi:I would have to say Final Fantasy VII. Because at the time, the specs of the PlayStation was unlike any other console on the market at the time. It was head and shoulders above anything, and it was just an amazing, amazing platform. So it would not be an overstatement to say that without the PlayStation, there would be no Final Fantasy VII. I don’t even think we would have thought to make a game in that manner. So, of course, in all of my conversation with Kutaragi-san, we had hinted that the birth of the PlayStation has also triggered the birth of Final Fantasy VII, and all the doors that Final Fantasy seven has opened up for both me and the company. So it was again a huge, huge revolution, a huge shift in the entire game industry, and I think both on the hardware and the software side, a massive leap forward.
