Hironobu Sakaguchi discussion: Fantasian Neo Dimension, Final Fantasy and 20 times of Mistwalker

On PS5 and PS4, Fantasia Neo Dimension was released on December 5th. Two business legends who are both legends in the style collaborate on this Mistwalker RPG. Second, there’s artist Nobuo Uematsu, who has lent his talents to the show’s report, the next whole game soundtrack he’ll make solo, capping off an extraordinary 30-plus years of work. He showed us some of his favourite pieces last year, walking us through them all. Now, we talk to the next creative power involved, game developer and Mistwalker CEO Hironobu Sakaguchi. The father discussed the PS5 release on PS Blog earlier this year. Our new talk, which you can learn in total on the Official PlayStation Podcast after today, casts the shield wider to explain his thoughts on the RPG style, his long term working partnership with Uematsu-san, and marking both Mistwalker’s 20th anniversary and PlayStation’s 30th.

Note: this discussion is condensed for quality and clarity. The fresh Official PlayStation Podcast, which will be available after today, will feature the complete conversation.
Playstation Blog: You’re well regarded for your job in the RPG area, and RPGs are known for powerful team up with diverse 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 travel through this world and begin their adventure, I believe you can witness the character shift and change as one of the most fascinating things you can experience as an RPG player.
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 have more skewed defense strategies, while others might have more skill with magic, or they might use physical attacks to perform DPS. But that special quality or feature they bring to the table in a battle will become invaluable. In Fantasian Neo Dimension, you can swap out your party and team without having to play any of your turns, which increases the dynamic nature of your team and combat.
PSB: The game features wonderful, hand-crafted dioramas. What was their destination? 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 been saved and turned into gifts have been either preserved and given to different players as a gift 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. However, the majority of these dioramas ‘ so-called base, or many of their structural components, had to be unfortunately abandoned. So I would say that the majority of the dioramas in Fantasian Neo Dimension are no longer in existence. I understand that this may seem a little melancholy and almost fleeting in some ways, but there is also some sort of poetic beauty in that as well.
PSB: Fantasian Neo Dimension includes some original Final Fantasy music. Why those particular tracks, and why did you choose 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 entire game, I believe that Final Fantasy’s music and history are treated with respect.
PSB: Is it possible to sum up what your career, long collaborations with Uematsu-san mean to you?
Sakaguchi: I recently had the opportunity to perform live with Uematsu-san at the Tokyo Game Show, and it was quite different from how we would interact privately. I believe there was a different level of honesty when we were on stage. However, out of all the emotion, it seems to be a kind of warmth or passion that people can experience, which really 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. You can still bring out this wide range of emotion in people and remind us what it is and what it means to be a part of this larger ecosystem even through this digital, inanimate object.
PSB: Mistwalker celebrated the momentous milestone this year, 20 years since inception. Did you specifically mark it?
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, naturally, I left Square Enix behind and created this independent studio when founding Mistwalker. A large portion of my responsibilities at Square Enix have shifted from making games to managing, operating, and almost running a business, which was fun, but I realized that I wanted to live and create and that’s what I think Mistwalker was meant to do, and that’s what I find most enjoyable as part of the process of creating, creating games. So, 20 years later, I’m still able to create, and perhaps for many more years, but the fact that Mistwalker has allowed us and our teams to find a home for that creative energy really shows it’s done its job.
PSB: What would you like to see from the RPG genre in the near future?
Sakaguchi: The RPG genre is very focused on utilizing and utilizing the most recent and cutting-edge technology to maximize expression and strive for that next level of what it means to deliver an experience or a story to a person. And I believe that this is a common denominator or a through line for the entire Final Fantasy series. However, the RPG genre goes beyond just incorporating and integrating the most recent technology, of course. There are various kinds of system and mechanics that can be improved. Likewise the dioramas, or in this case, artistic expression, I think, is another field in which RPGs can kind of see itself moving into. Instead of using the most recent technology to express and depict the story through a way that would allow players to feel the warmth I mentioned a little while ago, we did that in our case. All of these, I think, contribute to a step forward in a certain direction. And to do that, I believe it’s more about how you can deliver these stories than just what the technology can do. And in some ways, I believe that will lead to a much wider range of RPGs in the genre’s future.
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. Do any particular keepsakes stand out to you specifically?
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 I don’t believe my creative career would have advanced nearly as far as it did in this ostensible timeline if I hadn’t created that. So I consider it to be incredibly difficult for me to give birth to the [original ] Final Fantasy and the subsequent franchise that it eventually spawned.

PSB: PlayStation celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. What PlayStation games did you find to be the most enjoyable? 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 PlayStation’s specifications were unique among all other consoles available at the time. It was head and shoulders above anything, and it was just an amazing, amazing platform. Therefore, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Final Fantasy VII would not exist without the PlayStation. I don’t even think we would have thought to create a game in that manner. We had hints to each other throughout our conversation with Kutaragi-san that Final Fantasy VII and the PlayStation’s birth also had an impact on 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. 

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