Sakaguchi on his time after Square Enix…
“After I quit Square in 2001. I did no work for about three years, just floating around. I established Mistwalker in the midst of that, and after three years of rest, I felt like I wanted to make something. So, starting with a staff of three people, we kicked off Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey at the same time.”
Sakaguchi on how The Last Story’s inspiration came from the mistakes from Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey…
“Both of those games used the Final Fantasy formula as a base to build up from,. There were assorted new challenges we tackled with them, but they were all story-oriented ones — we didn’t try to alter the gameplay system much at all. When we had a wrap-up meeting after it was all over, our biggest regret was that we basically used old-gen methods to make next-gen RPGs. That’s how this project began.”
Sakaguchi on The Last Story’s battle system…
“Our top goal there was to allow more than one method to survive any battle. The basic idea is to use Gathering [drawing foes’ attention toward a certain party member] to pool enemies together and then use magic on them, but you’re free to just melee your way through, or maybe use something in the environment. Each battlefield has a lot of exploitable features, and the system itself is versatile enough to allow players a lot of leeway. We made it so players can often come up with some novel way of winning a battle and think to themselves ‘Wow, I’m a genius!'”
Sakaguchi on the action-oriented fights (rather than command-based fights)…
“Like I said, that was one of the regrets we had with Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. Gamers see [command-based battles] as old-fashioned, as too slow-paced, as unexciting. It just felt like that had to change. The way people enjoy games has changed, and I felt like if this didn’t change as well, then it’ll put a stop to the evolution of RPGs. I realized all too well that simply going through the motions again would be pointless.”
Sakaguchi on how players can fast-forward through cut-scenes…
“I hate the idea of a ‘skip’ function, but sometimes, like for character introductions and so on, you have no choice but to put in a long cutscene. So I wanted a way for people who hate long cutscenes to be able to zoom past them while still being able to follow the story. I figured that fast forward would be a novel way to do that while still giving gamers a feel for the game world. It was not easy to implement, though — all the events had to be done in the game engine, for one, and we had to accommodate for fast-forward from the very beginning of development. But people criticize the games I make for having long cutscenes, so if I didn’t put this feature in there, they’d just say ‘Great, here are these huge event scenes again.'”
Sakaguchi on whether or not he’s thinking about what he’ll do next…
“No. I’m not thinking about what comes next at all. I’m not saying that this game is perfect, of course — it’s the product of a lot of trial and error, so I think it feels a bit patched together in spots. But I think that adds to the flavor, too. You don’t often get the chance to make a game like this. It may be weird for me to say this, but having the right staff at the right time, all feeling the same way about the project, is so important — it really worked out great with this one. That’s why I think I’d like to take some time for a while. We gave our all here, so I think you’ll enjoy the game if you try it.”
