TA: Will the second part include new music as well? The shift in gameplay experiences served a wonderful breaking point so has not to confuse the players. HS: The first half of the game is story-driven, whereas the second half of the game is quest-based and gives players more freedom as to where they want to go.
TA: What made you decide to split the Fantasian narrative into two parts? HS: Unfortunately, I have not played either Octopath Traveler or Bravely Default so I cannot comment. TA: Did any of the recent JRPGs like Octopath Traveler or Bravely Default that bring a wealth of quality of life improvements to the traditional JRPG formula play a part in how you approached designing Fantasian? It reminded me of how much I loved this genre. However, in the case of Fantasian, I was part of an online event in Japan where a few of my old colleagues and I played Final Fantasy 6 together. TA: Do you go back and replay your older titles for inspiration while working on new projects? I would also like to mention Final Fantasy 9, when I returned to my roots once.Īnd how could we forget about Terra Battle? And the last Final Fantasy of the Famicom era, Final Fantasy 6. HS: Of course, I love them all but if I had to pick, the very first Final Fantasy. What are your favourite games from your career? TA: You’ve directed some of the best games of all time both with Square Enix and with Mistwalker for other publishers. If anything, had we been hit with COVID during the brainstorming and pre-production phase, that would have been a bigger disaster. In spite of the concerns, however, I think we were able to transition to a remote working environment quite smoothly. It was quite nerve-wracking, considering it was the period where we needed to scale a lot of in-game assets. HS: Out of the three years of development, our final year was almost entirely remote. TA: How has it been working on Fantasian during the pandemic? Did this cause a delay from when you initially planned on releasing the game? “Can we do something on Apple Arcade?” was the first question we asked ourselves at the beginning of this project. HS: Frankly, there were no plans of any kind before Apple Arcade. TA: Did you plan to release Fantasian as a standalone game before deciding to go with Apple Arcade? All of this was around Apple Arcade’s launch, and we were able to create an awesome environment for our team to develop the game specifically for Apple’s new platform. They happened to be big fans of the Final Fantasy franchise and Uematsu-san’s music, so we started by going down memory lane, and exploring different ideas and opportunities. In Fantasian’s case, it was a chance meeting with a few members from the Apple team. HS: Projects often begin from unexpected encounters between people. TA: How did Mistwalker and Apple end up working together on this project?
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