Fantasian gave Final Fantasy creator’s career a third act

The term “living legend” gets thrown around loosely in the art world, but Hironobu Sakaguchi has earned that distinction. The 61-year-old game designer is the father of Final Fantasy, one of the most important franchises in gaming next to Mario. While Sakaguchi didn’t invent the RPG genre, he turned it into a foundation that developers still build on decades later. Rather than taking that legendary success and calling it a day, Sakaguchi isn’t done innovating.

In 2021, Sakaguchi led development on Fantasian, an Apple Arcade exclusive RPG created by his studio, Mistwalker. It was initially heralded as his swan song ahead of retirement. Three years later, he’s still hard at work. Sakaguchi is currently finishing up a console and PC port of Fantasian dubbed Neo Dimension. The new version brings the cult hit to a wider audience along with some difficulty adjustments, voice acting, and 4K visuals that show off its unique diorama art style. Considering how beloved Fantasian is with its limited Apple fanbase, the entire world is about to realize that Sakaguchi is still innovating the RPG genre just as much today as he was in the 1980s

Ahead of its release, I sat down with Hironobu Sakaguchi to discuss the origins of Fantasian and the changes coming to Neo Dimension. It’s easy to understand why Sakaguchi saw it as his send-off; everything from its Apple exclusivity to its connection to Final Fantasy 6 led to the perfect full-circle moment for a legend on the brink of retirement. He just didn’t expect such a clean goodbye to reignite his love of games in the process.

A link to the past

Despite being best known for Final Fantasy, Sakaguchi’s career goes much deeper than that. He had his hand in a number of projects over his journey, from Super Mario RPG to Parasite Eve. Following a split from Square Enix in 2003 after the disastrous release of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, he would go on to chart his own course with Mistwalker, a studio that he founded in 2004. For a while, it seemed like Sakaguchi’s past was behind him as he worked on totally new projects like The Last Story and Terra Battle.

That mindset changed in 2017 thanks to one (tiny) piece of hardware: the Super NES Classic Edition.

“One of the reasons I wanted to make Fantasian is related to Final Fantasy 6 in some way,” Sakaguchi tells Digital Trends. “There was a period where a lot of hardware makers were making miniature versions of their consoles. On the Japanese SNES, which came with about 20 games, Final Fantasy 6 was one of them. A Japanese publisher at the time had the idea to gather some of the original developers and beat the game on a live stream, to which I was invited. Having played Final Fantasy 6 there really reminded me of my origins as a game creator.”

Sakaguchi and a small core team at Mistwalker would get to work on an ode to classic RPGs that called back to the creator’s early work. “It would be impossible to peel that apart from the turn-based mechanics and what that represents for an RPG,” Sakaguchi says, cementing the team’s decision to create a traditional turn-based RPG. Sakaguchi has never been one to play the hits, though. Rather than making something purely retro, he sought to build on the tried-and-true combat style with features like the Dimengeon, which lets players bank up multiple random encounters into one gauntlet fight, and spells that could be shaped with an iOS device’s touchscreen to hit multiple enemies at once.

Fantasian’s most ambitious swing, though, came from its art style. The RPG’s settings are built out of real dioramas that were scanned into the game. Sakaguchi says that the idea initially ran into problems due to underwhelming 3D scanning techniques that weren’t capturing the nuances of Mistwalker’s models. The team would solve that problem by turning to photogrammetry, an advanced technique that’s often used to create 3D models of cities.

That unique art style wasn’t a random creative decision; it was another point that intersected with his long career. Sakaguchi notes that he always loved the art of plastic model making and wanted to bring that idea to a game. That interest just so happened to intersect with another game from his past, Chrono Trigger, as well as the legendary artist Akira Toriyama, who passed away earlier this year.

“Akira Toriyama, who worked on Chrono Trigger, was a huge fan of plastic models,” Sakaguchi says. “There’s one story where there’s this huge toy manufacturer in Japan called Tamiya, and they would have contests for people who modify their plastic models and make these dioramas. Akira Toriyama had submitted one under an alias and he won that competition! I really loved the models that Toriyama-sensei created, but there’s also this three-dimensionality to a lot of his artwork. Even though it might be flat, he in his mind knows exactly what it looks like on the backside of that character even if it’s not necessary.”

As we talk about Fantasian, I note that fans of the RPG have often compared it to Chrono Trigger. There are a lot of obvious similarities, primarily in its eclectic cast of characters that includes gruff airship captains and lovable robots. When Sakaguchi and I discuss Chrono Trigger and its relationship to Fantasian, he gives credit to Toriyama’s art for both influencing his own way of thinking and cementing Chrono Trigger as an unshakable classic.

“Perhaps one of the reasons that Chrono Trigger stood the test of time is because [Toriyama] has that in his mind despite players only being able to see a few angles of it,” Sakaguchi says. “I think in some ways that relates to Fantasian as well because the 3D dioramas had to be created from all angles and take camera shots. I don’t know if I said I thought about Chrono Trigger when making Fantasian, but perhaps there are some parallels that can be drawn.”

A new dimension

Despite being a big undertaking for Sakaguchi, Fantasian would launch to a limited audience in 2021 after Mistwalker was approached by Apple to create a game for its Apple Arcade subscription service. It might seem strange that someone as important as Sakaguchi would want his final game to be locked to a specific audience, but that decision was another one that would tie his long history together in a bow.

“My original exposure to video games — and you could argue it’s what brought me to the game industry entirely — was the Apple 2 computer,” Sakaguchi says. “On the Apple 2 computer, I played games like Wizardry and Ultima 2, which was a huge culture shock to me. When approaching Fantasian, I went into the project thinking that perhaps it could be my last game. I thought it was kind of poetic in the sense that the Apple computer brought me into the gaming industry. If I made my last game on the Apple platform, there’s a closing of the loop so to speak.”

That decision would make Fantasian one of gaming’s best-kept secrets over the past three years. Those who have played it will likely talk your ear off about its gorgeous art, creative combat, and challenging battles. It’ll outgrow its “hidden gem” status with the release of Fantasian: Neo Dimension, which brings a tuned-up version of it to PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC. That platform move gave Sakaguchi and Mistwalker a second chance to correct some flaws in the original. Chief among those is a new Normal difficulty option that retunes some notoriously difficult moments.

“In the original Fantasian on Apple Arcade, the mechanics and balance was primarily done by two of the programmers and myself,” Sakaguchi says. “As a result, it’s almost a very peaky game, with peaks and valleys. In hindsight, it wasn’t our intention to be mean to our players or anything; we were just trying to make what we thought was the funnest version of the game at the time. But I think the team that was in charge of it might have been slightly biased!”

That isn’t the only change. Neo Dimension will also feature full voice over, quality of life tweaks like increased character movement speed, and 4K visuals that better show off its dioramas. The team even tweaked things like contrast to make those standout visuals sing on larger screens. What once was a quiet send-off for Sakaguchi is now poised to become his next great masterpiece three years later.

Officially unretired

Fantasian Neo Dimension is launching at a pivotal moment for a genre that Sakaguchi helped put on the map. In recent years, the RPG landscape has entirely shifted. Franchises like Final Fantasy have traded in turn-based combat for real-time action, a trend that’s even bleeding into series like Dragon Quest. Fantasian at times feels like the final masterpiece in a slowly dying breed, but Sakaguchi doesn’t see that as a negative. He’s been around long enough to know that change is a necessity.

“Games is a medium that constantly has to evolve in some way to stay relevant, so the transition to real-time interaction seems quite logical given the change in hardware,” Sakaguchi says. “At the same time, the HD-2D type of expression is very imaginative and not something that I could have come up with. I think what people have done to push the boundaries of what pixel art is capable of is amazing, so I’m impressed and like where the genre is going as a whole.”

That, of course, begs the question of where Sakaguchi himself fits into those shifting sands. While Fantasian was once positioned as his final game before retirement, he’s singing a different tune now. He’s once again partnering with Square Enix after their split over 20 years ago, and he already has his next project in the works. Fantasian backfired as a goodbye; his experience on it only revitalized him. When asked about whether he’d make another game with diorama art again, he lets his future plans slip.

“Since we’ve gone through the trouble of creating this pipeline and technology, if the opportunity presents itself to use it again in the future, I’d love to take that opportunity,” Sakaguchi says. “That all being said — of course I can’t go into too much detail — we had an amazing team with Fantasian that I’d love to work on something with that team together again. So we’re quietly in pre-production on something else with that team. Hopefully details will be revealed at a future date!”

Sakaguchi knows that energy can’t last forever. He’s now in his early 60s working in a taxing industry. There will soon come a day where he officially hangs up his boots, but he’s rediscovered that magic that helped him create Final Fantasy with the Fantasian team for now.

“Making one game start to finish takes about three years, which translates to a lot of energy and stamina and different challenges that come with what you’re trying to do and innovate with the game,” Sakaguchi says. “Being able to continue working with this team is perhaps a big motivator for me, but how many more times I can do this still remains to be seen.”

Fantasian Neo Dimension launches this winter on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and PC.