The Mistwalker founder was in London to showcase his latest role-playing epic, Wii-exclusive The Last Story. And I’ll admit, it does sound a little bit like he’s packing it all in. In fact, Sakaguchi said that he worked on the game as if it really was his last. But it’s not. Don’t worry.
When the audience saw the game in action on the big theatre screen, it was evident that Sakaguchi’s approach to its development had resulted in some truly exciting and inspired gameplay. In The Last Story, you control a group of six mercenaries that come to the castle town of Lazulis Island seeking work. Such available work involves, as you would expect, defeating various enemies and monsters that threaten the mountainous region that surrounds the town.
The fantastic voice acting and localisation direction includes Cockney-sounding females, softly-spoken Scots and even hardass Welshmen.
As the leader of the pack, Zael has the power to engage in tactical combat while also deliver punishing blows in a real-time battle environment. This works using a rather cool feature known as “Gathering” - the ability to draw the attention of nearby enemies towards you so that your companions have enough time to attack and cast spells. While your sword can vanquish all kinds of grunts, bosses are a little harder and require some lateral thinking in order to defeat - environmental attacks and setting up traps, for example.
“Because I wanted to create a completely new battle system for this game, we had a year-long experimental phase where we tried out twice as many systems,” Sakaguchi revealed, speaking of the battle mechanics. In the end, the Gathering system was decided upon. “My ultimate goal was to create a game that would be held as a new style of RPG and I hope people will feel the same way.”
Of course, having led the Japanese RPG scene for several decades now, it must be hard to stay ahead of the competition. Over the last 25 years, Sakaguchi notes the three main events in the games industry that has allowed (or forced) the genre to evolve. “Firstly, the transition from 2D to 3D, certainly for the development of Final Fantasy VII this was a huge turning point.
Back to the title tattle - perhaps the reasoning for the ominous naming of Sakaguchi’s games stems from the one that made him famous: Final Fantasy. And indeed, many of the gamers and industry professionals in the audience were interested in asking about his past experiences on the franchise.
That philosophy led Final Fantasy to be not quite so final, as a huge number of sequels and spinoffs have been developed since its release. Sakaguchi is not so sure that The Last Story will end up the same way, should it prove to be successful. “It’s a good idea, but I don’t know whether I will be doing [sequels] for The Last Story.”
What is certain is Sakaguchi’s next venture - mobile gaming. It was revealed on Twitter earlier in the day that Mistwalker will be developing for iOS. The developer said on stage that he was in fact working on three separate titles for the Apple platform, including a platforming game. Does he think, like many mobile advocates, that the home console as we know it will die out?
“I can’t be certain about what will happen in the future, but the images that PCs and consoles can output are always going to be of a very high quality, so they will never disappear off the face of the earth. But at the same time the smartphone market is increasing rapidly, so it really remains to be seen.”
The Last Story will be released exclusively on the Nintendo Wii on 24th February.