14 DAY TRIAL // Speaking to Nintendo Gamer, Hironobu Sakaguchi, who worked on both Final Fantasy and is now leading developer Mistwalker, has said that, “A lot of western RPGs focus on creating a world and award the player a great deal of freedom in it, instead of focusing on a story. I think the interest in Japanese RPGs is divided based on how people feel about that difference in style.”
Mistwalker’s recent release, The Last Story, is groundbreaking in many ways because it allows gamers to eliminate grinding to get levels and even gives them the freedom to fast forward through cutscenes rather than forcing them to listen to every line of dialog from every character.
But Sakaguchi is not yet ready to accept all the elements that have made Western role-playing games successful, adding, “Exploring huge worlds is often a big feature of RPGs, but we decided to cut down the time spent wandering around like that and try making something with a bit of a faster pace. We tried to make it feel like being on a rollercoaster.”
The developer acknowledged that Western developers had managed to gain the upper hand when it came to graphics, overturning the advantage that Japanese developers had when 3D was initially introduced.
When looking towards the future, the veteran Japanese role-playing game developer sees the genre moving to handhelds and other mobile gaming platforms.
He predicts that the move from the arcade cabinets to the living room will be followed by one towards mobile gaming interlaced with social features.
The Last Story will be launched in North America during June and gamers can already buy the game in Europe and in Japan.
Square Enix is continuing to work on the Final Fantasy series, although the company has not announced any plans to deliver new content for mobile devices or for handhelds, focusing instead on remakes.