Thematically, though, it’s classic Sakaguchi fare – the natural world at odds with the creeping spread of industrialization. Alongside my previous work on Terra Battles, it helped me realise that that was an awesome new visual expression that you can use in the medium.” “I think there is a very unique and cute sort of movement that could only be done with these handcrafted dioramas. “I hand-painted him myself,” he says proudly. I liked crafting these sort of plastic models or model kits from a very young age,” says Sakaguchi (before nipping away to another room, returning with his own Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine. “I would say definitely there was a hobby element to it. “The entire concept was an RPG where you get to traverse through handcrafted dioramas,” and it comes from a long-held love of handcraft skills. The use of diorama models was decided upon “at the inception of the project,” says Sakaguchi. It’s the difference between the original Star Wars films and the godawful prequels – a sense of a lived-in world worn, used and real. Like a high-fantasy model railway set, the texture and detail provided by the diorama settings – whether across a dusty village or lush green expanse – offers a tangibility that would be otherwise near-impossible to achieve digitally. But we know some players do prefer using a controller input method, too.”Īnd those environments, all 150-plus of them, are sublime. The idea of touching was really almost synergistic with the idea of using hand-made dioramas, like you're touching these hand-crafted scenes with your hand, which is really a cool experience. “We really pushed ourselves, on the touch interfaces, making sure that when when you're manipulating the characters and are going through the stages or battles, that it felt really really good. Touch seems Sakaguchi’s preferred approach for Fantasian. Then there’s the multitude of input options available to Arcade players today – across Mac, MacBook, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV, Mistwalker had to prepare control schemes for touchscreens, keyboards and mice and gamepads simultaneously. Making it fun across every device was definitely a big challenge for our development team.” “You take an iPad which is basically almost a square type ratio all the way into platforms in between – your iPhone which is the most extreme kind of elongated horizontal aspect ratio, for instance – and making the game playable on either extreme and all platforms. “The biggest issue I would say is really adapting to the different screen ratios and resolutions,” says Sakaguchi. Set to land in two chapters later this year, each 30+ hours in length, the Apple Arcade platform itself brought challenges that would have been unheard of earlier in Sakaguchi’s career. It’s an ambitious game, certainly in the sense of what’s expected from a mobile experience. I felt I didn't really leave much on the table with Fantasian and not that it is but, yeah, that's kind of my sentiment right now.” I'm not saying that it is it, but if this were my retirement project, I think that that would still leave me feeling pretty whole. “My next step is probably to kind of take a step away, maybe rest a little bit, and kind of see where we are. “Working on Fantasian was such a huge colossal scope of work and it was a bit overwhelming, to be honest,” he tells TechRadar over video call from his base of operations in Hawaii. If this were my retirement project, I think that that would still leave me feeling pretty whole. His latest project, Fantasian, is a nod back to the classic, sweeping RPGs of old on which Sakaguchi built his career, all the while taking advantage of the latest technologies and a unique, hand-crafted diorama-focused art style. Leaving long-time collaborators (and home of Final Fantasy) Square in 2003, he formed his own development company, Mistwalker, and has been pushing the envelope for JRPGs on mobile and consoles ever since. No Hironobu, no chocobos, no moogles and, arguably (not to discount Dragon Quest fans), no JRPG (Japanese role playing game) genre altogether – at least when it comes to its popularity in the western world. Creator of the massively popular Final Fantasy series, he’s been the driving force behind some of Japan’s all-time greatest gaming exports. If Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto is the king of platform games, then Hironobu Sakaguchi is the grandfather of role playing games.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |