Sakaguchi joked about considering retirement in the new year, but ultimately opted to “give this another go”, much to the joy of JRPG fans around the world. During his very productive run at Square Enix, Sakaguchi created the legendary Final Fantasy series among other achievements before leaving to found his own studio in 2004. His own company, Mistwalker, has released plenty of classic bangers in its own right as well, enriching the genre with the likes of Lost Odyssey and The Last Story. Hmm… “last story” and “final fantasy” really are suggesting a pattern. While Mistwalker has pivoted in the direction of mobile games like Terra Battle and Fantasian, there is no guarantee that this next project will skip other platforms. Many earlier Mistwalker releases hit consoles, while some appeared exclusively on handhelds. At this point, probably only the developers themselves have a platform in mind - if even! Sakaguchi’s remarks to Famitsu imply that he is still very early on in the project, having recently started writing a scenario for it. It isn’t clear whether this is the studio’s only upcoming project, but it is likely that they’re also cooking up some other games as well that might see the light of day sooner. On the note of other Mistwalker projects, one thing we do know is that the studio is not particularly interested in remastering or remaking their older titles. This stings the most in the case of the Xbox exclusive Lost Odyssey, but it does allow the studio to spend more resources on exploring entirely new concepts. Sakaguchi hasn’t revealed any details about what this new dark fantasy game will be about, what kind of gameplay to expect, when the studio hopes to release it, or anything at all other than the fact that he’s working on it. At the very least, this gives fans of his work something to look forward to.
