Legendary game designer Hironobu Sakaguchi was featured in a brief interview with Bloomberg, discussing the recent announcement that Square Enix will publish Fantasian: Neo Dimension (originally launched on Apple Arcade in April 2021) for PC and consoles.
Sakaguchi worked at Square Enix for twenty years, creating the publisher’s most lucrative and popular series: Final Fantasy. The game designer said he purposely kept his distance from Square Enix at first:
I felt if I kept too close of a relationship, then it might actually affect how Square Enix treats Final Fantasy.
Eventually, though, the publisher invited him back to do a series of panels and events for the franchise’s 30th anniversary. Since 2021, after joining an in-game Final Fantasy XIV event, Sakaguchi also became an avid player of the popular MMORPG, to the point where he feels he now ‘lives’ within the virtual world of Eorzea.
However, when asked whether he would return to working on his previous franchises, Sakaguchi resisted the idea. While that was expected for Final Fantasy (Square Enix has since moved on with younger directors, and it would be weird for them to push them aside in favor of the original creator’s comeback), fans of the designer were hopeful he’d wish to continue Lost Odyssey and/or Blue Dragon at some point.
Both roleplaying games were funded by Microsoft as Xbox 360 exclusives and were released between 2006 and 2007. The critical reception was solid, but sales weren’t as high as Microsoft wanted, and there were no further installments. Now, with Sakaguchi firmly closing the door to a potential return to either game, it is increasingly unlikely that Microsoft will ever want to revive those franchises without their creator, leaving Lost Odyssey’s Kaim and Blue Dragon’s Shu, Jiro, Kluke, Zola, and Marumaro relegated to the limbo of memory.
