Square Enix is reportedly publishing their former lead developer’s game Fantasian to game consoles.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, NateDrake AKA Nate The Hate shared this as a rumor on the latest episode of his Nate The Hate podcast. Nate also claims that the game will be officially revealed in the upcoming Nintendo Direct.
Fantasian is the latest RPG from Mistwalker Studio, a game developer founded by Hironobu Sakaguchi. Sakaguchi was a 20 year veteran of Square Enix, and deserves credit as the originator of the Final Fantasy franchise, as well as being its chief architect for most of those twenty years.
Sakaguchi resigned from Square in 2001, with his official exit from the company being finalized in 2003. Sakaguchi credits manga artists Akira Toriyama and Takehiko Inoue in sparking his interest in making video games again, and that was why he founded Mistwalker a year later.
In Mistwalker , Sakaguchi pursued new ideas to push RPGs forward as well as to keep him interested. His two most successful games with Mistwalker are Blue Dragon, his collaboration with the later Akira Toriyama, with games releasing on the Xbox 360 and Nintendo DS, and Terra Battle, a tile based tactical RPG that came to Android and iOS.
Mistwalker’s latest title, Fantasian, was produced for the Apple Arcade. This game is the closest he has made to a Final Fantasy game in years, but it also has its own innovations. On the gameplay front, there is an intriguing mechanic which allows you to delay a battle by banishing enemies to another dimension temporarily.
Fantasian is also an incredibly beautiful game, with fully built dioramas comprising its backgrounds. As explained in this article for The Verge, Sakaguchi had several real life dioramas built for the game, fully painted and everything. Each of the 150 dioramas were photographed, mapped into 3D, and then recreated in game engine, to be enhanced with fog and lighting effects.
We had reported on rumors and a SteamDB listing that suggested that Fantasian would leave Apple Arcade exclusivity, to go to consoles and PC. But the intriguing tidbit is Square Enix’s involvement. We already know that Square Enix reported a shift to making less projects in their latest earnings call, after several big games fell short of sales expectations.
In spite of the challenging circumstances, or perhaps because of them, Square Enix decided it was worth the investment to publish Fantasian. But then again, the game was long completed, the work needed to port the game is limited, and may have already been done by Mistwalker.
So Square Enix didn’t need to spend that much to make this happen. Mistwalker and Square Enix may also have recognized that both parties coming together for this release would maximize its success, and could turn out well for both parties. We certainly hope that that is the case, and we’re looking forward to this upcoming announcement.
