Final Fantasy Creator Wants To Make Spiritual Successor To The Most Beloved Game In The Series

After the recent release of Fantasian: Neo Dimension on PC and consoles, Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi is currently working on another game as part of his farewell tour, one that he envisions as a spiritual successor to Final Fantasy 6. While Fantasian was supposed to be his game development swansong, the veteran game producer explained that his time on the game was highly enjoyable for him and that he couldn’t turn down an opportunity to continue working with the Fantasian team.

“I was thinking of making Fantasian: Neo Dimension my final work, but the fantastic team that was assembled to complete this project was so enjoyable to work with that I found it hard to part ways,” Sakaguchi said to The Verge. “Humans are greedy creatures, aren’t we? For that reason, I’m currently working on a new project with the same team that worked on Fantasian: Neo Dimension. It’s generally going to follow a similar style to my previous works, and it’ll be something that can be a successor to Final Fantasy 6 in a good way–our goal is to create something old but new at the same time. It’ll be part two of my farewell note.”

Final Fantasy 6 was the final mainline game in the series to be developed in 2D, as the series shifted toward 3D game graphics with Final Fantasy 7. Highly regarded as one of the best Final Fantasy games of all time thanks to its deep gameplay systems, ensemble cast, and story-based focus, Final Fantasy 6 has been ported to numerous systems over the decades since it was first released. When asked last year by French YouTuber Julien Chieze, Final Fantasy producer Yoshinori Kitase explained that a remake of Final Fantasy 6 in the same style as the recent Final Fantasy 7 remakes would be quite challenging to produce and would take about 20 years to complete.

Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake producer Masaaki Hayasaka, however, thinks Final Fantasy 6 would be perfect for the HD-2D to work on. “Octopath Traveler–the first HD-2D title–was developed while referencing [Final Fantasy VI], as it had the highest-quality pixel art,” Hayasaka said. “I would love to see how the game we referenced would look with the HD-2D art style.”