CHAPTER V End of an Era
Hashimoto The trio of PlayStation games we made provided a high boost to the company. They enriched our lives: we moved to better offices in Meguro, we got new computers and lots more staff were joining. But Sakaguchi was always looking for what was going to be the next big thing. He came to strongly believe that an online revolution was coming. Because of that, we set up our PlayOnline project, a portal for online gaming. This was the impetus behind what would become the company’s first MMO, Final Fantasy XI. The actual development of Final
Fantasy XI was handled in Honolulu in Sakaguchi’s studio there. I spent my time running around Japan brokering deals to get smaller games onto the PlayOnline service, to help support
Final Fantasy XI. There were so many projects on the go at that time. I think, at one point, Final Fantasy IX, X, XI, XII and the Final Fantasy film were all concurrently in development at the studio. It was an extremely hectic time. That’s when I started hearing the rumours that Sakaguchi was going to leave the company.
Sakaguchi With Final Fantasy VII we had a huge number of CG experts join the company. We didn’t train up the old Square staff, but instead gathered a very skilled team from across Japan. They made the cutscenes in PlayStation games. Now, these people weren’t originally games guys; they were CG specialists, and their goals and dreams were to work in film. I had a feeling that, because we had this talent in the company, maybe we could make a film together. So I got together the team and some people from Hollywood and started looking at possibilities. We decided to make it in Hawaii because it’s equidistant to Japan and North America. Also, the local Hawaiian government was supportive about getting visas. If you had tried to take 150 Japanese staff to Hollywood to work on a film project, you’d never get the visas. But everything started coming together, and I decided we should take a chance. Kitase K People look at Final Fantasy: The
S Spirits Within and think it has little to do d with the games. That’s incorrect. While W Nomura, Nojima and I wrote the plot p for Final Fantasy VII, there was in fact f an earlier script for the game that Sakaguchi S had written by himself. Lots of o the concepts from that document made it into the game, but the actual original plot formed the basis of the script for the movie. People look at the film and think it’s pure sci-fi. But when I see the film, I can see a lot of the
“I had a feeling that maybe we could make a film together” Hironobu Sakaguchi
“Sakaguchi’s departure was like Aerith’s death. One day he just wasn’t there any more” Yoshinori Kitase
kind of things he wanted to do with Final Fantasy VII.
Sakaguchi The reason I decided to leave Square Enix was related to the film’s performance, of course, but that’s not the sole reason. From around Final
Fantasy VII onwards I stopped being involved in the programming work and moved more into production and business management. My job continued moving in that direction and I started thinking that this wasn’t the reason I joined the industry. So when the film project was such a massive failure it was a good chance for a reset that would allow me to get back to the things I wanted to do in the game industry.
Kitase As a business venture, yes, it was a failure, but as an entertainment company you have to try out new things. You don’t want to be a company that is so scared of failure that you never try anything new or interesting.
Hashimoto When I heard the rumours, I called Sakaguchi to ask whether it was true that he was leaving. I still remember when I first heard it from his lips. It was terrifying. The business had expanded so much in such a short time and I was hugely concerned that we were about to lose the guy at the top of it all. Initially the plan was that he would keep supporting Square as part of an outside company, which slightly put my mind at rest. But that didn’t quite happen, and keeping stable with such changes happening became a huge challenge.
Kitase I’ve since heard, second hand, that Sakaguchi said that he handed responsibility for the Final Fantasy series over to me when he left. That’s very flattering, of course, but at the time it wasn’t as if there was an official parting speech or handover of the reins. In lots of ways Sakaguchi’s departure was like Aerith’s death in Final Fantasy VII. One day he just wasn’t there any more.
“Sakaguchi is like a kid: someone who is pure and honest” Nobuo Uematsu
There wasn’t really a period of grieving, but it was immediately obvious in his absence what a strong hand he had kept on the tiller, and the fact that he was a very strong leader, not just of Final Fantasy but of the entire company. There was a void there left by him, which we had to get used to.
Uematsu I continued to work at the company for about two years after Sakaguchi left. It wasn’t so much out of a sense of loyalty to Square so much as the fact that, after Sakaguchi left, it started to get boring without him around. Lots of people say lots of things about Mr Sakaguchi but, for me, and other people who know him well, he is like a kid: someone who is pure and honest and who follows what he finds interesting. He is wonderfully straightforward in that way.
While Sakaguchi was at Square Enix the company followed in that mould. We made games that we found interesting and exciting. That’s what we chased. Sure, we had to think strategically from a business perspective, but after Sakaguchi left money seemed to become the highest priority. The first question was always, “What will sell?” That attitude made me lose interest, a little.
Hashimoto I remember it wasn’t just Sakaguchi who left. Lots of the higherups followed, which caused a lot of trouble for us in terms of how we were going to run the business. We didn’t want to cause trouble for our fans and business partners in the industry. It was hugely worrying. How were we just going to keep going? Money was also a big problem. We had expanded too much, and our outgoings were so high, that money was very tight. We had to think carefully about which titles we were going to focus on. The early 2000s were a difficult time to get through.
Nomura It’s not as if I consciously decided to stick around myself after Sakaguchi left. I am always handling multiple projects at once, so there is never a convenient time to pull out. Also, I’m aware that whenever I would hypothetically choose to leave the company it would cause trouble for somebody, and that has resulted in me staying, more than any conscious decision to do so. Kitase As a product, I don’t think Final
Fantasy XII’s direction was influenced by the absence of Sakaguchi. But it’s probably fair to say that with the changeover from PlayStation 2 to 3, we had to spend a lot of time building the basic engine. That took far longer that we had estimated. You needed a lot of staff assigned, and in order to do that we had to move people around in the company, and squash smaller games in order to get the staff together. Sakaguchi was very good at bringing a team together. He was very blunt and direct, but also very powerful in his ability to move people around to just the right place. If he had been in charge he would have got the development together in a much more efficient way.
Hashimoto We struggled as the technology was changing. We lacked the experience with PlayStation 3 and to be frank, our adoption of that machine was well behind the curve.