Fantasian trial#

“There are a lot of different scenes where the characters are conversing and having little banter with each other,” Sakaguchi says, “and that’s true even with the pixel-art era of Final Fantasy.

Sakaguchi decided against making stop-motion character models because he wanted to capture the minute facial expression of characters during conversations. While this aesthetic has its advantages, it isn’t all-encompassing.

“I have a lot of emotional investment in all of them.” Falling Down ”What surprised me was how these companies built out the dioramas more than we had asked for, and I could really feel that they poured their blood, sweat, and tears into it,” Sakaguchi concludes. These dioramas give Fantasian a wholly unique aesthetic unlike anything else currently on the market, while the complex environments, snappy turn-based combat, and engaging story bring it closer to classic Final Fantasy. “This Scrapyard has a lot of disjointed pieces that they were able to construct into one single diorama.” “I have a lot of emotional investment in all of them.” Sakaguchi is particularly impressed by the Scrapyard: “They were able to build this world with all of these parts they’d gathered from model kits, and some items built from scratch,” he says. was something we crafted early on, but as we were further along in development, a lot of the world setting and different elements changed, so we had to go back and recraft certain elements of that stage.” “The interior was actually modeled after a real ship. “The Uzra was really a huge challenge, and the team that put that together actually really built it out,” Sakaguchi says. The process was consistent for every diorama, but some were more challenging than others. This is what a scanned diorama looks like in-game. The teams crafted these environments using their own materials, and the dioramas were 3D-scanned, allowing Mistwalker to implement the 3D models of these dioramas into Fantasian.Īfter photographing the dioramas from a myriad of angles, Mistwalker could then projection-map the images of the dioramas onto those 3D models, and that’s how the final product is made. For example, the Southern Forest was created by a team with experience making model train sets with trees, shrubbery, and mountains in the scenery. Mistwalker worked with multiple studios on this project in a way that let them focus on each diorama maker’s strengths. The level design process has to be very meticulous and intentional.” “I can’t tell the level designer that I want to add a path here to connect two areas. “Being a diorama, you can’t really make changes later on,” Sakaguchi says. From there, Mistwalker knew all of the locations it needed dioramas for and created blueprints. Building an RPG starts with crafting the “scenario,” or story concept. Twitter: intricate and time-consuming process paid off in spades. Naturally, that led to the pre-rendered style.”Ī behind-the-scenes look at the diorama made for the town of EN in Fantasian. “As I was looking at them, I thought to myself it’d be really cool if we could explore these dioramas in a fully fleshed-out RPG world. “We had used these dioramas, just on a much smaller scale,” Sakaguchi explains.

Fantasian trial#

He played with model kits as a kid, and when he was at Mistwalker he decided to give the idea a trial run with the mobile RPG Terra Wars. Sakaguchi says this unconventional approach to Fantasian’s environments was a natural decision. Sadly, Sakaguchi tells Inverse the dioramas that enabled this artistic feat won’t last forever. The result is one of the most beautiful mobile RPGs ever. In fact, he got the idea to return to this style of turn-based RPG when he replayed FF6 on a livestream with some of its original developers a few years ago.įantasian also looks back fondly toward the RPGs of the PS1 era, with pre-rendered backgrounds that evoke the soaring scale of Final Fantasy VII and VIII.

Sakaguchi says Final Fantasy VI is one of the biggest influences on this new project. Apple Arcade gave Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi and his studio Mistwalker the chance to go back to basics with Fantasian, a turn-based RPG with digital backgrounds derived from intricate real-life dioramas.