Folks, if I leave an impression on the gaming world in my time here, I hope it’s my support for SaGa. Sure, we all love Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and whatnot. But there’s a special spot in my heart for SaGa and all its weirdness. In my time in games media I’ve had the pleasure to talk to series director Akitoshi Kawazu a few times, along with some of the other talent involved in SaGa’s development. It’s always a blast to pick the brains behind our favorite games, and things like language barriers make it stressful too. But in a fun way, of course.
During the road to SaGa Emerald Beyond, I was offered another chance to shoot some questions over to not only Kawazu, but other notable members of the team including Composer Kenji Ito, Combat Designer Tomokazu Shibata, and Localization Director Neil Broadley. I asked about the series’ history, its music, the striking new combat system, and even got to ask about the localization! I got some fun responses, especially with respect to people responding to the recent Emerald Beyond demo, and some particularly juicy insight about the combat. Enjoy!
Lucas White, Shacknews: As I draft these questions, the demo has been released. I imagine by the time these questions make it over, lots of data will have come in from players. Any early surprises from how folks have responded to the game? Moments of pride or validation? Personally, I was quite tickled when I saw some fans note offering different protagonists for each platform demo as “very SaGa,” and one person posting an image of Vegeta from Dragon Ball kneeling in respect for Mr. Kawazu’s ostensible/perceived brazenness. I wonder what you all make of that as well!
Kawazu, I kneel. pic.twitter.com/fGvNvMpLjY
— Coco (@Cocokkura) April 3, 2024
Akitoshi Kawazu, Director and Lead Writer: I’m happy to have pleased a strong player like Vegeta. You don’t have to risk your life playing this game, so I encourage players to challenge themselves to the fullest to experience the joys of victory.
Tomokazu Shibata, Combat Designer: I felt a strong sense of accomplishment when I learned through social media that players were really getting heated and engrossed in the battles.
Shacknews: For Mr. Kawazu, playing Emerald Beyond reminded me quite a bit of the original SaGa and SaGa 2. Entering different worlds tied together by a mysterious force felt like climbing the tower in the first game for example. Some mechanics also took me back to those original games. Other pieces felt like natural progression from the rest of the series as well. The word “culmination” comes to mind. It’s rare in any medium to have a director lead a series in this way for so long, and especially in video games. As a fan it’s fun to look for those traces of DNA at a certain point, and wonder how much is deliberate, especially when older elements seem to resurface. It feels very pronounced here, though!
Kawazu: In running the Romancing SaGa Re;univerSe mobile live service, we wanted to include as many elements as possible that players would enjoy. The appearance of various races and adventuring in different worlds has been a tradition since the first SaGa title, and there is also a desire within me to freely enjoy a world where anything is possible. Of course, I enjoy the worlds of epic sagas like Romancing SaGa and SaGa Frontier 2 as well. However, if the presence of "Mr. S" somehow generates joy, I don't mind inserting him without any logical reasoning. That was my perspective this time around.
Shacknews: Being the first new SaGa game in many years, the first global localization for the series, and coming at a time when there are more SaGa fans or curious RPG fans in North America than ever, did you or do you find yourself looking back at SaGa as a whole body of work with Emerald Beyond in the purview?
Kawazu: I think it makes sense to look back at the past in order to advance to the next step. However, I don’t think I’m so old that I simply look back at the past for the sake of nostalgia. I believe that the future of SaGa lies beyond this work, and I’m more interested in thinking about that.
Shacknews: For Mr. Ito, one of the cool things about SaGa from my perspective is how much variety comes with it, and that extends to the music. I started with Bonnie and Formina by the way, and love how loud the sax gets when I just leave the game idling on the map sometimes. What does SaGa mean to you as a composer, and how does Emerald Beyond reflect that both as part of the series in general and the newest iteration?
Kenji Ito, composer: I see SaGa as a "school" that nurtured me. I was trained in musical thinking and production through working on this series. In addition, I grew up on Japanese music from a very young age and it still has a big influence on me today, so in a sense I think that the music of SaGa has a very “Japanese” style. I hope you enjoy this newest entry in the SaGa franchise, which was born in Japan.
Shacknews: For Mr. Shibata, I noticed the combat looks and feels like the system from Scarlet Grace, but has strikingly different things you have to pay attention to and worry about as the player. I’m still wrapping my head around it, especially trying to predict how moves will orient my characters on the timeline (if that’s even possible!). I’ve had moments of triumph (“Wow, I can’t believe everything came together like that!”) and tragedy (“Oh no, not only did I break my own combo, I let the enemy get a Showstopper! My life is in shambles!”).
Shibata: The battle system has many gimmicks, and the timeline battle system is very strategic. The placement of allies and enemies on the timeline changes with each turn, so even battles with the same enemies can turn into different situations each time, requiring the player to be flexible in building their strategy. On the other hand, the overdrive and showstopper elements bring a sense of surprise to the battles. With close observation and luck, you can activate overdrive and showstopper to turn a battle around. The enemy will do the same thing, so even the slightest carelessness and bad luck can allow an enemy to use overdrive and showstopper to defeat you. The battles are a mixture of highly strategic thinking, unexpected developments, tension that doesn’t leave room for slacking off, and exhilaration.
Shacknews: I’m still processing it all as I write this, and I believe I’m enjoying it more and more! Can you offer insight on how this system came to be, and how you hope to see the players engage with it as time goes on? Do you have any concerns or fears about it, or points of pride? Also, what’s it like to work on combat specifically in SaGa, a series that almost feels born from Kawazu’s combat design work in Final Fantasy 2?
Shibata: I’m very glad you enjoyed the battles. It’s very difficult to master this game, and the system has such depth that even though I was involved in making it, I’m still discovering new things about it. There are a vast number of strategies, and each player will discover their own unique strategy. Our intention in designing this game was for players to then take their various strategies and share them with each other. In particular, formations bring about a big change in the way battles are fought. Even a formation that seems useless becomes attractive when you understand how to use it. Once you’re familiar with battles and have established your own strategies, try playing together with others. Everyone will offer a different strategy than yours, which should make for a very interesting experience.
I don’t feel that it’s unnecessarily difficult, but it is certainly a battle system with many elements. I worry that it may take some time for players to truly grasp the nature of how fun the battles can be. Perhaps something simpler would have worked well, too, but I think some people will find this system very addictive.
I knew in my heart that working on the battle system for a SaGa title was going to be a true challenge. It was difficult but rewarding, as the team didn’t shy away from paying attention to every last detail when building the system.
Shacknews: For Mr. Broadley, SaGa has always had an interesting writing style to say the least, and localizing it can’t be easy. Especially for the English-speaking audience, which treats things like nuance and clarity very differently both culturally and linguistically.
That said, Emerald Beyond has so much personality and color! I recently encountered the “Parrot” in the pirate world, and that was so funny… I guess I’m wondering what it’s like to be in charge of localizing such a unique and complex series like SaGa. For Emerald Beyond in particular, it feels like there’s a lot more heavy lifting and naturalistic voice in the text than usual. How much of that is localization versus the original text, and how much freedom and/or collaboration was involved?
Neil Broadley, Localization Director: There are many different philosophies when it comes to the localization process of a game, but my goal with SaGa Emerald Beyond was to ensure that the English-language audience feels the same emotions and has the same experiences as a Japanese language audience.
The thing that stuck out to me immediately when I first got a playable build of the game was that the characters came off sounding very colloquial and casual. Unlike many RPGs, SaGa Emerald Beyond's storyline doesn't take itself overly seriously, and that irreverent tone is very clear in the Japanese game. As such, when localizing the game, I wanted the localization team to let loose and deviate from stuffy, trope-y fantasy RPG language and deliver something modern and casual that isn't afraid to say, "This game is a little bit silly." That's what the Japanese audience would be experiencing, after all!
This is notably different from certain earlier titles in the franchise, like Romancing SaGa 2 or SaGa Frontier 2, which were very much fantasy stories set in fantasy worlds. In SaGa Emerald Beyond, you can control a chassis-switching mech who fights alongside a red blood cell, a mole person, a gun-toting witch, and a death metal goth girl. If you come out of the game with an appreciation for eclectic absurdity, then I feel we have done our job!
SaGa Emerald Beyond is available on April 25, 2024 for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and 5, PC, and mobile platforms.
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replyLucas White posted a new article, Akitoshi Kawazu and the SaGa Emerald Beyond team discuss the latest (and weirdest) Square Enix RPG
