Matsuno: Square's loss is Nintendo's gain

[Julius Seeker]

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3153639&did=1

Matsuno recently left Square after developing a few very highly acclaimed titles including Final Fantasy 12, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Vagrant Story; all of which are among Square's most critically praised games in the company's history. Matsuno is now working on a new game for the Wii, which other people he is working alongside is still a mistery at this point. It is also unknown as to what the game will be, I am personally hoping it is something in the strategy field since I am much more into those styles of games than others. His Epic Adventure/RPGs also incorporate a lot of strategy, we've all played Vagrant Story, and FF12 is another game that is a good indication of this; both got 40/40 by Famitsu, that is 2 of the 6 titles in the last 20 years that have received the 40/40 score.

"Graphics (these days) have evolved, and there are many games claiming that this generates a more realistic atmosphere. However, there are very few games that have a control interface that lives up to this atmosphere. With the Wii controller you can actually feel like you're touching or living in this atmosphere."

"When I first tried Mario Galaxy, I realized that the controller fit the game almost scarily well. It allows you to intuitively feel the game and its atmosphere."

[Flip]

Thats pretty interesting. Although, can you see his turn based style games translating to the Wii, what would it take advantage of? He'll probably make a game completely outside what he is used to, but i'm sure his standard for an awesome game will not suffer.

[Torgo]

Hopefully he, along with Sakimoto, joins up with Mistwalker. That company is pretty much Square, in essence.

[Julius Seeker]

I have been speculating for a while that he is doing just that actually. That would make Mistwalker into somewhat of a super team, they have some very interesting DS and 360 titles in the works.

Sakimoto is already onboard with Mistwalker. Sakimoto's FFT short-intro (not the FMV one, but the one at the title screen) is one of the most drawing intros a game has ever had.

As for how Matsuno would create a game with the Wii controller, it will be interesting to see, he has a knack for coming up with interesting concepts in gameplay. Vagrant Story was somewhat out of his usual style of game, and he created something relatively original that worked. I am thinking he'll be looking a lot at Zelda and Mario for ideas if he chooses to make something along the lines of Vagrant Story. Vagrant Story obviously had a lot of influence from Zelda, as well as his older games, there were strong hints of influence from FFT in there.