Square Enix’s SaGa series has always marched to the beat of its own drum. The developers are not afraid to take risks and be unconventional. With its reputation for nonlinear gameplay, player choice and freedom of discovery, SaGa was ahead of its time, but despite more than ten submissions and two decades of history, North America has never really had its heyday. However, Square Enix does not give up and surprised many of those past E3 games by announcing two previously unreleased games in the series, Romancing SaGa 3 and SaGa Scarlet Grace: Ambitions, which would finally reach our country. Today, Romancing SaGa 3 is available for the first time in North America – 24 years after its first release in Japan. To celebrate and see what’s ahead, I talked with General Director Akitoshi Kawazu and Producer Masanori Ichikawa about the series and what we can expect from these games. Both were open about the state of the RPGs and why it took some time to get the franchise going again.
About returning the series .
Since the PS2 era, the SaGa series is quite quiet, with some only in Japan available browsers and mobile games. Scarlet Grace is the first major contributor in ten years, and the remasters of Romancing SaGa have certainly helped the franchise reach more people. The lag between the main entries is a little complicated, but it challenges publishers trying to adapt to a changing market. “When we came in the 2000s, the Japanese gaming market stagnated considerably,” Kawazu said, pointing to the boom in mobile games and to Japanese companies trying to appeal to a Western audience. “For a long time, only high-tech games have done well in the Western market. But we have entered an era in which Pixel and 2D games became popular again and traditional games became popular again. In this context, we have decided that it is a good time to bring the SaGa series back to the Western market. ”
Although Square Enix focused on its flagship series (Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts and Dragon Quest), it slowly released older titles and brought smaller objects into focus. A new studio was even founded, Tokyo RPG Factory, to produce new RPGs in a classic style inspired by the ’90s. At that time, Kawazu noticed that more and more fans were coming out of the woods, saying they had been waiting for more from SaGa. Due to this demand, the series was able to return and increase its fan base. “In recent years, the SaGa series has once again been regarded as the great show it is and (is gaining popularity again),” notes Kawazu.
About the Legacy of SaGa 3 and the Remaster .
Romancing SaGa 3 came out in 1995 for the first time, but this is the first time it’s headed west. The game continues the tradition of its predecessors by having several protagonists and determining your actions in combat as characters grow. For example, if you cast a lot of spells with a particular fighter, their magic values are increased. This even applies to the weapons: If your character uses a specific weapon type, that character learns special attacks for it. New content and improvements have been made to the HD remaster to enhance the experience, such as: Eg optimized graphics and new storylines. “It’s about playing the game and raising its initial potential to a higher level and sometimes adding extra elements to make it easier to play,” Ichikawa says. “Just a simple example: We’ve added an autosave feature to dramatically increase the number of possible stores. We’ve also added a feature that lets you know how far you are in the game. You have a kind of travel journal that you can look back on. Of course, there are also additional dungeons and events. We also added a new Game +. “To experience this lost chapter in the West, the Remaster is now available digitally for PS4, Xbox One, Switch, Vita (!), PC and iOS.
About a modern SaGa game .
Scarlet Grace is a new chapter for a new generation of players. Do you keep the classic elements? Reinvent the wheel for a modern audience? How do you like to compare longtime fans with newer ones? With a series known for their experimentation, it’s easy to wonder how designers approach a new entry. For Kawazu, it’s about getting back to basics. “Players are players from start to finish in every era, and I really do not think that the things that people who play games are fundamentally different from era to era,” he says. “But when it came time to do SaGa Scarlet Grace, we definitely took a step back and thought, ‘Okay, what are the basic elements of a role-playing game? And how do we do that in modern times? “
Kawazu said his main goal is for players to go through the story with the characters and have the same feelings and experiences. Since this was so important, he decided not to have dungeons in play, which allowed the team to add more events and story-driven content. “I definitely thought we had to cut away the whole chaff,” he says. “I did not want a level design. There are no dungeons, because there are a million action games where you can crawl through dungeons. If you want to do that you can play one of these games, you do not have to play this game to get it. ”
Kawazu agreed, saying that he did not want the player to wander aimlessly around somewhere looking for treasure or enemies to fight. “I really did not think that was necessary because all that is is that somehow you’re lost for a while. They make the player play a bit longer, and that’s kind of pointless, “he explains. In Scarlet Grace, you are still battling bosses and looking for things, but they all have story elements connected to them. “I wanted players to think about what they’re doing and actually engage with that story,” says Kawazu.
This also extends to the main property. This is not a role play around the world: there is no hero or big evil to fight against. “The different characters go out into the world for their own reasons to improve themselves and tell their own personal stories,” explains Kawazu. All characters have their own feelings and strong background stories, but you can also see them differently based on the choices you make. “There are basic concepts for the characters in this game, but the player’s involvement in those character decisions largely determines who the characters are going to be.” How these decisions turn out is not about having a more ideal version than that other. “We do our best to make sure that there are no objectively correct answers,” says Kawazu. “There is no right or wrong, it is” that person thinks that way, so they have chosen A “and” that person has those values, so they have chosen B, “and the natural results of those decisions will then do it.”
As you can see, the SaGa series continues to march to its own drum, and that’s part of what makes it so important in the RPG field. Innovation and change do not come about through standstill. The series is risky and some do not always go down (cough, cough, Unlimited SaGa), but you can not deny the influence of SaGa on RPGs, especially as far as choices and branch paths are concerned. “The SaGa series is a series that constantly challenges what it means to be a role play,” says Ichikawa. “Yes, Romancing SaGa 3 is an old game, but I really hope that players get the opportunity to look at it and see how we tried to challenge those prejudices, and also to play Scarlet Grace and to see how we continue to question these prejudices. I think we break the form in other ways than Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy or Kingdom Hearts, so it would be very interesting for players to watch it. ”
Romancing SaGa 3 is now available and Scarlet Grace will be released on the 3rd of December. More information about the SaGa series can be found in our other interview from E3.