Hironobu Sakaguchi teases a new story written by Yasumi Matsuno

The 2021 edition of 4Gamer's end-of-year game creator comment compilation includes a segment from Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the famous Final Fantasy franchise. In one of the Q&A entries, he teased that Yasumi Matsuno is writing some sort of new scenario, although he did not really reveal what kind of title the story will be for.

You can read our translation of the segment right below:

Question: Who is the person you have observed (or been observing) the most in 2021?

Answer: Yasumi Matsuno. Apparently he is currently writing a scenario, but I am looking forward to seeing what kind of title it will be like.

Sakaguchi has been very keen on Matsuno's performance ever since his early career years. When Matsuno just joined Square after finishing his work on Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together at Quest, Sakaguchi told him to create a Final Fantasy strategy RPG—which eventually resulted in Final Fantasy Tactics.

The series creator was also the one who recommended Matsuno to head Final Fantasy XII's development team. However, Matsuno eventually left the team—and the whole company—in August 2005 due to health reasons. Sakaguchi reportedly became very upset due to this issue that he ended up refusing to play FFXII.

Matsuno worked together with Sakaguchi at one point in 2014 when he the scenario for "The Death of Shay and Arionne" in Mistwalker's now-defunct mobile game, Terra Battle. After establishing his own company named Algebra Factory in 2016, Matsuno received new work from Square Enix to write the scenarios for "Return to Ivalice" in Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood and "Save the Queen: Blades of Gunnhildr" in the following Shadowbringers expansion.

Speaking of Final Fantasy XIV, Hironobu Sakaguchi has been helplessly addicted to the popular MMORPG in recent months. He listed the title as the game with the most impact on him in 2021. Matsuno even assisted Sakaguchi when the latter started a speedrun of Final Fantasy XIV last September.

In his 2022 aspirations, Sakaguchi expects himself to take a full rest since Fantasian is already completed, and he might take the rest by fully immersing himself in FFXIV again. He also mentioned how he has been equipping attires from Chrono Trigger.

As a side note, Sakaguchi mentioned Foundation on Apple TV+ as the non-game show title that left the most impression on him.