The man widely recognized as "The Father of <i>Final Fantasy</i>, Hironobu Sakaguchi, is heading up the development of two new role-playing games. His company, Mist Walker, has been at work on one or both titles since April of this year, for an as-yet-undisclosed platform.

Sakaguchi avers that the new titles will build on his past work at Squaresoft by stressing story and emotion:

"I'll incorporate the good points from past games, but I'm working to my limit in hopes that these games will bring tears to the eyes of their players, in the ways that only novels and movies could."

<i> Final Fantasy X-2</i> was the first game in the series not to list Sakaguchi in the credits. He started as series director from the very first game and was credited as executive producer as recently as <i>FFXI</i>, though its not clear how involved he actually was in the last couple of entries. He accepted a demotion after Square's foray into cinema, <i>Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within</i> flopped at the box office.