“Square collapsed” after Hironobu Sakaguchi left the company, said Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu, adding the “situation at Square was awful after he quit”.
Final Fantasy series creator Sakaguchi joined Uematsu on the podcast Nobiyo To Isshoni earlier this month where they discussed their time together at Square working on the series in the 80s and 90s.
Sakaguchi resigned in 2001, before officially leaving Square in 2003 along with other key members of the company, ahead of its merger with rival Enix that same year.
“Square collapsed after Sakaguchi left,” said Uematsu on the podcast (thanks Automaton). “To put it simply – he is the big boss. Always has been and always will be.”
Uematsu described Square in its formative years as more like a club of university students than a serious company, but Sakaguchi was “able to manage the work even in that kind of environment”.
He added: “We didn’t even have a proper corporate organisation, yet everybody listened to him. It’s a kind of quality you just have to be born with.” Uematsu called Sakaguchi “a leader” – he may have been bossy and strict, but he was able to attract the people around him.
Uematsu continued: “Maybe Sakaguchi isn’t aware of this, but the situation at Square was awful after [Sakaguchi] quit.
“He left and the organisation suddenly collapsed. I thought to myself ‘Oh no, I should get away from here’.”
After directing the first five Final Fantasy games, Sakaguchi moved to a producer role for subsequent games in the series. His final game at Square was Final Fantasy X-2, for which he was executive producer.
Famously, his final years at Square were spent creating the Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within CGI film, which was deemed a financial failure. In 2004 he established his independent studio Mistwalker, which has since released a number of excellent RPGs with a cult following.
Earlier this year, Sakaguchi discussed with Eurogamer how his most recent game, Fantasian Neo Dimension, is fuelled by nostalgia for his past work.
Though there have been successes in the Final Fantasy series since Sakaguchi’s departure – namely MMORPG Final Fantasy 14 – the series has struggled to match the 90s golden era Sakaguchi oversaw.
As for Uematsu, he left Square Enix in 2004, but has since frequently composed pieces for the Final Fantasy series. Last year, he confirmed he would be returning for the third part of the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy with a main theme.
As such, he’s not retiring from video game music as some had feared, but admitted he is “going to cut back a bit” on video game music work because “the time commitment for composing would be too long”.