COLLECTED WORKS - NAOKI YOSHIDA

How a career as a known fixer led to the biggest rescue job of all

- EDWIN EVANS-THIRLWELL

Naoki Yoshida is the architect of the Japanese game industry’s greatest comeback story since the original Final Fantasy game. Having cut his teeth at Square Enix on the Dragon Quest series, he led efforts to rescue the catastrophic Final Fantasy XIV, eventually transforming it into an MMO on par with the mighty World Of Warcraft. A scenario writer at heart, Yoshida crafted a reputation for adaptability and tenacity in the 1990s, though he has seen his fair share of disappointments. Here, he reflects on the many frustrations and surprises of a career spent steering or salvaging troubled projects.

FAR EAST OF EDEN III

Developer Red Company Publisher Hudson Soft Format PC-FX Release Unreleased

The first game I worked on was never released. I started my career at Hudson Soft in 1996. The company is famous for the Far East Of Eden series – when I joined, they were in the middle of development for the third one. The scenario had been completed, and the first thing I was asked to do was to take a massive amount of documents, all the text for the scenario, read everything through, then come back the next day to give everyone feedback. I think I was tasked to read through the main scenario because when I joined the company, I said that I wanted to be a scenario writer – it was a test to see what ideas I could come up with.