Jin Fujisawa, former Dragon Quest series scenario writer and director of DQ IX and X, recently talked to The Change about his time at Square Enix and his experience working under Yuji Horii, the creator of the RPG franchise. After leaving the company in 2018, Fujisawa became the general director of Daiyonkyokai (The Fourth Boundary), a studio specializing in experimental augmented reality games, as well as the representative of scenario company Storynote, which is currently developing its debut visual novel game under the game label Lorebard.
While his work still very much revolves around storytelling, Fujisawa says an important lesson Horii, the creator of the Dragon Quest series, “drilled” into him during his 20-year run at Square Enix was that “Dragon Quest isn’t about the scenario.”
In his younger days, Fujisawa believed that for an RPG, the scenario was everything, but Horii held a different view. “Horii-san would say, It’s not about the storyline, the experience is what matters. You start by thinking about what kind of experience you want the player to go through.” As an example, Fujisawa brings up Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride and the way it confronts players with the decision of whom to marry. “It’s precisely because the core of that event is the powerful experience of earnestly choosing a marriage partner that a unique story emerges for each player,” he explains.
Although Fujisawa initially did not see the point of this perspective and resisted Horii’s philosophy, he says he’s come to not only understand it, but to incorporate it into his own work. “[Horii is] is someone who wants to create things no one’s ever seen before, things that subvert expectations and make people go, Wait, what? That’s possible? When you’re young, it’s easy to get caught up in wanting to make people cry, but moving people through surprise is far more difficult. And when people are emotionally stirred by surprise, that’s when they truly feel happiness.”
Fujisawa says that this approach of “designing experiences” and offering surprise is a part of Horii’s DNA that Daiyonkyokai’s work has actively inherited.
