Heavenstrike Rivals

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One thing you need to know about me: ever since I played Final Fantasy VII, at the tender age of 13, I have been a Square Enix fanboy. But I never, ever thought I'd have a chance to make a game together with them.

After meeting with a producer from Square Enix during a bizdev tour of Japan (which I was taken on because I was the only person in the company that could speak Japanese), I was asked to put together a pitch for a mobile game that would appeal to SNES-era fans of Square Enix. That pitch was pretty quickly put to the side, but over the next nine months we developed a concept for a new gacha mobile RPG that would be created between London and Japan; a fusion of Mediatonic's knowledge of the western market and Square Enix's game development sensibilities.

I did tons of things on the project -- I was the interpreter/translator for a while, which was pretty catastrophic given my pidgin-level Japanese; I did early design, early production -- but before long I settled into the role of writer. One thing I loved about Square Enix is that they believe their games should contain fully fleshed-out worlds, and they didn't believe that should change just because you were making a mobile game. Narrative and worldbuilding was a key pillar of the game, and I learned a huge amount working with them.

I was hugely proud of the world we created -- after many many iterations we eventually settled on what was almost a fantasy version of the Blitz. The world of Lunnain consists of multiple islands in the sky, each hanging on giant metal chains that reach up to the unseen Heavens. For the last 28 years, those chains have also been the conduit of the Fallen, vicious monsters that descend from the Heavens to ravage the populace. In the face of the onslaught, Lunnain divides in two: the fortified and wealthy Havens, and the battered islands of the Forsaken.

The player takes control of a squadron belonging to the Trinity Lions, a Forsaken-based citizen militia that tries to hold back the Fallen. A chance encounter with an amnesiac girl (that old RPG staple!) leads them on a quest to unite the Seven Sisters and take the fight to the Heavens itself. (It's not a story structure I would have chosen for a live-service game, but we were asked to play on familiar tropes and remix them in a different way in order to appeal to the long-term Square Enix fanbase.)

Anyway, I hugely enjoyed building out this world, and worked on it for about a year after launch writing cutscenes for events that happened during the game. I also got to write for characters from Deus Ex, Fullmetal Alchemist and even Final Fantasy IV when we did crossovers with those games, which was pretty cool.