While he isn’t supposed to “officially” say anything about the game until — presumably — Nintendo give the green light, The Last Story director Hironobu Sakaguchi likes sneaking a few hints into his Mistwalker blog posts about his day-to-day activities, regardless. For instance, he may have just given away that the game’s battle system will be in realtime:
Production of the last story is advancing smoothly. But, I want you to understand how difficult it is to finish the last fixes and it is time consuming in RPG creation. There is an unknown territory for me because of the real time system exists in it. But I believe that the hurdle will invent something new. Of course, it’s possible to finish it really quick, but the effort we put in in 2 years would be wasted. The final seasoning is very important. So I made up my mind carefully and I’m working with scrupulous attention. Anyway the sense of security is necessary to the foundation so that you can enjoy yourself without any logic.
“Realtime system” sounds like it refers to the battle system, but we can’t be sure until Nintendo are ready to talk about the game. This would mean both their upcoming RPGs — this and XenoBlade — are doing away with traditional turn-based battles. Regardless, “enjoy yourself without any logic” sounds like an admirable goal for a game. It makes it sound like an almost…instinctive…sense of enjoyment, which, frankly, not many games are able to achieve.
Aside from working on The Last Story, Sakaguchi has also been playing with LEGO, and blogging about his creations frequently. Perhaps we’ll see his fondness for building things represented in the game in some form as well?
