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Final Fantasy 6 art director, composer working on Granblue Fantasy
Continuing a welcome trend of established JRPG developers attaching themselves to new projects, Final Fantasy 6 Art Director Hideo Minaba and composer Nobuo Uematsu have taken roles in the development of Granblue Fantasy. Cygames is developing the JRPG and will eventually cast its spell on mobile devices. According to Siliconera's report, the project began after Cygames Director Yuita Kimura expressed interest in making a game with Minaba. But if he was going to ask Minaba, Kimura felt he might as well ask Uematsu to get involved, too. Uematsu stated that he's been asked to compose with the sound of Irish music in mind and believes that his fans "may feel a sense of nostalgia from this." Uematsu has composed 11 songs for Granblue Fantasy, while Minaba has drawn roughly 100 characters.
Fantasy Life's collection of lives
Level-5 released character art of people working in the twenty different job-based "lives" in the developer's newly announced Fantasy Life. The designs show the very Little King's Story-esque style being used by character designer Hideo Minaba, which is going to charm the money right out of our bank accounts. Each one of these lives represents a unique set of quests, and a unique ending with a different Nobuo Uematsu vocal theme. The identity of each Life isn't labeled, though Andriasang printed a list from Famitsu magazine of all the jobs to go along with the picture. Many of them seem pretty obvious given the tools in their hands, and six of them are outright revealed by a second picture. Both images, and the list, are available after the break.
Level-5 invites players into a 'Fantasy Life' ... in a doomed town
In addition to the London Life RPG inside Professor Layton and the Devil's Flute, Level-5 announced another collaboration with Brownie Brown, the Sword of Mana developer and Mother 3 co-creator: Fantasy Life, a town simulation in the vein of Animal Crossing. Fantasy Life occurs in the world of Fantazeal, which shows prophesied signs of impending destruction after a shadow passes over the moon. If this were a normal RPG, you'd portray some kind of teenaged hero fighting to save the world from this catastrophe, but in this game, it basically doesn't seem to matter: you choose a job and undertake daily "Life Quests" related to that job, to improve your wealth and happiness levels. The game includes local and online wireless functionality, allowing others to visit your town. Aside from Level-5 and Brownie Brown, Fantasy Life features more big names. Nobuo Uematsu is composing an opening theme, as well as ending themes for the ending of each job's "life," and character design is being done by Hideo Minaba, a Final Fantasy series alum who most recently designed the characters in Little King's Story. [Via Andriasang]
