Legendary Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uematsu is not retiring from video game music work, despite rumours.
Confusion appears to have arisen following a promotional video for the release of Fantasian: Neo Dimension, Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi’s RPG for which Uematsu composed the score.
“This is my final project as a composer of video game music,” he said. “I hope you’ll pick it up and play it! Thanks for your support!”
Fans presumed this meant Uematsu was retiring, but he’s since confirmed this is a misunderstanding.
“Wait, wait, wait! Everybody calm down!,” he wrote. “There seems to be some misunderstanding, but I’m not retiring from video game music work!
“I’m going to cut back a bit on my video game music work because I want to have more time to make the music I want to make. It would be difficult for me to take on the entire soundtrack of a video game because the time commitment for composing would be too long, but I would like to continue to work on jobs such as one theme song.”
This is in line with previous comments from Uematsu from earlier in the year.
“As far as Final Fantasy is concerned, I’m still involved by writing the main themes for the games,” he said back in February. “But I don’t think I’ll compose music for a whole game again.
“You would have to give it full throttle for two or three years. And I don’t think I have the physical and mental strength to do it anymore.”
Then, in April, he confirmed he’d be returning to the Final Fantasy series to write a new theme song for the third part of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy.
Rebirth creative director Tetsuya Nomura asked Uematsu: “I’d like to believe you’re a lock for the next title?”
Uematsu replied: “It’d be my honour. Really I’m honoured you’re even extending the offer.”
Uematsu composed the scores for Final Fantasy 1 – 9, and has contributed to many games since either with co-composers or providing individual songs.
His focus now, though, is his band Uematsu Nobuo conTIKI, as seen in the social post above.
Fantasian: Neo Dimension will be released on 5th December across Nintendo Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC (Steam).
It’s a cult classic RPG that’s now been freed from Apple Arcade, though it loses tactility in the transition, as I wrote in our Eurogamer Fantasian: Neo Dimension preview.