The Last Remnant - Development

Development

The game's director was Hiroshi Takai, its executive producer was Akitoshi Kawazu, and its producer was Nobuyuki Ueda. Kimihiko Miyamae was the art director, while Yusuke Naora served as both art producer and character designer. Some of the head designers behind the game have worked together previously on titles in the SaGa series. The game was the first game by Square Enix to use the Unreal Engine 3. Because they used a licensed engine rather than making their own, the production time it took to see graphical resources onscreen was cut significantly, allowing the team to begin illustrating and experimenting at an early stage. The decision to use a licensed engine, rather than develop their own as was traditional at Square Enix, was made due to concerns in the company of the rising production costs of making a game, and the direct development time savings possible from using an existing engine. Over a year after the game was released, on February 17, 2010, Square-Enix's chief technology officer Julien Merceron claimed in an interview that most of the game's perceived technical shortcomings were caused by a decision to use the Unreal Engine to try to replace having as many skilled programmers as would be used otherwise.

The development team planned to distinguish The Last Remnant from the Final Fantasy series and other role-playing games through its focus on the battle system. The art direction of the game was focused on making all of the characters stand out on the battlefield, and in making the Remnants stand out in the world screens. The cities were designed to not look very fantastical, so as to make the Remnants more prominent, and were designed early on in the development process to give the impression that the people of the city were living both literally and figuratively under the power of the gigantic Remnants. The game marked several firsts for Square Enix, as it was their first game to be released on the same day in both Japan and internationally, as well as the first to use motion captures of Western actors. This resulted in the characters' lips speaking English synced to the spoken dialogue, rather than Japanese. The game had always been intended to be released simultaneously worldwide and was to be targeted to players worldwide, which impacted the character design and art direction. The design and dialogue were created to appeal to international players as well as Japanese players, rather than being focused on the norms of the Japanese video game market alone.

The Last Remnant was announced at a press conference at Shinjuku, Tokyo on May 10, 2007. It was shown as a playable demo at the Tokyo Game Show in September 2008. It was then released on the Xbox 360 on November 20, 2008, and released in late March 2009 for PC. The PC version of the game featured numerous changes from the original, including the integration of the downloadable content from the 360 version into the main game, enhanced graphical settings, a "Turbo Mode" that increases battle speed, and a New Game Plus option that allows the player to start a new game with the gold and unique items from their first play-through. Though originally announced to be released on the PlayStation 3 at the same time as the Xbox 360, no PlayStation version of the game has yet been released. Square Enix has not commented on why, though director Hiroshi Takai has said that he found developing for the 360 "a lot easier" than for the PlayStation 3. However, as of February 2013, the PlayStation 3 version is still listed with a "To Be Announced" release date on Square Enix's official Japanese website.