Tetsuya Takahashi

(born November 18, 1966) is a Japanese video game designer, writer and director. Takahashi worked at Square in the 90s as a graphic designer and graphic director, participating on some of their most well-received titles such as Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger, before directing and co-writing Xenogears. He left Square in 1999 to co-found Monolith Soft, where he would develop the Xenosaga and Xenoblade series with Namco and Nintendo respectively, being the executive director of Xenoblade since the first entry in the series.

He is married to Soraya Saga, who also worked with him at Square Enix, as well as on Xenosaga and Soma Bringer.

Takahashi is one of the founders of Monolith Soft, senior director and chief creative officer at the company, as well as part of its board of directors.

Biography Takahashi was born on November 18, 1966, in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. He began his career in video games in the 1980s working with Nihon Falcom.

Squaresoft Takahashi worked on Final Fantasy VI, including the design of the Magitek armor from the opening scene of the game. He also was the graphics director on Chrono Trigger.

In 1995 he married his Squaresoft coworker Kaori Tanaka, better known by her pen name Soraya Saga.

Xenogears Originally submitted as a potential plot for Final Fantasy VII, it was made into its own project after being judged too dark and complicated for a fantasy game by others at Squaresoft.

Monolith Soft While at Squaresoft, Takahashi realized that the company intended to focus on the Final Fantasy series, and that sequels to the Xenogears series were becoming unlikely. In October 1999 he left Squaresoft to start a new company, Monolith Soft, together with Hirohide Sugiura.

Xenoblade Chronicles Following a meeting about the game Soma Bringer, Takahashi imagined what a game would be like where the world was actually the body of a "giant god". Takahashi attempted a more "mature" writing style for the game, and said he expects to continue in the same vein in the future. The game references both Japanese and Western RPG styles, referring to the western style in some cases "without thinking about it". Minor localizations were made for the American and European release, as well as bug fixes and game balancing. Originally Takahashi tried a more traditional turned based combat system, but he later incorporated a battle system where the protagonist can see into the future as a gameplay mechanic.

Xenoblade Chronicles X Takahashi and Monolith Soft were revealed to be working on a new game for the Wii U in September 2012. It was later revealed in the January 2013 Nintendo Direct under the tentative title X, and shown further at E3 2013. For E3 2014, it was announced with the title Xenoblade Chronicles X.

Video games

Year Title Role 1989 Ys III: Wanderers from Ys Monster graphics Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes Artist 1991 Final Fantasy IV Battle graphics 1992 Romancing SaGa Field map design Final Fantasy V Field map 1994 Final Fantasy VI Graphic director1995 Front Mission Graphic design Chrono Trigger Graphic director Seiken Densetsu 3 Graphic design: BG 1998 Xenogears Director, scenario, lyricist 2002 Xenosaga Episode I Director 2004 Xenosaga Episode II Original author, supervisor Xenosaga: Pied Piper Story writer 2006 Xenosaga I & II Scenario, original author Xenosaga Episode III Author, music coordinator 2008 Soma Bringer Producer, game designerSuper Robot Wars OG Saga: Endless Frontier Staff 2010 Xenoblade Chronicles Executive director, scenario, concept, lyricist 2015 Xenoblade Chronicles X Executive director, concept 2017 Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Executive director, scenario, concept, lyricist 2018 Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna – The Golden Country Executive director, scenario, concept, lyricist 2022 Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Executive director, scenario, concept, lyricist 2027 Xenoblade Genesis Executive director