Ryutaro Ichimura, one of the main producers of Square Enix’s Dragon Quest team, is leaving the studio to seek a “higher risk environment”.
He made the heartfelt announcement on Blood (opens in a new tab), citing that his great love for Dragon Quest is what brought him to the Square Enix studio for Final Fantasy 16 around 22 years ago in the first place.
“Motivation for Applying: Because I love Dragon Quest,” Ichimura shares in our translation of his tweet, extracting his own words from a resume he found among his office items while browsing through them. “Born in the year of the dragon, he joined the company in the year of the dragon, was assigned to the Dragon Quest department, and became a producer of Dragon Quest; It was like something destined.”
“Square Enix presents a great opportunity and has given me many challenges. I can only thank you (from the bottom of my heart),” he wrote, continuing to thank his colleagues at Armor Project, Bird Studio, Sugiyama Kobo and the players themselves.
“It took a lot of courage to leave such a wonderful place, but that’s the conclusion I’ve come to. I’m 47 this year and I’m starting to count how many more games I can play in my life. Now it takes me three or four years to make one, so to die without regret, I have to think carefully about each one,” Ichimura says, stating that “he would like to leave this blessed environment and push himself into a high risk to find out what comes out of it.”
Although he officially left Square Enix on March 31, Ichimura concludes the announcement by assuring us that he would like to continue making games, even if “Dragon Quest, for me, ends here.”
For more information on Square Enix, see our list of best JRPGs playing right now.