SaGa Emerald Beyond, the newest title in the SaGa series, will be launching April 25, 2024 on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Nintendo Switch, Android, and iOS. It will also be launching simultaneously in Japan and North America, a series first.

The announcement came as part of Square Enix’s SaGa Glimmerfest broadcast which aired early this morning, and coincides with the franchise entering its 35th anniversary year following the debut of The Final Fantasy Legend or Makai Toushi SaGa on the Game Boy in 1989.

SaGa franchise creator Akitoshi Kawazu, franchise producer Masanori Ichikawa, franchise localization director Neil Broadley, and head of community and service at Square Enix London Saori Spencer-Hill joined an hour long show where new information about the game was shared.

After SaGa Scarlet Grace, Kawazu decided the representative color of the next series title would be “emerald” and that instead of iterating the title by placing a numeral after it, the team wanted to set it apart from Scarlet but also denoted that this belongs to a new series of SaGa games. Just as scarlet colors were important to the theme and aesthetic, emerald colors will follow suit in this title.

Localization director Broadley stated that all lines with Japanese voice overs will also have English dubbing and showcased trailers featuring two of the game’s six protagonists: Tsunadori Mido and Ameya Aisling. Broadley went on to highlight that this is the first new title (not including remasters) to receive a simultaneous worldwide lunch. This was due to the desire by the team to have players around the globe experience and talk about the game together at the same time. Ichikawa added that due to the many different paths in the game, players will want to share their experiences and help each other through obstacles.

Remarking upon the two protagonists featured in today’s broadcast, Kawazu shared that Tsunadori Mido was the first character and storyline developed for the game. While he seems like an archetypal protagonist for these kinds of games, he and his story are deeply connected to the core of the game’s themes and setting, as well as its secrets.

Miyako City, one of the game’s major locations, is an ancient city inspired by Kyoto, Japan that has been through periods of war and peace. Generations of the Mido family work to protect this city, and their efforts have sometimes prevailed or failed. Now, in the Modern Age, the Mido family’s traditional roles have been weakened. Tsunadori’s mission is to reclaim his ancestral power to be able to have the strength to protect his home.

Ameya’s story is a Sailor Moon magical girl vibe, and her cat familiar LoLo battles at her side. She hails from Pulchra, a land of witches, where the magic they conjure exacts a certain price. This magic is also used to protect their land, but has also been used in the past to destroy it, in something of a vicious cycle. Ameya wants to become a full-fledged witch, but in order to do so needs to pass her witchterms and collect all of her cats – only then can she wield the magic necessary to protect Pulchra.

There are 17 different worlds you will visit in SaGa Emerald Beyond, and one of them is the Subterranean Haven of Cordycep. Here, you’ll find many different races, including the mole people who love to eat juicy earthworms. The protagonists of the game that visit Cordycep will need to help the myriad races of this world confront a certain crisis of change.

Broadley shared that the game has been in development for several years, including localization work, though it began in earnest in April 2023. He shared that the last back of text crossed his desk mere hours before the broadcast. Now follows a quality assurance process, but the translation is now largely complete. While the English Glimmerfest broadcast didn’t have live gameplay because of non-finalized UI text, the team will be releasing an English version of the footage some time in January or February.

When it came to casting Tsunadori Mido’s English voice actor, Broadley mentioned that Miyako City is inspired by Kyoto, which may be viewed as “backward” or “quaint” by people living in Tokyo or dense population centers. So, when casting Tsunadori in English, they requested a Midwestern US accent, namedropping Minnesota and Wisconsin — something familiar and colloquial. He’s also so confident and self-assured character, and they wanted to express him as leader-ly instead of cocky.

For Ameya, the 11-year old schoolgirl Yumeha Izumi is an alter ego she employs to masquerade around Miyako City. To portray her as a witch in training who is incredibly talented and lucky in equal measure. She has a carefree nature and bubbly, so this was requested to be clear part of her speech patterns so players would find her endearing.

In Emerald‘s 17 different and diverse worlds, the inhabitants will be faced with change wherein some benefit and some do not. Broadley stated that the localization team took a lot of effort to portray these challenges in a way that feels familiar, and expressing them in a relatable way.

In a Q&A segment, the team fielded questions about the game, including its structure and combat system. When asked if the game would unfold in a linear or open fashion, Kawazu answered that it’s difficult to answer. In truth: it’s both. There are multiple protagonists each with their own story and themes and goals – leading them all to be very different. While the goals they are trying to fulfill may play out in a linear fashion, the way they can explore the 17 worlds is in a non-linear fashion. The game is designed to be played and replayed several times.

When you revisit a world with another character in a subsequent playthrough, different events will happen, and in that sense the structure is non-linear. The team worked hard to have players not experience the same events twice in different playthroughs. Ichikawa shared an anecdote where he and another developer chose the same protagonist, but all of the events that they played through were different based on their choices. Once the protagonist enters a hub area, they’ll have freedom to visit different worlds as they choose.

When asked if characters will be able to equip more than one weapon type, most characters will be able to equip two different sets of weapons. While there were many characters in Scarlet with different weapon types players would switch in and out, Emerald will have two weapon types to use in battle, which will also lend a higher level of strategy to moment to moment combat.

The challenge level in Emerald compared to Scarlet is a bit easier than previous SaGa titles for the first five to ten hours, after that it ramps up in difficulty to a point where it will be more difficult than Scarlet and some of the bosses are stronger than the ones encountered in Scarlet.

In closing, Ichikawa stated that he wants to expand the SaGa franchise for a global audience, and that includes releasing all of the series installments on modern platforms and to please wait for further announcements as part of the series’ 35th anniversary. Kawazu noted that 34 years have passed for the franchise and that fans across the globe have asked for additional translations like French and German, and they want to make this a reality. More than anything else, they want to continue to provide the type of experience that only SaGa series titles can.