by the title. Kawazu acted as director, lead designer, and scenario writer. The producer was Masafumi Miyamoto, founder and former president of Square. Production was difficult, as while Kawazu had a larger team to work with, they also faced new technical and design issues. Kawazu's aim was to change the gameplay style of having a single path players had to travel, instead creating multiple stories for players to experience at their own pace, giving birth to the Free Scenario System. The Free Scenario System was designed as a direct contrast to the linear story structure of Square's Final Fantasy series. The eight protagonists, with their own stories within the same world, drew inspiration from taiga dramas, with the number referencing the Japanese novel Nansō Satomi Hakkenden. Albert's scenario was the first to be written. The number of characters was also due to Kawazu's wish for the formation system. The narrative was difficult for Kawazu, as he needed to create a central plotline while crafting eight independent narratives. Due to Nintendo's strict cart size limitations, several planned elements had to be cut from the final product. The characters were designed by artist Tomomi Kobayashi. Kawazu had been looking for a suitable illustrator for some time, and when he saw samples of Kobayashi's work contacted her about working with him. Romancing SaGa was Kobayashi's first video game work, so she had to get used to the large amount of creative freedom she had compared to her previous projects. She was only ever sent a name and some elements from Kawazu, but otherwise left to her own devices. Kawazu had a lot of input on what the characters were like, such as Albert being the only left-handed character, but could not have as much influence as he wanted due to other development needs. Hawk's design was inspired by the character Blood from Princess Knight. Kobayashi's favorite characters were Hawk and main antagonist Saruin. Kobayashi designed 40 unique characters, and at the height of her work was designing six per day. The sprites were designed by Kazuko Shibuya, who had worked for the company since the 1980s and designed character sprites for the Final Fantasy series. She created the character sprites based on Kobayashi's designs. Due to their deep narrative connections, Kawazu asked Kobayashi to design the characters before any sprite work was done. An important part of the sprite design was keeping the