Jin Fujisawa, the director behind Dragon Quest IX and X and a former scenario writer for the series, recently sat down with The Change to talk about his two decades at Square Enix and the lessons he picked up from working under Yuji Horii, the creator of Dragon Quest.

Fujisawa left Square Enix in 2018 and has since taken on the role of general director at Daiyonkyokai (The Fourth Boundary), a studio focused on experimental augmented reality games. He also runs Storynote, a scenario company currently working on its first visual novel under the game label Lorebard. Even though storytelling is still at the center of his work, Fujisawa says the biggest thing Horii drilled into him over the years was something that went against what he believed early in his career: that “Dragon Quest isn’t about the scenario.”

As a younger developer, Fujisawa put the story above everything else. Horii saw it differently. According to Fujisawa, Horii would say: “It’s not about the storyline, the experience is what matters. You start by thinking about what kind of experience you want the player to go through.”

Fujisawa pointed to Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride as a clear example of this thinking. The game puts players in the position of choosing who to marry, and he says it works because the weight of that choice is what drives the experience. “It’s precisely because the core of that event is the powerful experience of earnestly choosing a marriage partner that a unique story emerges for each player,” he explained.

Fujisawa admitted he did not fully buy into this way of thinking at first and even pushed back against it. Over time, though, he says he came around and now actively applies it to his own projects.

He described Horii as someone driven by the desire to create things people have never seen before. “When you’re young, it’s easy to get caught up in wanting to make people cry, but moving people through surprise is far more difficult. And when people are emotionally stirred by surprise, that’s when they truly feel happiness,” Fujisawa said.