Akitoshi Kawazu
"Unlimited Saga" was developed by Square, which handled development for multiple role-playing series including "SaGa" and "Final Fantasy". Development lasted two years, and involved a staff of around fifty people from Square's Product Development Division 2. Many of the staff were veterans of the "SaGa" series. Series creator Akitoshi Kawazu produced and directed, Kyouji Koizumi returned as battle designer from the "Romancing SaGa" games, and recurring staff member Jyunichi Shinomiya acted as lead writer. As with other games in the series, Kawazu chose a non-traditional way of designing the game. He stated, "As far as "Unlimited Saga" is concerned, we said let's tackle the basics of game design once again. We didn't try to emphasize the realistic details, but rather symbolize, and cut out the parts we didn't need. We thought, let's dare to do a 'not express' thing and we calmly [stuck] to that route." Despite the non-traditional approach, the team built on their previous game development structures when creating "Unlimited Saga". During its early production, it was planned for an unnamed handheld console. When production of that console was cancelled, production was moved to the PlayStation 2. "Unlimited Saga" saw the series' debut on that platform.