Yuji Horii believes now would be an ideal time to experiment with AI as he did with The Portopia Serial Murder Case

When Square Enix's ahead-of-its-time attempt to allow an AI to generate a modern version of a classic game, The Portopia Serial Murder Case, came out a couple of years ago, it was met with a very negative reception, with fierce criticism about the poor quality of this artificial reinvention of Enix's classic 1983 visual novel. Of course, from 2023 until now, technology has not only advanced, but has slowly seeped into all layers of society, work and the way we relate to information. That is why many more game studios are now daring to implement a more or less limited use of AI in games: Entertainment is the next frontier.

As we have already mentioned recently, one of the most exciting moments during our coverage of Comicon 2025 Napoli was the personal interview we had the honour to do with Yuji Horii, father of Dragon Quest and the modern JRPG. We talked not only about the future of the Dragon Quest franchise, the legacy of Akira Toriyama or a "contemplated" remake of Chrono Trigger. There was also space to analyse the current state of another genre that Horii knows very well, such as visual novels.

Our David Caballero asked Horii how he saw the current scene of this traditionally niche genre outside Japan and its growing impact on European audiences, thanks in part to creators such as Kazutaka Kodaka (The Hundred Line, Danganronpa) or Kotaro Uchikoshi (Zero Escape). Specifically, whether he would now give a remake of The Portopia Serial Murder Case, for which he was the original designer, another chance. Horii did not make it clear whether he would approach his work from that angle again, but he did say that he would like to explore more uses of AI in other games, for example an adventure game:

"Recently, I did a remake of Portopia using AI, as AI is becoming more and more advanced."

"I'm not sure if it's possible, but it would be a lot of fun to have an adventure game where players could converse with AI, solving cases."

So there you have it. Even at 71 years old, Yuji Horii is still committed to innovation and the application of new technologies to keep telling stories closer and closer to the players. You can watch the full, subtitled interview with the JRPG master below.