"Production of the last story is advancing smoothly. But, I want you to understand how difficult it is to finish the last fixes and it is time consuming in RPG creation," Sakaguchi said. "There is an unknown territory for me because of the real time system exists in it. But I believe that the hurdle will invent something new. Of course, its possible to finish it really quick, but the effort we put in in 2 years would be wasted. The final seasoning is very important. So I made up my mind carefully and Im working with scrupulous attention. Anyway the sense of security is necessary to the foundation so that you can enjoy yourself without any logic."
It's good to know that The Last Story appears to be in the final stages after a two-year development cycle. Sakaguchi's hints about the battle system and the "scrupulous attention" that is being paid to the finishing touches so that way players can "enjoy [themselves] without any logic" are interesting, and might make more sense when we see gameplay footage.
More information on The Last Story is on the way, though a release in North America has not been confirmed yet. It's slated for a 2010 release in Japan.
I hope it's point & click then, jRPGs have invented all kinds of strange systems to compensate for the inability of a gamepad to deal with multiple characters simultaneously so now that we have a pointer it should be feasible to give the player control over all characters simultaneously in a straight up realtime battle system.
