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PARANORMASIGHT: The Seven Mysteries of Honjo has been a rather odd one for Square Enix. The game was announced in the most recent Nintendo Direct, but only in the Japanese presentation. That led many to believe it wouldn’t be localized, but just one day later we saw Square Enix announce the title for worldwide release. Even crazier, the game went from announcement to launch in just a few weeks.

Rewind the game industry 10 years or so, and PARANORMASIGHT is the exact kind of game you’d never expect to see localized. The fact that this game launched worldwide goes to show just how far the industry has come, and how much tastes have evolved. The Switch no doubt helped further this appreciation of the visual novel genre, which is something we’ll see in all platforms going forward.

Proving just how much the industry has evolved, PARANORMASIGHT director and writer Takanari Ishiyama revealed in an Inverse interview that the game was planned for localization from day one.

We had decided on English localization from the project’s initial conception. The setting of this title, Japan from several decades ago, is somewhat of an alien culture even from the perspective of those living in Japan today. So our goal was to create a world that may not go all the way back to the Edo period or the Sengoku period, but something akin to a historical fantasy world that could be accepted. Also, we were confident that if the characters were appealing, people would enjoy the game even if they were unfamiliar with the worldview.

[PARANORMASIGHT director and writer Takanari Ishiyama]

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