"A brand new .hack// that will be a new representative game for the company" Sitting down with CyberConnect2 Vice President Taichiro Miyazaki during GDC 2026

RPG Site: I know that Cyberconnect 2 has described how the recent .hack// announcement, .hack//Z.E.R.O. came into fruition with some Japanese outlets. For posterity, can you describe for the English speaking audience exactly how that announcement kind of came to be?

Taichiro Miyazaki: Um, so... Inside Cyberconnect 2, we have always been talking about what we would do for a new .hack// game, and there have been a lot of ideas over the years that we have come up with, that we even presented to Bandai Namco Entertainment.

But due to scheduling conflicts, and, you know, Bandai Namco Entertainment's side of situations, as well as the IPs that we handle in house, there just wasn't a good time to really move forward with anything.

But we were coming up on our 30th anniversary, and we really wanted to take on a new endeavor to commemorate that milestone. So, I went to the executive at Bandai Namco Entertainment - I explained that, you know, we're coming up on our 30th year, and we would really like to try self publishing .hack//. They approved of the plan.

I mean, obviously, we still had to have around some conditions and details, since we would be getting the license from Bandai Namco Entertainment, and there are a lot of caveats that come with that. But they were pretty positive to our idea from the get go, and the negotiations and the discussions have been going pretty smoothly, and that's how we were able to make the announcement.

RPG Site: As a follow up - and I don't know how much you can say at this point - obviously, .//hack, when it originally started, was a multimedia franchise. While Cyberconnect 2 has obviously been very public about self-publishing games, starting with Fuga: Melodies of Steel, It's not just games that you guys self publish.

You've also done, for example, manga for Fuga - and you have your own manga branch, and you have your own animation teams, like 3D animation.

Is .hack//Z.E.R.O. the start of, maybe, a newer multimedia push, or are you only going to be focusing on a game? Or are there limitations limiting what you're being allowed to do with the license that you're, I guess the best way to describe it is, "borrowing" from Bandai Namco?

Miyazaki: So, obviously, there's a lot that hasn't been decided about the future of this new .hack//, but with every original title that we have taken on, we have always kept in perspective the possibility of a multimedia franchise. So, we would love to do that for the new .hack//, but the truth is we haven't decided either way yet.

RPG Site: I do know that  when the title was 1st unveiled, that Matsuyama-san hinted at an element of the game's title. I've been referring to the game as .hack// "Zero", but the truth is it's an acronym. We don't know what stands for yet, but we've been told that it should be something that would stand out to fans of the series.

I know a lot of fans have though of "IMOQ" because of the original quadrilogy being referred to as such, referring to each individual release put together. Is this project planned to be episodic, like the previous .hack// games? Is that what the hint is, or is that not something you're ready to divulge yet - or has it even been decided?

Miyazaki: Well... we'll divulge that information when we're ready.

RPG Site: Another thing that came up in that interview, was that the team is planning to have a greater focus on the real world this time, whereas before in previous entries the games were developed in a way where you only saw what was happening outside of the MMOs through like webpages and forum posts and like. There is a much bigger focus where we get to actually see the real world this time.

The question I have, is I know a ton of .hack// fans, that even if the original games were like that because of development limitations… they really enjoyed going on these forums, and figuring out, like, different quests and areas to grind and whatnot; and maybe it's not actually a place to grind. It's a gank squad waiting for you.

I know many players that were very big fans of that element of the original games, is that still something that CyberConnect2 wishes to represent in this new .//hack? Or is the greater focus this time outside of the in-game MMO?

Miyazaki: Yeah, so I can't talk in too much detail about what's going on with the project at the moment. But, I think everybody who has played .hack// has an idea of what makes .//hack, .//hack. We do want to inherit those elements into the new .hack// game while also providing a completely novel game for people to enjoy.

So that if you're coming into the franchise or the new player, the game says to you, "Hello, my name is .hack//. Nice to meet you!" But, if you're an old player coming into this game, it feels like .hack// is saying, "Hey, thanks so much for waiting. I'm back." We have to make sure both pillars are standing strong. 

I also think that it would not be logical for us to, you know, keep all the elements of the older JRPG. There are new, modern expectations for what JRPG's entail. We want to make sure we work within that framework, while dropping in these classic elements from the original .hack// titles.

RPG Site: Fully understanding that, again, very early on in the project, there's still a lot you can't even talk about - and even if you do have an answer to it, it's not necessarily something you can divulge - would you say that an element of the design consideration with Z.E.R.O comes down to how MMOs are perceived differently these days?

Back when the original .hack// came out, the most popular MMOs of the time were like early Final Fantasy XI, and Phantasy Star Online, which is inherently a very different type of MMO from something like Final Fantasy XIV, all of these gacha MMOs, like Genshin Impact, and, of course, like modern World of Warcraft. Is that element of consideration when designing a .hack// for a modern audience?

Miyazaki: Yeah, absolutely. We will be thinking about sort of incorporating what the new MMO perspective is, but we don't want to, you know, bring the game too close to that, either. I think the basis still should be that we want to meet the expectations of the fans of .hack// who have played the original games. So I think there will be quite a bit of trial and error in this field where we try to ensure that the game feels modern.

So that It's got that vibe, that's like very close to what we're seeing in the MMO world now, and also to make sure that we don't take it too close to the classic .hack// in a bad way. Like, I think if we were to bring the game too far in either direction, especially if we were to try to emulate the older games too much, the game would just feel kind of cheap.

In that sense, this is how we will be architecturing the game from here on. The important thing for us is that the new .hack//  feels novel, feels fresh, and that it takes in these ideas from current MMOs. But, that's something that we are going to have to really break down and analyze - what does it mean to have an MMO in this day and age - and then see which parts, which important themes we can bring into this new game.

RPG Site: Kind of latching onto that last bit. To CyberConnect2, what does it mean to be an MMO in the current, modern age? I feel like one of the elements of the original .hack// that was actually kind of similar to, I think, what a lot of people took away from an anime, Serial Experiments Lain is, was the element of the early internet. The way we interface with "social media" at the time was very different.

When .hack// was new, MMOs were social media. There weren't really any alternatives. You had, like, instant messengers or you had MMOs, and that's how you interacted with people online. What's it like developing a new .hack// in a world where the entire paradigm of how people interface with the internet has so radically shifted?

Miyazaki: I do think based on that question and what you just said, what we need to provide is a new experience for everybody who picks up this game. I think part of that is, obviously, communication; how people will interface with each other, or the internet has changed over the years, and there will always be a different flavor in each era. The good, the bad, the parts that are, you know, insufficient, et cetera.

But, I do think the way people form communities as a general rule has not really changed that much, even though the internet has become more commonplace. Because now we have not only the internet, but AI and AI has become slowly become a part of our lives. So "How are people interfacing with each other?" and "How are they interfacing with AI in this new community?" is sort of like a representative of the shift in the culture, but it's also very based in, like, how we form communities as a whole.

So, I do think that, you know, when we were making the original .hack//, we were thinking about what we want to express about the internet and people interfacing with each other and the internet in that era. We're going to follow the same train of thought, just in the modern age in terms of what does the modern society represent? Where in modern society do you want the focus to be?

If I start talking about it, I can go on forever about all the elements that we have to keep in mind, but we will be analyzing that very deeply as we move forward with deciding the scenario of the game.

RPG Site: CyberConnect 2, as you always say during your panels at Anime Expo is, for a Japanese company, it's a very global facing institution - because your games sell most outside Japan. Which is why I'm curious, what does the team think about the difference in perspectives when it comes to AI, like in Japan versus globally? Do you think there's a difference?

Miyazaki: I do think that on the topic of how we perceive AI, there are probably two main perspectives that I want to discuss. One is, you know, the use of AI as a developer. I do think this is going to vary by opinion, and it's going to depend a lot on the business culture that has formed. So if the business culture is different, then the way we perceive AI as part of the workflow, it's probably going to be different.

The other side is the existence of AI, as a whole, as a concept; and rather than differing by region, I almost think it probably differs from person to person. How we feel about the existence of AI - and it would be very difficult to incorporate every opinion - but we do want to hear a lot of opinions on this matter, and think about all the different opinions on this matter, and try to incorporate that into how we decide to showcase AI, and to what extent we want to showcase AI in this new game.

I don't think it would make a lot of sense to try to fist the idea of one side or the other when it comes to this. I think what we're aiming for is to present AI in a way that feels kind of relatable, that sort of appeals to the masses, that gives a sense of like, oh, okay, I see what you're saying. That's sort of the goal on that matter, although that is my personal opinion.

As far as the team for .hack// goes, we are hoping to have a team that comprises .hack// veterans - people who have worked on the previous games - as well as newer developers, who used to be fans of the series, and then who grew into game developer thinking, "I would love to work on .hack// someday." So these are very young people in their 20s.

On top of that, at our company, we have approximately 50 staff from outside of Japan. International staff. So I think we will see a lot of opinions on what should go into the new .hack// game, and all the elements that comprise it.

It will be our job to gather all of those opinions and turn it into something that could be a brand new .hack// that will be a new representative game for the company.

RPG Site: Is there anything you'd like to say regarding the next 30 years of CyberConnect2?

Miyazaki: [Laughing] We haven't quite thought about 30 years into the future, but I can speak about the next decade, the next 10 years, and what we want to do.

So, up to this point, we have been a game developer, and we have gained a lot of experience in that field, and we, thankfully, thanks to all of you, as we have now a global fan base. We have learned a lot from being a developer, and as thanks to these experiences and the fact that the game industry has gone a lot more digital, that we were able to self publish Fuga.

Now, of course, we learned a lot doing that as well, some of which will seem obvious to people. Like, oh, it's not enough to make the game. We have to sell the game, too. These are some things that we learned during Fuga.

But now that we have done some small scale publishing and have learned from that, we would like to do slightly larger scale publishing, and that is exactly what .hack//Z.E.R.O is to us. When I say larger scale, I mean, of course, the budget, the schedule, the size of the team; but I also mean, target sales and what it means for the growth of the company.

We want to set higher goals, and we really want to reach them, but within the realistic scope of what we are able to do.

So, you know, we really hope to make use of our original knowhow as CyberConnect2, and we really hope to grow as a publisher, and we hope to see the evolution of CyberConnect2 as a company in the next decade.

RPG Site: Thank you as always.