His last work with the series will be Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth for which he composed No Promises to Keep (which deserved an honorable mention in our review of the game). Nobuo Uematsu, however, has decided that he will give himself some rest. The man suffered serious health problems as early as 2018. After his last effort he said enough on the pages of the German website Zeit.
Nobuo Uematso, after Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth: “enough entire soundtracks, I don't have the strength”
Nobuo Uematsu
The composer left Square Enix in 2004 so he could dedicate himself to more projects. The collaboration with Square has not stopped at all, on the contrary. Uematso continued to work on the software house's games as a freelancer.
In recent years, however, the musician has preferred to move from writing entire soundtracks to smaller portions of work. According to him, a complete OST would require two to three years of really intense effort. A sacrifice that man does not feel like requiring his body: “I no longer have the physical and mental energy necessary for this task” he would have told the German portal.
The desire, he says, is to focus on his personal projects such as his band Uematsu Nobuo with TIKI and smaller compositions.
The last time Uematsu wrote an entire soundtrack was in 2021 for the game Fantasian, created by Hironobu Sakaguchi, the father of Final Fantasy.
Recently, another great composer had decided to hang up his baton. We are talking about John Williams, multiple Oscar winner, who had announced his retirement only to then ponder a change of heart.