.hack//Z.E.R.O. Interview

At Anime Expo 2026, representatives from CyberConnect2 were present, showcasing early information about .hack//Z.E.R.O. RPGamer was able to spend time with the Vice President of CyberConnect2, Taichiro Miyazaki, and ask questions about the game, its development, and the .hack series as a whole. Mr. Miyazaki’s answers were given in Japanese and communicated through a translator. .hack//Z.E.R.O. is still early in development, with neither a release date nor platforms announced. The game is not related to the .hack//ZERO novel written by Michiko Yokote.

.hack is a multimedia franchise that began in 2002 with a four-part PlayStation 2 video game series — comprising .hack//INFECTION, .hack//MUTATION, .hack//OUTBREAK, and .hack//QUARANTINE — and the prequel anime .hack//SIGN. Another video game trilogy, .hack//G.U., began in 2006 and was remastered in 2017 as .hack//G.U. Last Recode, and had its own prequel anime series titled .hack//Roots. It has also received additional animations, spin-off games, novels, and manga.

Jordan McClain (RPGamer): It has been many years since fans saw a brand-new, major .hack project. What did it mean to you and the team at CyberConnect2 to finally return to this universe with .hack//Z.E.R.O.?

Taichiro Miyazaki: When it comes to this new .hack title, this has been a long time coming. Not sort of in terms of development itself, but there has always been this in-house… if we could make a new one, we would do it like this sort of atmosphere. And with our coming 30th anniversary, it just felt like something right to do.

RPGamer: What aspects of the original .hack games did you feel were essential to preserve, and where did you feel that the franchise needed to evolve? And then, to be clear, will newcomers require any foreknowledge of previous .hack games?

TM: When it comes to the nitty-gritty, actually, .hack//Z.E.R.O. is going to be entirely self-published, as you are probably aware. This was with the permission and the blessing of Bandai Namco Entertainment, who, of course, holds the majority of the rights. So, in that sense, it’s going to be a completely new game, but retaining that .hack feel that old players have gotten to know. However, in no way is a new user going to play this and be bombarded with things that are going to confuse them.

RPGamer: What has been the guiding principle behind .hack//Z.E.R.O.’s development?

TM: There’s sort of a two-part answer to that. When it comes to the series itself, as we spoke before, it’s important for us to sort of maintain what makes .hack, .hack in this new work, and yet, at the same time, avoid being held back by too much by the old portions of the franchise. As a game development company, as a whole, whenever we develop something, it is always with the goal of moving the users, making them feel something. Sort of allowing them to emphasize or place themselves into the position of the protagonist, and sort of really feel that. To have something that resonates and the game leaves within them. In a simpler sense, it is something like, if you had a bad day and you played this game, then you’ll forget about that bad day.

RPGamer: Regarding that, what are you most hoping that players will come away with in terms of emotions or feelings? In other words, what intended emotions do you want to convey, or what do you want players to experience when they play .hack//Z.E.R.O.?

TM: Unfortunately, this talk is going to have to wait for a little bit farther in the future as more developments will be released to the public. But for now, I think a good way to answer this question, as we spoke earlier, we will be keeping true to the previous works in .hack and sort of retaining the major themes of camaraderie and faith.

RPGamer: Can you tell me a little bit more about the “Z.E.R.O.” in the title? What does that aspect of the title represent about the game?

TM: That is also something we cannot talk about right now. Sorry.

RPGamer: The original .hack franchise explored ideas about the meaning of relationships formed in virtual spaces, long before those became mainstream topics; the internet was much younger. As you approach .hack//Z.E.R.O., how have your thoughts on digital relationships evolved, and what themes do you feel are the most relevant to explore today, with the world being so different in that regard?

Steven Chen (translator): Are you talking about IMOQ [Ed. Note: acronym for the original .hack tetralogy: Infection, Mutation, Outbreak, Quarantine] specifically, or including G.U.?

RPGamer: Including G.U., but the original four titles.

TM: As it stands currently, with the IMOQ series in particular, a player who is completely new from this current generation of information is going to see the relationships in .hack significantly differently from how a player of that era is going to see it. And this ties into sort of how we create games. Before we start the actual development of the game, the specific background, the world itself, the settings, every tiny bit is sort of set before development starts. And this is done so that the game world doesn’t feel fake. However, at this current state, we can’t talk about specifics of the game’s development.

RPGamer: So many games are integrated into live services, streaming, social media, and the internet broadly. If you can speak to that, how has the real-world development of technology, especially things like artificial intelligence, influenced the conception or vision of “The World” in the game at all?

TM: As far as the game’s specifics and backgrounds of the game world itself go, there’s still a lot of portions that are undecided. However, when it comes specifically to something as large as AI, it’s difficult to imagine it will be omitted in the story. So, to some extent, you can expect that AI will be an important part of the .hack//Z.E.R.O. story.

RPGamer: With CyberConnect2 having sole creative control over .hack//Z.E.R.O. and Bandai Namco’s blessing, what opportunities does that give the team that maybe weren’t available before? Or does that open new doors for development?

TM: The project itself is still in early stages. However, during the period when we were working with Bandai Namco Entertainment, we have always had this very positive relationship. But then, when we were able to freely discuss — there was never this sort of like hard yes or no — we were able to discuss what we wanted to do and what we were able to do. At this current moment in time, we don’t feel anything particularly that we were able to do that we were not able to do with them. Yeah. We had a great relationship with Bandai Namco Entertainment and we never felt like we had a lesser degree of freedom with them than we currently do have now.

RPGamer: Have there been any changes in the gameplay compared to previous titles? And can you speak to — I realize it’s still early in development — what the design philosophy behind the combat is?

TM: Well, it has been roughly ten years since the last .hack game. So, the gameplay itself, the battle is going to be more modernized.

RPGamer: Modernized in what particular aspects, if that’s something you’d be willing to talk a little bit more about? Are there any influences in the RPG landscape as to how you approach the design of the battle system?

TM: As far as the particular changes in the gameplay, or particular RPGs — action RPGs that we want to pull from — there are no particulars. However, the reality is in the last ten to twenty years, game design has obviously changed greatly. Things have gotten a lot more user-friendly. Tutorials are much easier to understand. The dreaded grinding stage of the JRPG is, of course, something we also want to sort of reduce and get rid of in our own games. Ultimately, what we are trying to create is an action RPG that retains the essence of a CyberConnect2 game, which means this has to be a game that only CyberConnect2 could create, and that is our goal.

So, a certain idea of what this change is going to look like. To be very, very specific, we are not going to reference this game. This is not going to be a direct inspiration. But the Persona series changes greatly from Persona 1 and 2 to Persona 3 and 4. And that is sort of what we’re imagining for .hack//Z.E.R.O. We have the older games; we have the newer games. It’s going to be a big change. We’re not specifically going to reference anything, but it is going to be a big, positive change.

RPGamer: What are you most excited for fans to experience in .hack//Z.E.R.O.?

TM: In general, “The World” of .hack//Z.E.R.O. is something we really want our fans to look forward to enjoying — being able to immerse and lose themselves in that world.

RPGamer: Is there anything that you want our readers to know about .hack//Z.E.R.O., or anything that you want to convey about the game or its development – anything at all?

TM: It has been ten years since our last title. And with .hack//Z.E.R.O. coming up, I’m sure we’re going to have a lot of new faces and new people who have not come in contact with the franchise before. We hope that they understand that our goal, at our heart, has always been to create games that emotionally move the players. And not just that — .hack//Z.E.R.O. something that we plan to be moving — but also, that this is just the start of a project that we plan to continue to share news as soon as we’re able to.

But we also have been entrusted with IPs like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, Kimetsu no Yaiba, Dragon Ball Z, and Naruto. There are a lot of things to get excited about, especially for us. And for us, particularly, it’s also really important to connect with our North American fans. And we hope they will continue to sort of support and look after us and chase after our news as it pops up.

So, just to close things up. We are going to create a Japanese action RPG — the sort of Japanese action RPG that only we at CyberConnect2 could create — and we hope our fans will look forward to and enjoy that.

RPGamer would like to thank CyberConnect2 and Taichiro Miyazaki for taking the time to answer our questions, as well as Steven Chen for coordinating the interview and translating. .hack//Z.E.R.O. is still in development, with a release date and platforms yet to be announced.