He served as lead scenario writer and producer on the first three Suikoden titles. He had just completed his work in the same role for Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, a Kickstarted spiritual successor, scheduled to release this April, when he passed away on February 6, 2024.
While Suikoden was never a chart-topping series, Murayama was well respected by many for his world-building skills in which he developed plots by attempting to write naturally from the scenarios and complications he introduced and finding the different ways individuals could react to fuel the conflicts of his stories.
Even nearly 30 years after the release of the first Suikoden game, the works he made continue to have ardent fans and he too never lost his passion for story-telling and world-building.
His passing was announced today, February 14. May he rest in peace.
To this day, I maintain that the narrative structure of Suikoden III was way ahead of its time, and that the main reason we haven't seen more games attempting to marry cinematic narrative arcs with multi-POV nonlinear storytelling is because that marriage is wildly tough to pull off. I fully believe there are countless pitches that designers started working on after playing that game and gave up on because it looked like such a black diamond slope to start heading down.
RIP to a real one, who did impossible things with such quiet deftness that many who looked upon those works later concluded, "a wizard probably did this."
While I love a lot of Megaten games and have enjoyed Final Fantasies and Fire Emblems and been curious about Star Oceans and Tactics Ogres, Suikoden is the JRPG series of my heart. Suikoden III was the first console game I ever completed, borrowing my best friend's PS2 and his copy of the game in first year university, playing it sitting on my childhood bed, the console hooked up to an ancient Tandy monitor.
Murayama's games stand out for the people who love them for lots of reasons, but in the genre I think part of it was that he recognized that the supporting characters are what make the hero. Not in a power of friendship way, but in a top to bottom you need all these pieces, grand and mundane, if you want to tell a story about a big thing.