Masato Kato

Masato Kato is a Japanese video game artist, scenario writter, and director known to have contributed in many popular Japanese role-playing games such as Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VII, and Xenogears.

Biography
Kato first worked for Tecmo, now Koei Tecmo, in the late 1980s on Captain Tsubasa and the Ninja Gaiden series, from graphics to scenario writing, then to directing. After the release of Princess Maker 2 in 1993, he has moved to SquareSoft, now Square Enix, for working in IPs from the company. His first contribution to Square was Chrono Trigger in 1995, where he would be the game's director, albeit uncredited, story planner, and script writer. Following the game's success, he has participated in the development of games from the Final Fantasy, Chrono, and Xeno series.

Kato left Square after designing the plot of Final Fantasy XI to become a freelance scenario writer. In addition to games for different companies, he has continued to work on Square Enix projects with the Mana series, the Nintendo DS port of Chrono Trigger, and expansion for Final Fantasy XI. He has also contributed in 2012's Ninja Gaiden 3 long after leaving Koei Tecmo, and in Spike Chunsoft's Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer series as the scenarist, replacing Shin-ichiro Tomie as of 2008's Shiren the Wanderer for the Wii. In 2017, he released a spiritual successor to the Chrono series for iOS and Android, titled "Another Eden: The Cat Beyond Time and Space".

Writings
In 2005, Masato Kato has collaborated with Yasunori Mitsuda to write a short story titled Five Seasons of kiЯitɘ, in which Mitsuda accompanied with music on his album kiЯitɘ.

Relevance to the Xeno series
Kato's sole contribution to the series was in Xenogears, where he served as the game's writer and lyricist.

Xenogears

 * Event Writer
 * Scenario Writer
 * Lyricist