Short answers, pulled from the story.
Yoshitaka Murayama was a Japanese game designer, director, and producer best known for creating the Suikoden series of role-playing video games at Konami. He later founded Rabbit & Bear Studios and created the Eiyuden Chronicle series, published by 505 Games.
Yoshitaka Murayama died on the 6th of February 2024 at the age of 55, due to complications from an ongoing illness. He died approximately ten weeks before Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes was released on the 23rd of April 2024.
Murayama left Konami in 2002 because he had always planned to stay no longer than ten years before going freelance. He explained this in an August 2009 interview with Swedish gaming magazine LEVEL, stating he remained on good terms with his former team.
Murayama pitched Suikoden using the classic Chinese novel Shui Hu Zhuan to illustrate his concept of an RPG with a large supporting cast. The game took its name from the Japanese reading of that novel, and Murayama was tasked with creating 108 characters to mirror the 108 outlaws in the Chinese classic.
Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes was announced on the 27th of July 2020 and its Kickstarter campaign reached its base funding goal in just over three hours. It exceeded all of its original stretch goals before the campaign concluded.
Murayama believed supporting characters were more memorable than protagonists, a view he developed from reading manga like Saint Seiya and Captain Tsubasa. He also sought to build emotional depth through small mechanical details, inspired by a line of code in Enix's 1992 RPG Dragon Quest V that slowed a priest's dialogue each time a player was resurrected.