As for the story... I think all it does is reinforce and confirm a lot of the bad rumors and stereotypes about Square management currently.
I can't help but feel a lot of his fans MIGHT end up disappointed and betrayed by his level-5 works.
Matsuno from the few interviews i've seen always seems to have a bit of Miyamoto in him.
A wandering type who likes to invent to new ideas and who's main goal is to make games that as many people will like as possible while fulfilling his creative wishes.
It's just he was generally trapped by circumstance first by being part of a small company, and later... by being part of square, to do the same things he did well over and over again.
From his talk on dumbing down Final Fantasy Tactics story from his past work, and then that being more expanded in his later work on FF Tactics Advance... I come to the impression that Matsuno is someone who is a very good story writer... but to whom, the story isn't what's important.
He doesn't care if it's a giant geopolitical war, or whether it's one kid trying to get back home in a strange anime style "battle" world. He wants to create games, and then stories around the games. Not the other way around.
Given full freedom i bet the episodic Ogre Series would of had dozens of games, but with vastly different gameplay and even stories within the world, some focusing much more on the personal... or even doing things like running item shops.
Either way, i'm interested to see what he does.
