I think the statement is clear, what he said that the game will be story driven, unlike Skyrim were you could go anywhere to pick main quests. To advance in story you have to go to the marked area. He specifically said it will be like Red Dead: 

"“That’s right. It’s not a game like The Elder Scrolls V:Skyrim,for example,where you could go where you please and pick up quests,” says Tabata. “The destination will always be indicated, and that’s where you’ll head with your allies, and grow together.”

Tabata adds that while the game will allow you to explore, “once you arrive atan area of interest and start advancing through the story, in a sense, it’s closer to Red Dead Redemption.”

"it’s possible to go where you want and explore."

Bur really, what matters that areas will be massive and can be explored, it don't need to be completely open world. 

Both could be hard to follow but for different reasons. FFXII has a lot of depth to it so it can be difficult to follow if your attention wavers (or you get distracted playing through side missions which can happen quite easily in XII).

XIII's was hard to follow simply because it was told poorly. They hid a lot of the more interesting bits of info in the datalog and expected players to pick everything up from the overly long, drawn out bits of teen exposition.

I never understood why people think FF13's story is hard to follow.  There's like one or two instances that are weird because the meaning is lost in its effectiveness, but the story is never hard to follow:

*spoilers*

Like Barthandelus tasking the characters to fulfill their L'Cie mission to kill Ragnarok, but at the end all of a sudden Bart wants them to kill him  so he can ascend.

It's never hard to follow, it just doesn't make sense.  They were really reaching for creating their own logic in a story.  But unfortunately you just can't do that and succeed without providing consistency for this logic.

I kind of lump those two sentiments together. FF13 throws a lot of new terms and concepts at you but does little to inform you of what they actually mean. You spend a good chunk of the game working your way to some goal that you don't really understand or identify with.

I honestly don't get how people think FF12's plot is confusing.

Final Fantasy's problem is that the creators HAVE THE WRONG PRIORITIES.

I can't look at any of the recent FF games and not see a ton of creative effort. They just don't think things through properly. Make an enemy fight back intelligently? Nah, slap on another two zeroes of HP. Those long-ass fights tedious? Add an auto-play option. Make a competent level-up system? Nah, everything boils down to generic experience or is lock it into a specific place before players ever pick it up.

They have this philosophy that they can't trust the player to make decisions for themselves.

I would really like to see Miyazaki direct one Final Fantasy game just to slap the executives with this attitude in the face. Kill an important NPC? There isn't even a way to go back to a previous save; your game is fucked. Deal with it.

A thought for a moment though, and this is something I've been curious about regarding Japan in general: SE being Japanese, they put a lot of stock into terms, but there's also a lack of depth of usage in comparison to English.  The Japanese language is symbolic, but without a lot of creativity or depth/progessive change with their words because their words are based on symbols.  It's very static.  So when they say something as a term and a huge part of the story like say L'Cie, Fal'Cie, or their take on the Purge is put out there from their point of view I don't think they think the meaning has another meaning or different usage if possible.

http://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/5298/why-are-there-so-many-sound-symbolic-words

I think SE tried changing the meaning of some terms or made the creation of new terms one thing but then doubled back to try something too ambitious they weren't familiar with.  The terms are never hard to understand though since they're usually one way or another given the static symbolic nature of the Japanese language.  They just don't connect appropriately or consistently. 

I might be wrong, but it's something more objective to take into consideration regarding why SE makes so much obtuse nomenclature and to help us understand why specifically it doesn't work over here considering English is our language.

Way back when, there was a game for the Xbox 360 called Lost Odyssey. It felt like a Final Fantasy game. It didn't try to reinvent the wheel. The story was good, the characters were fun, the gameplay was accessible, and the world was epic. That was the last time a game felt like Final Fantasy to me.

The statement is a step in the right direction, and I assume they have learned their mistakes and won't do again the three FF13 games who have badly damaged the franchise. But I think that Square hasn't earned yet the right to be trusted just based on what they say in interviews, giving the last 3 FF games they produced.

I didn't have a problem with them. I haven't actually played 12, but 13 threw a lot of terms out there, but Sasz did a fair job of explaining what a l'Cie and a focus were early on. That's all the information you actually need to understand XIII.You don't even need to know what a Fal'Cie is, and there's a ton of context telling you what Cocoon and Pulse are. The problem was they didn't work the theme into the mechanics and they didn't think the party chemistry through properly.

How do you make "fighting fate" into a gameplay mechanic the player can identify with? Since Oedipus Rex it has been a narrative theme, and it's hard to apply it to game mechanics. It's quite easy for a character to wrestle control from the player (MGS2) but it is essentially impossible for the player to wrestle control from the designer, and that's more or less what this theme required.

Then there's the party chemistry. Snow outright ruins Lightning because he's charismatic and wrestles authority from her. Compare this to Duodecim, where both Kain and Laguna make mistakes which REQUIRE Light to step up and take charge. Now if Snow had been wrong on several really important regards and Light had to veto him, that would change things drastically, but as is Snow is the unintended protagonist of XIII. It's sloppy design choices like this which ruined XIII's potential.

Add in the enemy design and you have XIII. Enemies have billions of HP, and then make up for being tedious by lacking the wit of a gerbil, and then make up for THAT being too easy with uber-secret double-special attacks. What is with these retarded design choices?