Only thing that is important is the end result. I fell for hype for FFXIII and it looked great. But things did not turn out so well. So hopefully these changes end up for the best.

Well if you really followed FFversus scene you would know there was an entire trailer dedicated to stella's introduction and many articles in magazine about her relationship with Noctic. Noctics and Stella knew each other from childhood and shared a special connectiona and almost similar powers. After a near death experience both of them recieve a special powers where they can see "light of the dead", letting them know when someone is about to die or is dying. Stella is more open about this power, while Noctics lives in denial, and most of the time this creates conflicts between Stella and Noctics and it reaches its peak when their respective kingdom are fighting each other over the last crystal, and the two square off as enemies, even though they wish this were not the case. and this was one of the story arc which was emphaised since 2006 and even in 2013.. And this is just a brief overview about her and how important character she was in the story. 

There is more on her past, family and personality. But i know you will still defend by saying this isnt enough info

Oh about the dark tone is not there at all, you need to watch those early trailer again to know what exactly dark tone is.

Okay? Yeah that information has been out there for some time. Balthier was once the main character for Final Fantasy XII - and he isn't now. Yuna's original design was once completely different. Shit happens - things change. People are acting as if we went through Versus XIII for half a game and then they booted it up and she was simply gone. Everything above could be surmised in a sypnopsis.  Outside of that there is no information which supports that she was a strong female lead.

I see. So Square told him that his "dark vision" for the game had to be changed despite SEVERAL quite dark concepts appearing in pretty much every game prior? And the name was Versus XIII because main series games couldn't be dark, NOT because it was part of what was to be a deeper spiritual Fabula Nova Crystallis (XIII) subseries? Yep, sure. Whatever helps you sleep at night.

Occam's Razor is in full effect here. Square didn't want to spend 30 years on a three-game subseries again because that already failed once and took less time. They gave Nomura's position to his codirector because he didn't agree. Boom, problem solved. No conspiracy here. God forbid a mediocre director got removed because he got a Kojima complex. 

@ bolded 1

Ruined the game for me. Terrible decision... Vaan FFS!

@ bolded 2

Its been so long, it feels like we've been through half a game! And whilst it may have been summarised in a synopsis, it's still a lot of story detail for a character whose just been scrapped. It points to some significant changes from the old concepts presented. No information over the years would have been better than misinformation.

No one knows how much was developed before the change. Might as well just think of it as not being a game before FF15.

That being said, why not complain about how shitty the gameplay is instead of a storyline that's probably going to suck anyways.

You are overreacting. He said that, yes he made changes but he is also incorporating as much as he could of the original story of Versus 13 which means that what we will have in XV will be something similar to what versus was and not something 100% completely different. You are acting as if there will be nothing left of what versus was which is completely false.

Imo it's controversial because the whole change has been done in a way that makes it feel like the project was hijacked to fill a void because the was nothing for an actual FFXV title. This isn't even a fan of Nomura thing as I don't care for the guy but he certainly had an interesting concept that was presented to gamers for the good part of a decade which has now been confirmed to have been thrown out.

If anything Tabata is now worse off as if him and his team don't deliver every critic will be lining up to have a field day over this especially after the whole XIII saga debacle.

The game is looking like a mess honestly.

It was Basch who was originally  the main character. Not Balthier.