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Forums - Gaming Discussion - FFXV Director "Tabata" has left Square Enix

Wyrdness on 08 November 2018

From what I can gather SE at the moment aren't good at managing direction of their projects, they have people with vision and talent but not the discipline of structured direction. Shinji Mikami once said of Godhand that he had too much freedom and that some restrictions on letting him do what he wanted may have helped the game and I think this is what's happening at SE their main internal teams were having that too much freedom to the point it's not helping the games they work on.

This would explain why their projects keep running into development issues leading to other teams being pulled off projects to sort out messes and so on.



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Farsala on 08 November 2018

We need a new SE director thread. While I was glad Tabata got something done, it is clear that Nomura's game would have been much better for me. Although FFXV got to my top 100, I think a FF game failing to get to my top 50 is unacceptable. Definitely excited for KH3, it will be the first AAA home console game from Nomura in a long time.



Landale_Star on 08 November 2018

I appreciated his efforts to get FFXV finished and have really enjoyed the game and it's dlc so far. I hope he finds success at his new studio.



Darc Requiem on 08 November 2018
forevercloud3000 said:
I think everyone is blaming the wrong people. The success and failures of this game are mostly a joint venture but if anyone caused the snowball it was Toriyama. Because he is one of the higher board members he got to make his game, FFXIII take precedent over Versus. Originally they were being made at the same time. FFXIII hit so much trouble that they started pulling Nomura's team onto it. One of the most damning things for Versus was when the already complicated process of making an engine had to turn to focus on a less complex game. Crystal tools should have been made primarily for Versus first, then XIII, that would have made the transistion simple. I swear I remember hearing that at one point Versus was ahead of XIII. Yet after FFXIII released they were left with the question on how to transition that same engine to work with a much broader game.

Nomura suffers from being too artistic and creative for his own good. I will say that. Much like Kojima..... he needs a handler to get him to scale back. I think even if the engine had not impeded him so much he might had over promised. It sucks because he kept having to be stolen away from his own projects to help with others. He is probably the most worked of all the Square Enix creators. Remember.... Square snuck in 2+ extra games into their timeline of the FF Versus XIII release. XIII-2 and Lightening Returns added to the derailment. I honestly think that once Nomura saw he was not going to be able to make the game that he promised, he no longer was up for it.

I distinctly remember leaks starting to happen the year before this console gen. They said that Square had planned to quietly scrap Versus after years of delays. Problem was....once that leak happened SquareEnix Stocks plummeted. They quickly put out a statement that the game was still in development. I think the game WAS actually cancelled, and everyone involved was ready to move on. Yet the Shareholders recognized FF Versus as the most appealing looking entity they had revealed and the hype for such a game would never just go away quietly. Many a share was bought on the premise of this game afterall. So at that time they kicked back into overdrive, but now they were given a time limit...... FF Versus XIII, now FFXV had to come out else so many deals were about to be broken.

This is where Tabata got tapped in. He was one of the only SE devs churning out his projects in a reasonable time, many of which were well received. He came in as the fixer for this game. Yet......I think some of his liberties ruined the spirit of what the game was promised to be, even with taking in consideration . Mainly....Luna. Why? One of the most appealing things of the original Versus concept was Stella, a badass Rapier wielding counterpart to Noctis. The removal of Magic was also damning and the limited level of control of the party members when they were previously stated to be uniquely playable was unfortunate.

Final Fantasy XV could have a movie written about it, it's development had so many turns.

Honestly this why I think some developers were better on limited hardware. In the case of Kojima, I enjoyed his older works far better than his new ones. All technology of the newer platforms is great, but for really creative types it seems causes their imaginations to run wild and not in a good way.



vivster on 09 November 2018
AsGryffynn said:
vivster said:

Well, yeah. Males don't belong in video games, especially with no females around. It's the right thing to do.

Look macho, The Elder Scrolls V: Manliness wants to have a word with you... 

Sin acritud! 

Women can be manly too! Have you seen the internet?



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AsGryffynn on 09 November 2018
shikamaru317 said:
AsGryffynn said:

Except those rumors were just well, rumors. This was never the vision Nomura had. All along, Stella was put into the same role as Luna EXCEPT on the very first trailers, when there was no plot AT ALL (and are the ones that feature a fighting Stella). The only parts that changed vastly were the pacing and the invasion of Insomnia (in fact, this was where Tabata and co hit a snag. They wouldn't be able to deliver by the end of 2016 if they tried to keep it in. 

People need to stop this "Tabata ruined Nomura's game" because there was no such thing as "Nomura's game". It was just a collection of trailers and concepts similar to Agni (which I hope is the project they are working on at Luminous Studio, since they mentioned a new AAA IP). There was no actual plot beyond "Noct and Stella are Romeo and Juliet and fight a so called dictatorship" until you realize there was no plot in between. Admittedly, the concept would've been better than a relapse back into "turning Eos into Remnant II" but hey, at least we got a bloody game and not a load of warm air. 

It was far more than just trailers and tech demos. According to reliable sources Nomura had finished writing the story by 2010 and the game was supposedly 25% finished and planned for release on PS3 in 2014 as of the 2011 trailer, but shortly after that Square was shown an early PS4 demonstration, and Square's CEO Yoichi Wada made the decision to transfer it to next gen and turn it into FF15. After that, Square wanted it done as fast as possible, so Tabata and his team were brought in to help with Tabata co-directing. There are reports of Tabata and his team clashing with Nomura and his team, so eventually Nomura was dropped entirely so he could work on KH3 and FF7 Remake, which had both entered early development by that point (December 2013). 

Except that the story he finished was mostly what we were shown. Nothing Nomura made diverged significantly save at the start. The only differences were the insertion of the Oracle role and the growth in Ardyn's role which was originally an Emperor thing. Well, there was also Lupus, but Lupus was no different to Ravus in anything excepting design. 

vivster said:
AsGryffynn said:

Look macho, The Elder Scrolls V: Manliness wants to have a word with you... 

Sin acritud! 

Women can be manly too! Have you seen the internet?

Yes, we stressed that if more women are needed somewhere, it's in K-dramas. 



Wyrdness on 09 November 2018

Anyway such a shame I really liked the concept behind Versus/XV and found it more interesting than prior games' concepts hopefully with XVI they can execute what they come up with better.



Shaunodon on 09 November 2018
shikamaru317 said:
AsGryffynn said:

Except that the story he finished was mostly what we were shown. Nothing Nomura made diverged significantly save at the start. The only differences were the insertion of the Oracle role and the growth in Ardyn's role which was originally an Emperor thing. Well, there was also Lupus, but Lupus was no different to Ravus in anything excepting design. 

Not sure where you're getting that from. Tabata himself said that they cut alot, he insinuated that Versus 13 was originally supposed to have sequels, so he had to cut alot of planned story elements in order to condense the story of of multiple games into a single game. We know that he cut Stella, we know that he cut the Invasion of Insomnia, we know that main villain roles changed almost entirely with Iedolas and Verstael having much bigger roles originally, we know that references to the Godess Etro and Noctis' ability to see the light of expiring souls were cut, we know that Versus 13 was designed to be much darker than 15 ended up being. 

And that's just story, we know that Tabata made alot of gameplay changes as well.

Look, I liked FFXV, it wasn't a great game, it had rushed writing, poor combat, and a number of other issues, but it was still a fairly fun experience overall, I gave it an 8/10. But you can't blame me and others like me who followed Versus 13 right from it's 2006 announce for mourning the loss of Nomura's version. Could it have ended up being worse? Sure. But it might have been alot better as well. Fact is we will never know. All we can do is dream. 

If Nomura were allowed to continue pushing FFXV around in development hell, most likely outcome is we'd still be sitting here waiting for his vision to become a playable game, with just a greater collection of trailers and maybe a prologue disc.



outlawauron on 09 November 2018

It's a bit bittersweet to see him leave while the DLCs weren't finished, but FF15 has seen far more love and care than anyone expected under his watch, so I can't be too mad at him doing his own thing. The days of storied creators staying with their studios is long dead.



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bigtakilla on 09 November 2018

Isn't Tabata the one who single handedly swooped in and saved FFXV after Nomura supposedly took a decade to darn near release another FFXIII travesty? Bad news....