* Were kinda late this, but piece was was uploaded to SE's recruitment page December 2019.

https://www.jp.square-enix.com/recruit/career/BU-BD/3BU/

Yoshida was being pretty coy about FFXVI in that interview he did; and with the typical FF team doing Remake and next KH; FFXV team making a brand new AAA IP, not surprised that he gets his shot after the success he has had with 14.

I am disappointed in a full fantasy setting though. I have never been interested in the FF11/14 art drection either.

You sure that's not fan art do you have a link to the recruitment page?

https://www.jp.square-enix.com/recruit/career/BU-BD/3BU/

I swore it was already in the OP, but ill put it in now.

Yoshida did amazing work with FF14, so I would love to see him go on with an offline FF. 

He also mentioned some years ago at a producers letter, that he will have done telling his story of Final Fantasy 14 with Update 6.0, which would be the next Addon (2021 planned, + maybe a year for story updates that follow the story to the end). 

They better be working on the next game and waste as little as possible resources on that useless remake. Everything looks great in FFXIV, so I have high hopes. In fact I don't even need a FFXVI. All I need for now is a FFXIV single player edition.

I am really curious how they go about the combat this time around. They have been pushing action based quite hard for the last bit and there has been a lot of community push back for turn based combat which they gave in a little on FF7R with classic mode.

They are never going back to a classic turn based battle system. Games like Bravely Default  and Octopath Traveller fill that void. I can see them going back to FFXII though since that version of the ATB was based off FF MMO's.

I don't know how they separate teams at SE, but I would rather XVI have a long development cycle and stay in concept stage for a while until they really nail it. The development process behind 15 was a mess and I really want them to focus on the FF7 remakes. I have many criticisms of FF7 remake, but it is my favorite SE game ever released. I really want the second and third (or how ever many more) to be even better in terms of dialogue and cutting out filler. While I generally hate alternative timelines and cyclical storytelling I actually think they did it in the most interesting way possible. I'm still worried that it will be handled poorly given the KH director being behind it and how that series has fallen apart to my tastes. I also don't want to run into a situation where voice actors age too much or can't fulfill the same roles for other reasons. It's pretty jarring to me in games when sequels have different voice actors. So I want the remakes to be polished, but I also want them to be the main focus of the studio and release in a timeline that isn't too dragged out. 

Hot take: I have many thoughts on Kingdom Hearts all the way back from when Kingdom Hearts 2 disappointed me and nearly everyone I knew in real life; I'm on the side of the IGN review everyone wants to complain about, but even more so because the story bothered me back then and was already a mess as far as I'm concerned where the IGN criticisms are all about gameplay. The KH games still always have some redeemable qualities, and I did like KH2 but I think it deserved a much worse meteoritic score compared to the first. However, I'm most interested in FF7 remake sequels followed by FFXVI. 

FFXV was kind of a mess in its own right despite having a ton of themes that I not only found interesting but even paralleled thoughts I had on writing my own fantasy novel. I didn't finish the game, but I've watched many videos on it because I was curious on why I didn't like it and what I was missing out on. It's development budget was rushed into production and they started to lose money before it was ready and thus we are left with a game that is divisive. The same can be said about XIII, KH3, and all games that overlapped its development. I want them to take things slow and not put a ton of money into XVI until they have the concepts nailed down completely and a plan in place. Until then put the main focus in FF7 remakes with the KH team doing its own thing.

I don't know what full-scale development means, but I hope they aren't going to go bankrupt again or separate the product to make up money they lose from rushing things. I am a bit worried by this statement, but full-scale development might not mean that it's actually being developed in engine yet. While they say this will be a fantasy without machinery, it doesn't really state the story is finished and those concepts are just as important as aesthetics. I don't know where they draw the line, but for me full-scale development means actual in-engine development, but reading that post I'm not sure that's what they mean.