Shouldn't wily Nomura get blamed for the Versus train wreck?
If anything Nomura should just design characters and then step away from production- especially writing "story".
Everyone should be blamed for the VsXIII/XV mess, and at the same time everyone did what they could with what they were handed (both Nomura and Tabata). If you look closely at it, there were simply too many problems for the project to hit the highs they were aiming for:
During Nomura era:
-Nomura aimed very big for this game (and rightfully so, it was his shot at directing a FF)
-Nomura is also a perfectionist, which means his games requires extra time and dedication by default
-Crystal Tools was a mess, incapable of satisfy Versus needs
-FFXIII was late, needed extra staff & resources
-FFXIV debacle
-ARR greenlighted, needs extra & resources
-FFXIII gets greenlighted to cover up XIII and XIV costs quickly
-Versus gets pushed down the list, team gets resized
-Extra time needed to get an engine going
-With his game flying under the radar and no one forcing a deadline on him, Nomura gets lost in ideas, experiments and concepts for his game
-When the time comes to push Versus big, both the tech and the developement itself are lagging behind
-Next-gen is approaching, so SE higher ups want Versus as a cross-gen game as to start the transition to the newer consoles
-It is also decided the game will become a mainline FF, which means some of the more extreme ideas need to be cut off (according to rumors)
-Nomura is also needed to handle other projects vital to the company (KHIII and VII next), so he can't just direct XV
Tabata era:
-Tabata is ordered to deliver the game in the most complete state possible for the deadline, at whatever cost it takes, while keeping costs reasonable and also be profitable
-They spend a year circa doing preparations, deciding if they can make XV cross-gen, if it will run on both PS3 and PS4, and if the PS3 will still be relevant when the game launches; ultimately they move the project to next-gen only
-Since the tech for the game is lagging behind, they decide to port it to the (at the time) in-developement Luminous engine,which means starting from zero with pretty much all the assets
-But Luminous itself is not ready yet, so XV will act as a "guinea pig" for it, with things being tested and improved as the game progresses; this of course means much more troubles, time, money, effort and compromises
-Tabata gets handed lots of ideas, but time/budget/developement limits makes so that he has to choose the very basic elements of the game and keep it as coherent as possible
-To make sure the interest is high and everyone knows a new FF is coming, SE rolls out a plan for an expanded universe that will deal with elements not appearing in the main game
-Tabata also get instructed that the game needs to have mass appeal, so SE management pushed for elements that are trending (open-world, fetch quests and so on)
-Developement issues keep happening, so not the ideas that were chosen to be developed can be done
-To make sure the game is well received, Tabata is also asked to keep receiving fan feedback
-Meanwhile SE gets wind that the market is changing, that players now want to stick with their games longer and DLCs and patches are a thing; A plan to support XV after its release is decided, some parts of the game that may or may not have been part of the main game get moved to DLC
-In the end, Tabata gets to release a game where the 1st half is more polished, but still lacking in polish and content and with severly compromised ideas, and a 2nd half that is barely put together because simply there was no time left
-Still, the team has to keep working on the game by adding deleted elements that are still salvageables
Ultimately, i think everyone and no one are to blame for this mess.
Square Enix management wanted FFXV to be a great game worthy of making the series competitive again on the world stage, but at the same time were too afraid of taking a loss on sales and receptions so they played it safe; they also had to go hard with deadlines and limits because at some point
you just have to.
Nomura, while surely being a perfectionist that takes a lot of time to deliver on games,
got asked to make a great FF, and then stripped of all of his resources and ultimately kicked off the project.
Tabata, while being too keen on playing it safe, listening to fan feedback and also for having gone with choices about what to keep and what not that i strongly disagree with,
got asked with the impossible mission to deliver a critically and commercially acclaimed game, inheriting only lots of concepts and an already a mess of a project, with a strict deadline in front of him and a fixed number of resources.
...
