bequietdrive
Member
Hey Gaf, I recently got to sit down with Tabata at Gamescom and ask him about something I have long been fascinated with - XV's long and complicated development process.
Not so much filled with ground breaking news ( except the part about new FFXV cinematic universe content coming) but hopefully an interesting look into the troubled development process behind the game.
New expanded universe content
FFVI influence
Dev problems
FF XIII Reaction
http://www.trustedreviews.com/opini...-revealed-as-director-hajime-tabata-bares-all
Enjoy.
Not so much filled with ground breaking news ( except the part about new FFXV cinematic universe content coming) but hopefully an interesting look into the troubled development process behind the game.
New expanded universe content
fter ten years in development Square Enix tripled down on Final Fantasy XV’s universe, releasing the feature-length CG film Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV and the anime series Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV. So is this what fans can come to expect from future entries in the series?
“We very much did this as a new approach, a new idea and challenge for XV, so I can’t really say if that’s going to be the future of Square Enix or not,” Tabata admits, but as producer of Kingslaive, he’s been happy with the reception it’s received. “I am feeling now, though, that it’s had a really good result and that it’s hitting what it was supposed to hit, because there are a lot of people who would otherwise have not been interested in Final Fantasy coming and checking out the game now.”
Having spent a decade in the world of Final Fantasy XV, it’s not surprising that Tabata’s involved in every aspect of it, and it sounds like there are still more stories to tell. “This isn’t going to be everything you’re going to see from XV’s universe,” Tabata teases. “There are things that haven’t been announced yet, so you’ll see more from XV.”
Read more at http://www.trustedreviews.com/opini...r-hajime-tabata-bares-all#St4sviAEROsKCYLF.99
FFVI influence
Replaying VI and other games in the series reaffirmed to Nomura and Tabata that they should focus on creating a story that felt personal and had a strong emotional resonance. “It wasn’t that we played VI and decided that it was the inspiration behind XV,” Tabata clarifies. “The idea of having that very human, very emotional tale was already decided, but I think there may have been some influence there in more of an indirect sense. From seeing VI, I got to understand the classic Final Fantasy feel. From the games previous to VII that emotional core was really what Final Fantasy was about.”
Read more at http://www.trustedreviews.com/opini...r-hajime-tabata-bares-all#St4sviAEROsKCYLF.99
Dev problems
While creating not only a new type of combat system but also marrying it with an incredibly ambitious open world was a vision happily shared between Nomura and Tabata, it seemed a pretty daunting task to many of the team. “It certainly wasn’t an easy thing to get the whole team to have that courage to move ahead and try something so out of their comfort zone,” Tabata confides. And with Japan falling behind the curve when it came to tech, he explains why XV’s development process became a difficult and increasingly lengthy one.
“I think, first of all, the big reason why obviously the West did overtake Japan when it came into the HD console development era was very much because Western developers had that previous base of PC development experience and they were able to use that very effectively in the switch to the new consoles. In Japan, however, most places didn’t have that base of knowledge and experience with PC gaming, they’d just worked on different generations of consoles. So it was much harder for them to make [the transition].”
Read more at http://www.trustedreviews.com/opini...r-hajime-tabata-bares-all#St4sviAEROsKCYLF.99
FF XIII Reaction
As well as the technological struggles of a new console generation and attempting to create an entirely new type of Final Fantasy, the team faced other obstacles. After the largely negative reaction to Final Fantasy XIII, the team was all too aware of the pressure to win back fans. With Nomura being moved to Kingdom Hearts III in 2014, the last two years have seen Tabata step up as director and leader. Tabata is hesitant, initially towing the party line and defending XIII, but then he replies...
“A lot of the staff on the XV project also worked on XIII as well. While there were arguably a lot of fans for FF XIII too, there were clearly those bits that people were a bit negative about and treated very harshly.
“So in some ways I think those [devs] obviously did think, in their own way, that ‘Yes, with this development we have to turn that around’ and ‘We have to learn from that and work out what we did wrong’. There was probably that element for them.”
Read more at http://www.trustedreviews.com/opini...r-hajime-tabata-bares-all#St4sviAEROsKCYLF.99
http://www.trustedreviews.com/opini...-revealed-as-director-hajime-tabata-bares-all
Enjoy.