Final Fantasy 15 director, Hajime Tabata, has mentioned in a new interview how difficult it was for him to convince his fellow developers to be on board with his vision of the game. Tabata knew something had to change as no progress was being made to the game to start off with anyway.
4Gamer published a very long interview with Tabata where he spoke with Tekken’s Katsuhiro Harada about the roller-coaster experience concerning the development for Final Fantasy 15. Many in the development team were scared of the changes that Tabata wanted to employ.
Tabata said there was some negative feedback on some of the things he wanted to do such as the character changes and choices. If you remember correctly, Final Fantasy Versus XIII had a different main female character that was dropped completely for 15.
Tabata’s response was: “It refers to people within the company who can’t imagine anything other than their own view of Final Fantasy. Since the root is a strong self-affirmation, one’s own view of Final Fantasy takes more priority than the team’s success.
If that view of Final Fantasy isn’t fulfilled, then they’re convinced that it’s bad for Final Fantasy. They think, ‘Since Final Fantasy is a special team, then we are also special because we are making it. When the new Final Fantasy comes out, everybody is going to be so into it.’ But that’s not the reality of the situation, is it?”
Even though Final Fantasy 15 looks great, Tabata feels that the series needs to evolve in order to survive. The game has a combat system more akin to the Kingdom Hearts series than a traditional Final Fantasy game. Not to mention Tabata wants the game to be a success so he probably wanted to avoid upsetting the fans that were disappointed with the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy.
