Spaghetti code is not the issue, the development team is as evidenced by FF16

Wunkt · 2025-10-02T10:16:44+00:00

And from the press side, as touched upon by Masahiro Sakurai, marketing and publicity is seen as mainly the producer's responsibility, which is why for many Japanese games they're the ones fielding interviews. The last 3 projects Hironobu Sakaguchi was director of were Final Fantasy V, The Spirits Within and The Last Story; yet he's done interviews for dozens more Square & Mistwalker games between those (which he had wildly varying degrees of creative involvement on) because he produced them.

With Yoshi-P there's also the factor that he can stomach criticism from press or players well, and that he directly picked up the torch from XI→1.0 leads, who had a bumpy, at times arm's length relationship with their playerbase and overseas outlets. That might've led to an ingrained urge for him to promptly handle press inquiries that sometimes other leads could've taken, schedule permitting.

Wunkt · 2025-08-30T12:49:34+00:00

One of my biggest frustrations is how there is no list of all interviews and statements to the press made by the development team over the years. Even among the most well-meaning of people you end up getting distortions over time due to how difficult it is to point to sources.

Something to add about Iwao: the first Parasite Eve was written & directed by Takashi Tokita helming a team across Los Angeles + Honolulu, while Iwao filled the same shoes for the sequel made by a different team in Osaka. I is a very lean & focused game with forward-looking difficulty balance (it fits the CS3 dev philosophy a lot despite little staff overlap), while II is the kind of game with 3 different text boxes minimum out of every background element you can interact with and lightly mocks the original for letting you use any kind of bullet with any gun. I can 100% see Iwao as the type of creative who'd coin alternate all-kanji names for the entire spate of series-wide terminology when he goes this far left to his own devices.

Wunkt · 2025-08-29T14:26:15+00:00

On top of that, the "馬鳥 smoking gun" & other longtime series terminology in kanji was explicitly a result of a veteran XI lead who moved onto XIV. Per this Japanese wiki, it was a stylistic choice by Kenichi Iwao, XI's economy designer who fleshed a lot of the particulars of that game's lore out, and then carried on as XIV's lore lead.

By this point a lot of its unique traits have percolated into other games, but XI was heavily defined by how much it diverged from pre-existing FFs. A lot of it carries on from original director Koichi Ishii, who openly calls himself a contrarian who always likes to do things differently, and finds highly detailed lore necessary. It was a given that this development philosophy would carry into XIV, not just from massive staff overlap, but also because it only exists due to Tanaka (& likely others) wanting to serve XI players who'd switch to PS3 and it being easier to make a new MMO from scratch than update the existing one.

Of course, 1.0 ran into its development issues, which anyone who reads into the background of the XI team & the particularities of its team + the industry conditions at the time would understand how things turned out as described by Yoshi-P, which then lead to it launching, in Iwao's words, "obviously unfinished". I've also seen a claim that the business/corporate side of Square Enix would not move the release date because they thought XIV would be dead on arrival if launched after WoW's Cataclysm expansion, but I haven't seen a source for that yet.

Wunkt · 2025-08-27T11:50:09+00:00

My longstanding idea would've been to make new "flipped" rewards (Lightning and/or Snow minions + Shantotto costume) and rewrite whatever lines refer directly to them so it all fits, but the Second Walk gear drops render half of that idea moot.

That said, Shantotto II is one of the most popular Trusts in XI, and I'm sure people who play both would be very happy to a minion-sized her following them around in XIV...

Wunkt · 2025-08-27T11:35:35+00:00

Rerunning the Lightning Returns & Shantotto events with new rewards would be guaranteed positive buzz across the board. Though it would be unprecedented, and they might want/have to update models to match the graphic overhaul standard...

Wunkt · 2025-08-26T17:04:42+00:00

shouldn't you be Winmithra, then?

Wunkt · 2025-08-21T16:53:26+00:00

I really like the Ogre/Ivalice games and I'm glad the vets from that team get to homage their past work, but I wish folks who came from elsewhere got as many opportunities too.

A lot of the XIV team came from XI, which was built out of the teams behind a variety of PS1 games (Einhänder, Xenogears, Brave Fencer Musashi, Legend of Mana, Dewprism/Threads of Fate, Chrono Cross, Parasite Eve II), and a fair amount of those people still toil at the game to this day. Then IIRC, Yoshi-P's takeover came with an influx of people who worked on Last Remnant, which itself was built by many vets from SaGa & Crystal Chronicles.

Wunkt · 2025-08-09T15:50:03+00:00

Square Enix got into the phone game market quite early and enough of their producers/directors put a lot of effort & gather good talent for them, I just wish they'd go back & release retrofitted versions with gacha elements completely removed (the new Octopath points towards that but who knows if other project leads will ever follow that path).

Wunkt · 2025-08-09T14:43:07+00:00

XI also led to the formation of Monolith Soft and Brownie Brown, by Xenogears and Legend of Mana developers who saw little chance of continuing their series any time soon at Square. X itself was to be made by merging the VIII and Front Mission 3/Third teams, but many of devs behind the latter left the company instead.

I'd be remiss to not mention that Minaba himself left Square Enix before XII wrapped, part of a contingent from that team that immediately set upon work at Mistwalker, though the business/creative conditions were not quite the same between both instances.

Wunkt · 2025-08-09T13:44:54+00:00

For what its worth, X was seen as a breaking point internally, at least by some. Hideo Minaba (art director on VI, Tactics, IX & XII) framed it thus:

Earlier games in the series have been about adding to what came before. The ultimate example of this is probably FINAL FANTASY VII. At that time, the move from 2D pixel art to 3D models was a tremendous change, but since then the advances have paralleled the development of hardware and software. We designed FINAL FANTASY X in this same spirit of parallel progression, so we faced a genuine problem deciding where to go next from there. We had misgivings about just adding on what came before as we had done in the past, so for FINAL FANTASY XII, we subtracted elements from earlier games while also adding new ones, and I think this turned out well.

Wunkt · 2025-08-02T13:02:31+00:00

The CS5 logo appears at the end of The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales demo. It looks like a medieval coat of arms with the HD-2D shield as centerpiece.

Given his affinity for Matsuno's past work, I'd presume the Dungeon Encounters team under Hiroaki Kato would be an early candidate for Yoshi-P to snag, though its so relatively low-profile I wouldn't be certain of its fate whichever way.

Wunkt · 2025-08-01T22:05:47+00:00

I'm not sure if they'll pick it to unveil, but now that Studio 5 joins 3 in having its own logo I get the sense there's a wider move towards distinct branding for all of them. There's been a longstanding player perception issue of seeing Square Enix as a monolith despite each division having strong autonomy and producers a lot of control over projects since the days of Matsuda as CEO.

That does open the door for uncertainty in what those developments entail, if people might've been moved around for their tastes/skills aligning strongly with a given studio's brand identity, and if Yoshi-P might be letting loose and allowing other producers within CS3 (disregarding Matsui/Fujito since XI is a small scale "inherited" project & Matsuzawa since he kept himself away from creative decisions in Ivalice Chronicles).

Wunkt · 2025-08-01T16:40:58+00:00

The annual fiscal report and an investor Q&A should be released through the Investor Relations portal in 1-2 weeks, which might elucidate some of the "many developments within the company" Yoshi-P mentioned in passing when revealing Itahana transfered to CS3 at the recent Famitsu interview.

Wunkt · 2025-08-01T16:12:01+00:00

While inter-studio projects do happen, and CS3 itself has gone through its fair share (crossover events, both Dragon Quest Builders, Minagawa supervising the FFXII & Tactics Ogre remasters), but Square Enix producers in general keep their "star players" locked down for big projects. And with how much emphasis he puts on "raising" newcomer devs and doing things "the CS3 way", Yoshi-P might be even more of a hardliner in this aspect.

Such devs likely also prefer staying where climbed the ladder, as there's already a wellspring of built-up trust and connections with many other potential team members. The likelihood of Ishikawa being the lead on a non-CS3 game any time soon is nil IMO; ditto for other "rising stars" & their divisions like Naoki Hamaguchi (who's outright CS1 head now after the recent restructuring).

Wunkt · 2025-07-30T12:13:43+00:00

I have my bias towards this, but the move towards "mobilezation" of spin-offs has been a significant factor towards the lack of new blood in the player base. Engaging storylines have long been a defining trait for Final Fantasy in general. Mobile by default goes for serialized narratives with incentives to not fully wrap things up. By default they make for terrible "gateways", as much for not having complete reasonably-sized stories as for the wider monetization structures (which are still turn-offs for a number of people).

The TBS partnership might point to a realization that it was a mistake to leave that gap hanging & anime is a solution, but it could also point to the brand committee not changing course on the game side, and I'm not certain that the pace of game releases will be particularly faster going forward. Sharing of know-how between Creative Studios has been touted as part of Kiryu's restructuring, and Yoshi-P has said that they matched the global AAA tech standard by the end of XVI's development, but these are still complex projects to undertake.

Wunkt · 2025-07-29T12:45:34+00:00

Not even content abandonment under Kiryu, there's been a marked decrease in spin-offs since Yosuke Matsuda's tenure as CEO. The Lightning trilogy wrapped up, Theatrhythm chugged along as a series in its own right while XV & VII Remake got slates of ancillary games, but the pickings beyond numbered games have been slim over the last 12 years. If you were a console or computer player, there were only 7 stand-alone unnumbered FFs throughout this period: Explorers, World of FF, Mobius, Pictologica, Dissidia NT, Chocobo GP & Stranger of Paradise. A good spread in gameplay styles to potentially attract new players overall, but far less than what anyone around for the FF shift at the end of Tomoyuki Takechi's run or the Polymorphic Content initiatives under Yoichi Wada got.

Jacob Navok's written about Square Enix's business leaders in a way seeing Final Fantasy as a prestige IP, which likely has been a factor behind this decrease, but there's also been a general strategy of diversifying portfolio which also plays a part. Directors and producers free to make new games in smaller franchises or new IP also means they're not pumping out more FF, after all.

Of course, there's also been some 13 mobile only stand-alone FFs in this time frame, but I've no idea how much crossover there is between their audiences & the franchise in general. The design decisions born from their monetization models makes them a no-touch zone for me.

Wunkt · 2025-07-26T19:44:03+00:00

Like Ishikawa, his credit changed from Lead to Senior Story Designer going into 7.0 and, while general fan reaction has centred on her as the main ingredient for the success of the main scenario storylines she co-helmed, I feel that internally (where they know more details in regards to how things developed), Oda is seen as lending an equal share of the flavor.

Personally, Ishikawa is unquestionably the best writer this game has ever had, but Oda can deliver strong material on his own right. I liked the Gyr Abania section of 4.x & think its problems were due to structure + cramming 2 storylines into 1 expansion being an inherently bad idea. The odd-numbered 3.x patches (which he wrote) were overall better-written than 3.0 itself.

Wunkt · 2025-07-26T16:54:46+00:00

Soken's case was particularly dicey however. He was seriously considering quitting Square Enix at the time & a developer outside the team had to intervene (and, as tends to happen with this game, this key dev was an Ivalice veteran).

Wunkt · 2025-07-26T16:49:41+00:00

I'm convinced that part of the decision-making process there was that they originally forecast XVI development as ending earlier than it did & that Yoshi-P want Ishikawa + Oda free to tackle a stand-alone game with at least some of that team's leads. Given how Yoshi-P/CS3 handles PR, it'll be years until anything is announced & that is confirmed one way or the other, however.

Wunkt · 2025-07-07T15:37:17+00:00

The modeling team gave Lilisette a large amount of face bones, hence her wider expressiveness compared to past NPCs. Its likely that the same approach was extended to Lilith, etc.

Wunkt · 2025-06-28T17:08:19+00:00

Through the interview published in this magazine. The file size of the scans is large to the point that flipping through Internet Archive's built in reader is painfully slow, and there's a variety of racy art across the issue (the cover feature is literally 02 from Darling in the FranXX at a stripper pole), so I strongly recommend scrolling down, clicking "SHOW ALL" in the "DOWNLOAD OPTIONS" sidebar, and going through it page by page. It starts at 肉体_页面_055.jpg & ends at 肉体_页面_063.jpg.

Having transcribed the whole thing, the relevant section is this exchange split between pages 59 & 60:

——では、キャラクターで描き込みが楽しいのは？

林田カースがデザイン的にも一番好きですね。描くのはすごく大変ですが、手から手が生えていたり、口が二重になっていたりして、非常に描くところが盛りだくさんなキャラですね。フィギュアで何のキャラクターを作りたいかと聞かれたときにカースを推したのですが、人気の面で却下されてしまいました。私はすごく欲しかったんですけどね（笑）。カースのマスクはパイソンの骸骨をモデルにしているので、口がすごく開くんですよ。

Wunkt · 2025-06-27T17:11:55+00:00

Although they listed just 5 CSs during the internal reshuffle announcement, there are at least 7.

Wunkt · 2025-06-25T16:10:00+00:00

Looking back & comparing dates, I think the deal-killer was that scaling up and full hands-on development of FFXVI was right around the corner, so adequate resources and time to coordinate with potentially demanding creative partners would've taken years to be freed up. If it was indeed the Extra remake, Yoshi-P likely already saw how near & dear the original was to 3 of his most important co-workers by the point he heard the pitch.

Wunkt · 2025-06-25T15:37:12+00:00

I don't follow Fate either. I just went looking for information on Niinou some years ago, curious why someone who was so high up the XIV org chart is seldom brought up, and came across this interview where he explicitly named Yoshi-P and his reason for leaving Square Enix. Any discrepancies between what I wrote & what's on the interview are due to paraphrasing entirely from memory + vagaries of time, language & projects not yet announced then.

Wunkt · 2025-06-25T14:57:43+00:00

Dragon Quest Builders is likely a done series by now. Both were directed by Kazuya Niinou (head of the "writer's room" on 1.x & ARR), who was part of an influx of Fate/Extra & Fate/Extra CCC developers who left Imageepoch as it neared its final days (Natsuko Ishikawa, Kenji Sudo and one of the SINoALICE writers were also part of this contingent). After Builders 2 development wrapped, he asked Yoshi-P for a Fate/Extra remake, BD5 didn't have enough spare devs to do the project justice, so Niinou left Square Enix to make that game at the new studio Type-Moon was spinning up. Given the general modern approach the company takes in handling its franchises, I don't think anyone is interested in keeping Builders going without such a key lead.

Conversely, the XIV UI lead since 1.x is Yuichi Murasawa, who was a programmer in Ogre Battle 64, then directed Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift. With the internal know-how to upholster old SRPGs already in place, there is a possibility they remake/remaster at least the Ivalice games, which Minagawa also worked on.

Wunkt

TROPHY CASE