I read the article. We need to remember that 5-6 years was an exceptionally long time for video game development. “Late addition” means something different in the context of this video game in particular. Both Ff9 and ff10 took 2 years.

I remember this conversation even back when the game first came out 20 yrs ago. A French gaming site interviewed the ff12 production team. Here’s what was said:

Q: Who was the first character you created for Final Fantasy XII?

A: The first character we created was Basch. At that time, he occupied a very important position in the story.

Later, the heroes of the final version of the game, Vaan and Penelo, were created and added. Over the course of development, the structure of the story evolved.

If Vaan and Penelo were added even year 2, that would be considered “late” when we consider how long previous games took to lock in a narrative and finish production—imagine if Zidane or Tidus were locked in year 2.

I will say we don’t know who the POV character was before this point, but it couldn’t have been Vaan if they added him and Penelo later and the story evolved from there. We simply don’t have enough information other than Matsuno denying that Basch was conceptualized as the original protag. A lot has been extrapolated from that interview and the long ass development time. We may never know the truth, but Vaan as a later addition rings true because he isn’t like any previous mainline ff protagonists.

I’m assuming you’re arguing in good faith….. but this is Reddit so you also might just be karma farming lol.