He completely trashed his "faithful remake" and missed the entire point of Yoshinori Kitase's game. Instead we got a sequel disguised and marketed as a remake that was trying to be cool.
(5:10)
I don't know when it was decided that Tetsuya Nomura should be the Final Fantasy 7 guy, his contribution to the original game was character design and it was pretty clear with FF7:Advent Children (which he directed) that his only interest was on remaking FF7 into his own thing, not continuing it. Now mind you I rather liked AC as a edgy teenager back in the day, but you'd have a hard time arguing that Cloud having a Man of Steel-esque fight with Sephiroth literally punching each other through buildings and running up fall debris was a proper sequel to the game.
Well I don't really mind the quasi-timey-whimey-sequel, but yeah misleading to call it a remake when it's clearly not.
As someone who beat the original and watched/played everything else, I enjoy what Nomura was doing. Is it perfect? god no, but he went for its own unique approach, and I appreciated that. Your going to disappoint people one way or another, might as well go balls to the wall and make something interesting.
All things considered, I dont think its that much of a departure from the original's style until the endgame. Then I can agree with the point that Newbies are not going to know WTF is going on. If there is one thing I always appreciate about Nomura, its that most of the time when something like that shows up, there is at least one character who is just as lost as the audience.
Plus my understanding is he was just as surprised as everybody else when he was first announced as the director. I dont think he wants to be "just" the KH or FF7 guy.
The FF14 claim is easy enough to check...
So FF15 started development in 2012 and it was released in 2016. But there is of course a trick to it, since it was technically originally announced in 2006 as Final Fantasy Versus XIII and only six years later in 2012 rebranded and retooled to become it's own mainline entry. Tetsuya was replaced in 2014.
FF14 started development in 2005 (well planning at least) and it was officially released on September 2010. The 'realm reborn' work started on April 2011 with the final product being released in 2013.
So (assuming by dates are right of course) even if they stole his entire team for the 2 years it took them to do a realm reborn that still left him with 5 years to finish his game before realm reborn, and another years (probably less though) after that to work on it.
I've noticed the thing that really fucks over these kinds of games, is when they are forced to transition between two different consoles after already spending a shiton of time and effort on last gen. Between that, losing a core part of his team and god knows what background office policies were going on, I think it unfairly effected Nomura's reputation when he was taken off.
They really rushed the shit out of 15 to get it out the door and it shows. Lots of cut content, shitty plot and unimaginative gameplay. You can thank Tabata for that.
I feel like Nomura is very talented and imaginative, but he hasn't really had the chance to make his own thing.
