GalvanizA
Oct 03 2008, 09:30 PM
IMO it's not the developers, they haven't changed; it's Yoichi Wada and also Shinji Hashimoto. Shinji Hashimoto is a key culprit that people ignore and forget about. He jumped over to Square from Atlus when he saw that company was no match in the J-RPG field. Since coming over and getting an influential position at the company Hashimoto has been allowing Tetsuya Nomura to do ANYTHING and EVERYTHING at the company which is why Nomura is all over the majority of their products. Hashimoto is in charge of Sales & Marketing and is the main guy deluded in thinking Nomura's work sells like sex with the hottest woman on the planet.
I remember at the FFVII: AC Premiere at Venice Film Festival back in 2004 and Nomura said on a blog entry on the official Japanese AC site (translated by AdventChildren.net) that Hashimoto asked him after the premiere, "You've come this far, what's next for you?" And Nomura rebuked his question by saying, "How would I know? I haven't even finished this movie or Kingdom Hearts II yet!"
Nomura seems to be given free creativity but he also seems to not really like it but accepts it anyway.
This is why Toshiyuki Itahana got so worked up back at around E3 2006 and said the main series was dead and that staff members that care about the traditional style of FF are moving to the FFCC series, which still, funny enough, isn't even traditional. Thankfully, Akitoshi Kawazu is an Executive at the company so they're safely under his protection from Wada and Hashimoto. In fact, Kawazu seems to realize this problem with the series being all Kitase and Nomura and that's why he supports FFCC and also Ivalice Alliance.
All I want now is the FFXII team, which is now lead by Hiroyuki Itou, to be able to make main series games more often. I trust Itou will put elements from VI, T, IX and XII into his future main series games. The bad thing is who acknowledges Itou at modern day SQEX? Yoshinori Kitase who worked with Itou on FFVI has an even bigger role at SQEX than he does despite Itou doing more work on FFVI than he did! It was FFVII that put Kitase on the map. Itou has no chance of being given the same freedom as Nomura who has Hashimoto wrapped around his finger and also because he does not have the "one promotion away from Exectuve" position that Kitase has. Remember DoC: FFVII? The only reason that got made was because Kitase likes FPS games and has a powerful enough position in the company to get it made. I mean think about it, how else would Nomura be able to direct FF Versus XIII without Hashimoto letting him? Do you think Hironobu Sakaguchi would allow something like that to happen? Allowing Nomura to direct a main series console FF game? Hell no! Sakaguchi telling Yasumi Matsuno to direct FFXII is one thing as he's got a track record of making good games. Hashimoto don't give a **** about the game being good, he just let Nomura direct an FF as Kingdom Hearts sells **** loads and he expects similar sales from FF Versus XIII.
Wada and Hashimoto are just about money and only the actual developers care about creativity which is why current SQEX keeps making spin-offs and remakes.
Just my view on what's going on in that Tokyo HQ of theirs. Oh, and I'm a Nomura fan btw incase this thread made me come off as a hater.
I remember at the FFVII: AC Premiere at Venice Film Festival back in 2004 and Nomura said on a blog entry on the official Japanese AC site (translated by AdventChildren.net) that Hashimoto asked him after the premiere, "You've come this far, what's next for you?" And Nomura rebuked his question by saying, "How would I know? I haven't even finished this movie or Kingdom Hearts II yet!"
Nomura seems to be given free creativity but he also seems to not really like it but accepts it anyway.
This is why Toshiyuki Itahana got so worked up back at around E3 2006 and said the main series was dead and that staff members that care about the traditional style of FF are moving to the FFCC series, which still, funny enough, isn't even traditional. Thankfully, Akitoshi Kawazu is an Executive at the company so they're safely under his protection from Wada and Hashimoto. In fact, Kawazu seems to realize this problem with the series being all Kitase and Nomura and that's why he supports FFCC and also Ivalice Alliance.
All I want now is the FFXII team, which is now lead by Hiroyuki Itou, to be able to make main series games more often. I trust Itou will put elements from VI, T, IX and XII into his future main series games. The bad thing is who acknowledges Itou at modern day SQEX? Yoshinori Kitase who worked with Itou on FFVI has an even bigger role at SQEX than he does despite Itou doing more work on FFVI than he did! It was FFVII that put Kitase on the map. Itou has no chance of being given the same freedom as Nomura who has Hashimoto wrapped around his finger and also because he does not have the "one promotion away from Exectuve" position that Kitase has. Remember DoC: FFVII? The only reason that got made was because Kitase likes FPS games and has a powerful enough position in the company to get it made. I mean think about it, how else would Nomura be able to direct FF Versus XIII without Hashimoto letting him? Do you think Hironobu Sakaguchi would allow something like that to happen? Allowing Nomura to direct a main series console FF game? Hell no! Sakaguchi telling Yasumi Matsuno to direct FFXII is one thing as he's got a track record of making good games. Hashimoto don't give a **** about the game being good, he just let Nomura direct an FF as Kingdom Hearts sells **** loads and he expects similar sales from FF Versus XIII.
Wada and Hashimoto are just about money and only the actual developers care about creativity which is why current SQEX keeps making spin-offs and remakes.
Just my view on what's going on in that Tokyo HQ of theirs. Oh, and I'm a Nomura fan btw incase this thread made me come off as a hater.