Wow, this is pretty heavy stuff. According to Square Enix president Yoichi Wada, Final Fantasy XIII might be the swan song of the traditional RPG at Square Enix. Although Wada expects XIII to do great things for his company, he believes that Square’s internal studios should be put to work on creating “next generation” gameplay.
“I believe Final Fantasy XIII is going be something special, and that it’s going to be well received by the audience,” states Wada. “But whether we are going to continue to internally create this type of game remains to be seen, because I actually feel that the team that was involved with Final Fantasy XIII should next move on to create and generate some ‘next generation’ forms of play.
“I really think that the Final Fantasy team could create something completely different, but at the moment they’re strictly catering to the particular audience they have now.”
This is actually pretty astounding. Final Fantasy might have tried all manner of different combat and character progression systems over the years, but its core JRPG gameplay as always remained intact, and of course won Square Enix a huge fan following. Abandoning that winning formula is pretty bloody huge, and if Squenix dared to do it, I wonder what its hardcore fanbase would think.
What do you think, first and foremost? Should Square Enix abandon all the old ways and focus on doing entirely new things, or are there some aspects of Final Fantasy that should never change?
An Audience With: Yoichi Wada [Edge]
