Wow, this is pretty heavy stuff. According to Square Enix president Yoichi Wada,Final Fantasy XIIImight be the swan song of the traditional RPG at Square Enix. Although Wada expectsXIIIto do great things for his company, he believes that Square’s internal studios should be put to work on creating “next generation” gameplay.
“I believeFinal Fantasy XIIIis 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 withFinal Fantasy XIIIshould next move on to create and generate some ‘next generation’ forms of play.
“I really think that theFinal Fantasyteam 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 Fantasymight 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 doyouthink, first and foremost? Should Square Enix abandon all the old ways and focus on doing entirely new things, or are there some aspects ofFinal Fantasythat should never change?
