As Final Fantasy 15 gets ever closer to hitting the market, we’re finding out more and more about what the developers were doing the last few months. Square Enix had known for a while that the popularity of the game had waned quite a bit since the last iteration of the series had hit the market. Perhaps because of this, there were a number of internal arguments about the road map the game would take.
Recently, Game Director Hajime Tabata sat down with 4Gamer and talked about some of the decisions the development team had to make. Some of the development team thought the best way to get fans back to the franchise would be to put out a Final Fantasy 15 that was much more linear than what the finished product is going to be. Tabata and other members of the team desperately wanted to go with a more open world, in part because they felt gamers were under the assumption that Square Enix simply couldn’t put out an open world game of this scope.
Tabata added in the interview that the team had to learn quite a bit in order to make sure they could come up with the map and the designs that could make the game everything it can be. One final part of the reason why the company decided to go this route is because they want to make sure Final Fantasy 15 will show the company isn’t stagnant. Final Fantasy 15 is due out in September on the Xbox One and PS4.