Hajime Tabata, the director of Final Fantasy 15, is certainly a man you want to watch out for- he managed to salvage the nearly ten year long development cycle of Final Fantasy 15 and release it as a finished game that ended up selling well, and meeting good critical reception to boot.
But Final Fantasy 15 was him cleaning someone else’s mess up- it was not his own project. What he might do if he had the reins for his own game is something we are excited to see now- which is why we have been following news of Tabata’s next game, which will be an all new IP, so closely.
And speaking with SBS, Hajime Tabata spoke a bit about what that next game might be like, mentioning a new paradigm of game design he would be interested in exploring. “We are focusing on a new game design that could further explore the possibilities of AI and procedural technology. We are now aware that an entirely different development process is going to be required for a large scale global development project,” he said.
I can be cautiously optimistic, mostly because procedural technology puts me on guard- but I remain optimistic nonetheless. Tabata is clearly a smart and talented man- now to see what he does when he isn’t tethered to someone else’s works.
