Behind Closed Doors, Tabata Talks Final Fantasy XV TGS and Type-0 HD

I was invited behind closed doors for a special post-TGS meeting with Hajime Tabata of Square Enix. He dished out quite a bit of info about Final Fanatsy Type-0 and Final Fantasy XV.

The first bit confirmed what we already knew: Final Fantasy Type-0 will include a playable demo of Final Fantasy XV and be released on March 17 in the Asia region with English, Chinese, and Korean language support; March 19 is the Japanese release date.

About Final Fantasy Type-0

Asked about the process of taking it from the PlayStation Portable (PSP) to current-gen, Mr. Tabata said that he feels that Type-0 fits right in as if it were a title developed for this generation.

When asked why the game isn’t slated for Vita release, Tabata laughed and said that his eyes were getting bad after producing three PSP games. I’m not sure if he just inadvertently said that his own games looked bad on PSP (they didn’t) or took a passive-aggressive jab at PSP hardware there, but oh well. He said that also that Final Fantasy Type-0‘s remaster came as a result of many fans’ requests for Type-0 to come to a new system, and the PS4 and Xbox One were the ones he picked.

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Players can experience Japanese values and culture through Type-0‘s story, he claims. He also compared it to a war documentary. Having finished this game, I know what he’s talking about with both of these comments, and I must agree.

The PSP version of Type-0 had an ad-hoc multiplayer mode. With PS4 and Xbox One, Square Enix has been exploring the possibility of online modes, but has nothing to confirm at this time.

About Final Fantasy XV

The Final Fantasy XV demo included with Final Fantasy Type-0 will take most people an hour to complete, according to Tabata. If you really, really explore everything within it, however, he says it might take up to three hours.

Tabata said that the demo’s existence is in no way indicative of Final Fantasy XV‘s release date. They still don’t have a date in mind.

Asked why it was changed to PS4 instead of released on the hardware for which it was first shown, Tabata said that development had encountered problems along the way. Eventually, it had taken so long that they decided to make it part 15. At one point, Tabata’s translator said “From the very beginning, we knew we wanted this to be a PS4 game,” but I couldn’t get clarification as to whether that meant the 2006 beginning or “the beginning” meaning PS4’s public reveal, or what exactly “the beginning” meant. Later on in the discussion he said that “development started two years ago,” so perhaps that’s what he meant with that remark.

On the topic of linearity, Tabata compared FFXV to Red Dead Redemption. When asked, “Is Final Fantasy XV a truly open-world game or a set of linearly connected areas like Final Fantasy XIII was?” he answered:

“There is one story, but the world is open and seamless, so how you are going to play this game all depends on the player. The relationship between the story itself and the player is kind of like Red Dead Redemption.”

Both Type-0 HD and FFXV are for PS4 and Xbox One, but neither of the games is said to have any exclusive content at this time.