I'm of two minds in regards to Tabata and his view of FF and staff, and so I just need to get this off my chest -
On one hand, like you Lex, I think he's got humility and he seems to be a developer that puts a lot of thought into his work, and I'm sure he is, at least in parts, right about how many at SE have lost track of how to work the magic into the franchise.
So while I'm on-board with his approach to game-design, what I'm divided on his is perception of FF as a franchise, and that goes for a lot of the people who've voiced their agreement with him too.
Yes, FF games always were "challengers", and it's important to try new things -
However, in getting too focused on that I also think that people (and Tabata) end up ignoring the huge amounts of similarities between most of the FF games (notably among them 1-9, and to some extent 10) which arguably played a very large part in establishing what was for a very long time the recognizable identity of the franchise.
And, I also think people end up ignoring the fact that another important staple of the franchise was to both re-invent, yet keep familiar many central aspects of the games, and furthermore that what many of the older fans have been complaining about over the years is not a lack of innovation, but rather blatant disregard for the roots of the franchise - the elements that were tried, tested, and true - in favor of innovation for innovations sake.
At most, the main-line numbered FF games up until the merger of Square and Enix took baby-steps in terms of changes between each title - they reworked aspects of battle-mechanics, and character progression mechanics, and slowly introduced more complexity in terms of story-telling - but apart from that, most things remained the same.
Even when people see VII and VIII as being quite different from earlier games, they tend to forget that pretty much everything game-play-wise that FFVII did was more or less just minor adjustments to the formula that FFVI already established - even the shift of setting to something more modern, instead of classical fantasy (in fact, elements of sci-fi has been present in FF since 3, if I remember correctly).
FFVII edged on a bit further - but it wasn't doing anything, except in terms of graphics and sound, that didn't fit as a part of a trend that was already established by VI.
Things like the removal of the world-map in FF10 however, and the introduction of real action-type game-play, like you saw in Type-0, were not sound design-choices at the time, IMO (and perhaps even now, but we'll see once we get to play XV)
The removal of the world-map, despite not having the technology to replace it with a world similar to that of FFXV, lead to what I consider to, at least speaking in terms of how I viscerally experienced them, the most cramped worlds in the series, and the removal of command-based combat lead to some of the most messy and contrived combat in the series (Type-0).
Tabata seems to have turned this around though, and that's where, if he has succeeded he deserves some serious credit.
That being said - it feels like a real game of catch-up.
SE could easily have made lots of great FF games in-between FF10 and now (granted FF11 and FF12 are both good games - one is an online game though, and the other in set in Ivalice and is written in a way that is completely dissonant with the writing of all the earlier games, so personally, I think both should have been side-titles, not main entries), if they'd been more mindful of the roots of the franchise and worked harder on ways to improve/mix up the core game-play elements and story-telling conventions of the previous games, rather then painting themselves into a corner by attempting to re-invent everything and doing ok/poor up until now.
And what's more - if they succeed with this game - it will only serve as a conformation that this was the way to go after all (despite all the failures along the way) simply because they finally found a working formula, despite the fact that they already had one that people were asking for all these years, laying straight in front of their noses.
The success of games like Persona, the Bravely Series, and Dragon Quest show that there is still plenty of room for more traditional JRPG experiences, and despite the fact that this game looks good in its own right, the success of it, to me, will just feel like another nail in the coffin for what was always my go to franchise for that a very specific, and unique kind of JRPG experience.
The particular JRPG experience of the older FF games doesn't exist anymore. Persona, while a classical JRPG in many ways, is extremely different in feel, design and story-telling from the classical FF games.
With the classical FF design gone, there really is no replacement. There is no other place to go for people who want to play the next generations of games similar to that of FF6-9.
It's gone. As is Breath of Fire, Suikoden, and several others.
Gone because of mismanagement, licensing issues, and forced "modernity" at the hands of share-holders who only look to the money made by games like Witcher, and Mass Effect etc.
And gone because people like Tabata thinks FF is just a name of a franchise that apparently only has one core identifying factor to it - namely whether it challenges the genre or not...
Simply put - I like action RPGs, but FF was never a franchise I went to expecting or wanting action RPGs, or huge game-play changes - and personally, having the franchise's main line turn into that, is sad, and I think Tabata's line of thinking is largely to thank for that, and what's more, I think his perspective informing that line of thinking is wrong.
He's still proven to a great developer though, and FFXV looks like a great game. After all I've seen of it now though, I find myself wishing it was still a side-game - a novelty title for people interested in FF in an action RPG format (like the people who enjoyed CC and Type-0), not the new face and future of the franchise.
