The other sees him maybe a little condescending, egotistical and made some really moronic and contradictory statements. And I think he hasn't helped out any with the latter interpretation. As has been pointed out, he has barely mentioned Nomura at all and at times has taken full credit for a world that... let's face it, he didn't create to begin with.
Edit: What I mean by this is that he was not the sole creator of every aspect, however I do respect and acknowledge that Versus XIII was only possible because of his work. Please understand going forward in this post I am speaking more globally throughout changes in the design of Final Fantasy XV moving forward after Tabata took the role of director, not diminishing the important work of Nomura for laying much of the groundwork for what XV has become at the very least conceptually.
Being a director simply means you have a creative hand over a lot of the development decisions, however, the people that really should be credited with the work of Final Fantasy XV goes to the long list of artists, designers and programmers that work on things from the battle system to the visual direction and creating assets like monsters and the world itself.
Nomura didn't create the sculpt model of the world that we have seen various times, that was someone else. The gas stations and environments we saw back in Versus that still persist to this day wasn't created by Nomura either.
One thing that Greg Miller mentioned back when he accepted his award for "Trending Gamer" @2:08 stood out to me.
One of the first things Tabata did when in his director position was to create a flat structure within the division as apposed to a strict hierarchy common in many Japanese businesses and in a lot of older practices. This flat structure is being adopted more and more, especially in gaming to allow for a more open creative process when developing these titles. What this ultimately means is that more people have creative input when it comes to designing this game, which is critical when creating something as ambitious as Final Fantasy XV especially. What this also means, is that more people within BD2 are giving input on the direction of various components of the game, not just the upper level of various sectors like gameplay directors or something similar.
What I'm getting at here, is that Tabata isn't the only one that calls the shots for Final Fantasy XV, as he's mentioned many times, everyone is giving input on many sides of the game, and do blame Tabata for a lot of changes is completely misguided, as it could have been someone else within BD2 that suggested various changes. When changing Stella to Luna, for example, many of the decisions such as the name change were made with everyone in BD2, not just Tabata.
So, as I've said, it's not Nomura that created the world of Versus XIII, he was simply in place of guiding its overall direction. The thing that Tabata has mentioned is continuing and respecting Nomura's vision, something that he still has done. The important staff that worked on Versus XIII and molded its image are still working on it today, we've even met a few of them in the past through various means who have said they worked on Versus all this time. It's these people that are making this game a reality, the director's role is one of many, and while Tabata may have large control over the project's ultimate direction, not all choices made are of his alone, and so if you have a problem, you should point that at the entire division itself, not just Tabata.
Also, I'm not sure what you mean by calling him contradictory or moronic, if you could elaborate, please?
Last edited:
Likes:
Infest