Hajime Tabata Admits Final Fantasy XV has Undergone Major Changes Since Versus XIII

Here's a piece of news that could be either shocking or completely expected. This morning, during an episode of Square Enix's Active Time Report, Hajime Tabata, director of Final Fantasy XV, explained how the narrative of the widely-anticipated title has changed.

First of all, the appearance of Stella Nox Fleuret. Stella, who was Noctis' counterpart and the original heroine of Final Fantasy Versus XIII, has been completely scrapped. In my eyes, that's a little bit of a bummer. She appeared completely enigmatic since the beginning, but I guess the only reason for that was because she had an impossible-to-fit-in role to begin with.

To quote Tabata on this decision:

"We wanted to keep her as a heroine in Final Fantasy XV's story, and persued ways to tie her in to FFXV's design as well. But we found it increasingly difficult to make sense of Stella's character and role within FFXV. So then we thought, do we want to recreate Stella with a different role and image, or do we want to start over with a new heroine? And after a lot of consideration, we decided not to include Stella in FFXV."

Instead, Luna, the new heroine, will replace Stella. More information about her will be revealed in the future.

Secondly, the sequence of Niflheim invaders crashing a dinner party in the city of Insomnia within the Versus XIII trailer has been cut.

Instead, the Niflheim army attacks AFTER Noctis leaves the city. The reason?

Well, basically a spoiler, but since the original scene introduced Stella, the opportunity to shift scenes around opened.

Finally, previously released characters, like the female dragoon (Editor's Note: YAY!), are still included in Final Fantasy XV.

"All these things I have been talking about have been the subject of extensive debate and were decided with utmost resolve in order to make Final Fantasy XV into the best game possible. So, at least in our mind, these decisions are making the game better."

At the end of the broadcast, Tabata noted that Final Fantasy XV is a much different game than Final Fantasy Versus XIII, going through a campaign reboot. More information will be revealed at Gamescom.

In other words, do not expect anything for E3, but at least there we can look forward to Gamescom. Finally, the retooled version of the Episode Duscae demo will be released June 9th at 8 AM PST, 11 AM EST.