Final Fantasy 15 shake-up: director quits, DLC cancelled and PC help stripped again

Final Fantasy 15 had a tough ten-year improvement the place the game grew from an embattled spin-off. Two years after launch it’s nonetheless a struggling beast – although the most recent developments seem to sign the start of the tip for this entry of the collection.

Final Fantasy 15 director Hajime Tabata, the person who ‘fixed’ the meandering Final Fantasy 15 mission and guided the game to launch, has stop Square Enix. In the wake of its success FF15 had a complete second wave of further downloadable content material introduced, too – and the vast majority of that has now been cancelled.

The first signal that one thing was up with Tabata and his group got here earlier this week when Square Enix revealed it was writing-off an “extraordinary loss” of round $33 million in manufacturing prices related to Luminous Productions, a younger new spin-off studio the writer arrange for Tabata and members of the FF15 group to create new content material and titles.

In an announcement on the time, Square Enix defined that the loss was a results of the studio being refocused to the only real mission of delivering a brand new triple-A gaming mission rapidly – typical euphemistic investor discuss for cancelling some initiatives underway, shedding the cash already spent on them, to be able to deal with no matter they suppose is most commercially viable.

VG247 has been led to consider that Tabata’s departure is a direct results of these shifts at his new studio, and that he was supplied with a number of choices for the way forward for each himself and Luminous Productions at Square Enix and located none of them engaging.

“In regards to my next endeavors and near future, I have a project that I truly wish to solidify as my next challenge after FFXV,” Tabata defined in an announcement. “For that reason, I have decided to leave my current position and start my own business in order to achieve my goal.” Tabata formally left the corporate on October 31.

Whatever your emotions on FF15, it have to be mentioned that Hajime Tabata did spectacular work steering a troubled mission dwelling. He was additionally refreshingly honest and clearly very passionate about Final Fantasy, so his departure is undoubtedly a loss to Square Enix and the FF collection.

Final Fantasy 15 DLC: three upcoming DLCs scrapped, PC port options cancelled

The shifts at Luminous Productions have had a knock-on impact on the continuing improvement of additional Final Fantasy 15 content material, too – and quite a lot of the previously-announced content material has been cancelled because of this.

Four new story episodes have been set to be launched in 2019, specializing in villain Ardyn, feminine lead Luna, wry antihero Aranea and at last an alternate universe plot line with protagonist Noctis. These had beforehand been given goal launch dates throughout 2019 – and all however considered one of these, Episode Ardyn, is now cancelled. Episode Ardyn will launch in March.

Multiplayer part Final Fantasy 15: Comrades will see a stand-alone launch as promised, however just for Xbox One and PlayStation 4 – the stand-alone PC launch of Comrades has been cancelled. Comrades can be going to be faraway from the FF15 season cross as soon as it launches stand-alone, with the value of the season cross adjusted accordingly – simply in case it wasn’t all complicated sufficient. Existing homeowners of the season cross will retain their copy of Comrades.

PC gamers aren’t simply shedding out on Comrades, both: PC help for FF15 throughout the board is being considerably pared again. A slide from Square Enix’s bizarre live stream presentation asserting this information declared that the Windows Edition would have a “Production Cancellation”, and it seems that aside from the Ardyn DLC, which can come to PC, all additional updates are cancelled. That contains deeper mod help, one thing promised, detailed and even demoed at occasions. This is a good disgrace, because the PC model of FF15 was one thing of a technical marvel and was even lately utilized by Nvidia to demo the new RTX 2080 series GPUs.

Needless to say, that is all disappointing. Fans can stay up for Episode Ardyn, a minimum of, however these modifications seem to sign a sudden and unauspicious finish to the story of Final Fantasy 15. It’s a disgrace – particularly given how Square Enix’s dedication to the game measurably improved it within the yr following its launch.

 
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