Final Fantasy Creator Hironobu Sakaguchi Comments on Final Fantasy XV and Hajime Tabata’s Work

Giuseppe Nelva July 1, 2017 5:07 AM EST

Final Fantasy's "granpa" Hironobu Sakaguchi talks about Final Fantasy XV and the work of his latest successor, Hajime Tabata.

Back in February we heard from Final Fantasy XV Director Hajime Tabata about his conversations with the franchise’s creator Hironobu Sakaguchi.

During an interview at Anime Expo, DualShockers asked Sakaguchi-san his side of the story, and how he feels about Final Fantasy XV as the father of the series.

First of all, Sakaguchi-san jokingly mentioned that he’s more like the “grandpa” of Final Fantasy. Then he moved on to talk about Tabata-san’s work in more specific terms through an interpreter:

“About Final Fantasy XV, it was very ambitious at its onset, and there were a lot challenges in the development phase. I think he [Tabata-san] did a really, really good job at pulling everything together, which looking at it from the sidelines was no easy feat. More so than anything, I have a lot of respect for what he was able to achieve and pull together with Final Fantasy XV. Of course we are friends, so we frequently have drinks together, and he always says “oh you can’t see this, but what I’m doing right now…” We have a lot of conversations so if I tell you everything about them it’s going to be a huge problem with Square Enix, and I don’t want that… But what I can say is that I think he’s in a really good place, and is is a very talented guy, and the next thing he’ll be working on is going to be pretty good. So you know… look forward to it.”

It’ll certainly be interesting to see what Tabata-san will work on next, but we’ll have to wait.

In the meanwhile, he and the Final Fantasy XV team are continuing to push the game with new DLC, including the recently released Episode Prompto, and Episode Ignis, that will come in December. Major announcements are also expected to come at Gamescom in August.

[On Location Reporting: Azario Lopez]