User Info: NeithOF NeithOF 1 year ago #1



Worthy of note is that the guy is a scammer, this is what Koe's team had to say about Dan Tsukasa.

As you may remember, Koe started as a vision of mine during my time at University where myself and Sayuki, our lead story and language designer at the time came up with the idea to gamify Japanese language learning using research in motivational and communicative language learning, we brought on Daniel Elvins, who goes by the internet alias Dan Tsukasa around this time as he agreed to take on the 3D environment side of things, and he agreed to take this on in exchange for around 1/3 of the total backer funds.



We mentioned that assets have been delayed multiple times throughout our updates, and we thought it would now be necessary to tell you why for the sake of transparency. Unfortunately, Dan decided to take the backer funds to fund a move to Japan while making little progress on his side of the work. The rest of the team had to take on the work Dan refused to do and because of this, progress was (and still is) much slower than it should be. Due to the additional refusal of Dan returning money in a timely manner so we could hire someone to replace him, we had to trust that he'd, at the very least, eventually finish his side of the work. However, due to ignored requests for, and a general lack of updates even now, it has taken a toll on the rate of progress.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/297265509/koe-a-jrpg-with-japanese-at-the-core-of-gameplay/posts/1881568



He stole the money to fulfill his lifelong weeboo dream of moving to Japan in mid 2017.



Now with that out of the way, let's see the statements he made and debunk them one by one. Unfortunately the guy deleted his posts from reddit, he also deleted his twitter and youtube account, so all of his quotes will be second hand by various forums, but i did manage to find a screenshot of one of his statements so hopefully this is enough to prove that i am not making his quotes up.

https://i.imgtc.com/aZu8Moi.png

More of his statements from forums who reposted his comments.

Nomura is barely ever there, he's director largely in name alone. He spends the vast majority if his time in Osaka on KH3, as thats where he lives.



All i can say is, that during my 4 months working at square, my understanding of the situation was office politics, Nomura was shifted out when the company head changed, the only head liked Nomura, and the new head liked Tabata. As mentioned before, he's director but thats a bit more just a title because if he wasn't at all associated with the project it'd cause some concerns for fans. I only worked at square for 4 months after Nomura had left, so i've never personally interacted with him,



I'm not speculating though. Ive worked with these people and know people working still at both square and CC2



Let's start with these 2 statements.



First of all he is claiming that Nomura spends the vast majority of his time in Osaka and that he got exiled to Osaka after being kicked off XV and that he knows this because he was working for SE close to this happening (4 months), that means he is claiming he was with SE in 2013 and that he was part of BD2 as he had direct info from their offices.



Cont. The realization of one of my dreams came with the beginning of a nightmare. - Roberto Ferrari 2016 Let's start first by finding the source of this rumor. The source of this rumor is a 3D environment artist named Daniel Elvins also known by his username "Dan Tsukasa". He has worked on 2 small kickstarter projects called "Koe" and "A Hat In Time".Worthy of note is that the guy is a scammer, this is what Koe's team had to say about Dan Tsukasa.https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/297265509/koe-a-jrpg-with-japanese-at-the-core-of-gameplay/posts/1881568He stole the money to fulfill his lifelong weeboo dream of moving to Japan in mid 2017.Now with that out of the way, let's see the statements he made and debunk them one by one. Unfortunately the guy deleted his posts from reddit, he also deleted his twitter and youtube account, so all of his quotes will be second hand by various forums, but i did manage to find a screenshot of one of his statements so hopefully this is enough to prove that i am not making his quotes up.https://i.imgtc.com/aZu8Moi.pngMore of his statements from forums who reposted his comments.Let's start with these 2 statements.First of all he is claiming that Nomura spends the vast majority of his time in Osaka and that he got exiled to Osaka after being kicked off XV and that he knows this because he was working for SE close to this happening (4 months), that means he is claiming he was with SE in 2013 and that he was part of BD2 as he had direct info from their offices.Cont.

User Info: NeithOF NeithOF (Topic Creator) 1 year ago #2 The team creating Kingdom Hearts III is in the studios in Osaka, and as you guys know Osaka and Tokyo are a little bit far away from each other In fact, the co-director and producer Tai Yasue and Rie Nishi are there. They are key members of the Kingdom Hearts project, so when they need to discuss a lot of different topics with me, they come to Tokyo. This is our visual method of working. But as technology is ever advancing, our new offices in Shinjuku are now equipped with a video conference system. Now Yasue and Nishi can send me their materials or proposals in advance, which allows me to add my comments or my drawings and show them on camera in our video conferencing. In addition, there is no time difference, so even if we are far apart, it is easy to work."





Yasue reconfirms this as in late 2014 he was asked if anything changed since Nomura left FFXV since now he is supposed to have more free time than before and Yasue says.

"Nothing has really changed," Yasue said when asked whether the move had benefited development of the game.



"The development team is in Osaka, and Nomura-san didn't really do a lot of the detailed stuff, as he's really the sort of creative visionary.



"We communicate as much as we did previously, so our working relationship hasn't changed at all.



"The development team is in Osaka" pretty much confirms that even in late 2014 Nomura is still in Tokyo.



But if that isn't proof enough, here this is straight from December 2016, Nomura wishing everyone Merry Christmas and a Happy new year through the official Kingdom Hearts Youtube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJcxAUgZD4w

https://imgtc.com/ZBSjUuO



Now that this is proven to be a lie let's move on to his other lie, he supposedly worked for SE in 2013~2014 but...

1) If he had such a great resume as a game developer would he go back to the US to work on small time kickstarter games? I am sure he would have had much better job opportunities just for having worked for SE.

2) Would he need to literally STEAL money from the backers who fund KOE 3 years later, just to fund a move to Japan?



My opinion on this is that Daniel "Tsukasa" Elvins had never worked in Japan in his life and judging by how he mainly worked on weeb games and had a weeb username, his dream was to go work in Japan someday, which he fulfilled after stealing the money.



Now on to his next statement

There was no 'transfer' to a new engine, square was using UE4 for KHIII from day 1, the same way it was being used for FFVII from day 1, it was being tested for KHIII well before assets were made, its not like they made assets then started testing the engine, the engine is always the first thing to be decided in a games production. Plus square already had a lot of experience with the engine due to Dragon Quest XI..



This can't be more blatantly false and it's one of the biggest reasons on why you shouldn't trust this guy, especially since he claimed to have worked for SE at a time where KH was still using the Luminous engine.



First of all Unreal Engine 4 only became available for use and was licensed to developers in March of 2014. On March 19, 2014, at the Game Developers Conference, Epic Games released Unreal Engine 4 through a new licensing model. For a monthly subscription, developers were given access to the full version of the engine, including the C++ source code, which could be downloaded via GitHub. Any released product was charged with a 5% royalty of gross revenues



In the first place KH3 already had a playable build on Luminous in 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr9twjpM7gU



Cont The realization of one of my dreams came with the beginning of a nightmare. - Roberto Ferrari 2016 Nomura never moved to Osaka, since the development of KH3 begun in 2013 Nomura remained in the Tokyo Offices.Yasue reconfirms this as in late 2014 he was asked if anything changed since Nomura left FFXV since now he is supposed to have more free time than before and Yasue says."The development team is in Osaka" pretty much confirms that even in late 2014 Nomura is still in Tokyo.But if that isn't proof enough, here this is straight from December 2016, Nomura wishing everyone Merry Christmas and a Happy new year through the official Kingdom Hearts Youtube channel.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJcxAUgZD4whttps://imgtc.com/ZBSjUuONow that this is proven to be a lie let's move on to his other lie, he supposedly worked for SE in 2013~2014 but...1) If he had such a great resume as a game developer would he go back to the US to work on small time kickstarter games? I am sure he would have had much better job opportunities just for having worked for SE.2) Would he need to literally STEAL money from the backers who fund KOE 3 years later, just to fund a move to Japan?My opinion on this is that Daniel "Tsukasa" Elvins had never worked in Japan in his life and judging by how he mainly worked on weeb games and had a weeb username, his dream was to go work in Japan someday, which he fulfilled after stealing the money.Now on to his next statementThis can't be more blatantly false and it's one of the biggest reasons on why you shouldn't trust this guy, especially since he claimed to have worked for SE at a time where KH was still using the Luminous engine.First of all Unreal Engine 4 only became available for use and was licensed to developers in March of 2014.In the first place KH3 already had a playable build on Luminous in 2013 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr9twjpM7gUCont

User Info: NeithOF NeithOF (Topic Creator) 1 year ago #3

They don't have 4 years of work, they have 2. The announcement that square was taking the game away from Cyberconnect2, they didn't take it away and continue it, they started it again because cyber connects work was just so useless and not far enough along, but still far enough along that remaking it was faster than refactoring it... (it wasn't in a good state at all).



I know CyberConnects work was unusable, I've worked with them before, i know their level.



Side note: Now he claims that has also worked for CC2, not only for SE. Wow, that's a pretty big fall from grace my dude, how did you go from working on AAA games to stealing chump change from small kickstarter projects?? :(



This statement is being made under incorrect assumption that SE is outsourcing the entire game to CC2 and that 7R is being made entirely by them, implying that they were doing whatever the hell they wanted with it and so it ended up being completely unusable.



This is incorrect as CC2 was only one of the many companies SE was outsourcing 7R to, they just happen to be the most famous and therefore their involvement with the project gained more traction with the public which led to this misconception of "CC2 is making 7R now".



So far, Kitase, Nomura, Nojima, and Hashimoto’s names have come out, but apart from that, who else is participating, and what kind of structure is the production is heading forward with?



Yoshinori Kitase

”In relation to the models for example, our company’s visual director oversees the process and directly works with the data (“puts his hands on the data). ”



Tetsuya Nomura

”In design, apart from Ferrari who works primarily on sub-characters, such as the trio of Biggs and Co. that were made public this time around, programmers, and the core members of the planning process, are working closely together with outside cooperative companies.”



”As the core members are supervising the build-up of the game, we are also receiving assistance from several production companies, as this has become a commonplace production technique in recent times. CyberConnect2 whom made “FFVII G bike” for us (hereinafter, CC2) will be one of those companies.”



Other members who were revealed to have been working on 7R are pretty much the entirety of BD1, their team was small prior to BD1 mass hiring in 2017 because their last AAA game was FFXIII:LR and they only worked on the mobile game FF MOBIUS since then.

Takashi Shiraga: The development team learned how to develop high quality content in quick cycles from their experience developing Mobius Final Fantasy.



Currently, many of the development staff, including myself, are involved with the production of Final Fantasy VII Remake.

Kitase: “We’ve solidified the base [of the battle system]. Tetsuya Nomura, of course, and Mitsunori Takahashi, who took part in Kingdom Hearts and Dissidia Duodecim Final Fantasy, are putting all of their effort into it.”





Pretty much proves that the core members of BD1, were the ones in charge of designing the game. CC2 and the other companies were only following BD1's directions and BD1 was also working on the game themselves.



Mitsunori Takahashi and Takashi Shiraga were always the battle planners for the game, Hamaguchi was also working on 7R before he became the project leader aka before they pulled the assets back in house, Toriyama in 2014 said that he is working on a huge game that will be announced in 2015 aka 7R, Kyohei Suzuki is also working as "game designer" since 2016 which again is before CC2 was fired, Kazuyuki Ikumori is also the character model and movie director since 2015, Shintaro Takai is the games art director etc. The realization of one of my dreams came with the beginning of a nightmare. - Roberto Ferrari 2016 Now it's time to debunk his final statementSide note: Now he claims that has also worked for CC2, not only for SE. Wow, that's a pretty big fall from grace my dude, how did you go from working on AAA games to stealing chump change from small kickstarter projects?? :(This statement is being made under incorrect assumption that SE is outsourcing the entire game to CC2 and that 7R is being made entirely by them, implying that they were doing whatever the hell they wanted with it and so it ended up being completely unusable.This is incorrect as CC2 was only one of the many companies SE was outsourcing 7R to, they just happen to be the most famous and therefore their involvement with the project gained more traction with the public which led to this misconception of "CC2 is making 7R now".Other members who were revealed to have been working on 7R are pretty much the entirety of BD1, their team was small prior to BD1 mass hiring in 2017 because their last AAA game was FFXIII:LR and they only worked on the mobile game FF MOBIUS since then.Pretty much proves that the core members of BD1, were the ones in charge of designing the game. CC2 and the other companies were only following BD1's directions and BD1 was also working on the game themselves.Mitsunori Takahashi and Takashi Shiraga were always the battle planners for the game, Hamaguchi was also working on 7R before he became the project leader aka before they pulled the assets back in house, Toriyama in 2014 said that he is working on a huge game that will be announced in 2015 aka 7R, Kyohei Suzuki is also working as "game designer" since 2016 which again is before CC2 was fired, Kazuyuki Ikumori is also the character model and movie director since 2015, Shintaro Takai is the games art director etc.

User Info: NeithOF NeithOF (Topic Creator) 1 year ago #4

CyberConnect2 have around 200 staff at the moment, but Matsuyama expects the company to have 300 staff in the next two years, including at their newer Montreal studio.

For arguments sake i will assume that CC2 was just as big in 2015 and 2016.

These are the IN HOUSE projects CC2 was developing.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven - PS3/PS4

.hack//New World - Mobile

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 - PS4/XBOX1/PC

Naruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 Road to Boruto - Hefty expansion

Project Venom - PS4/XBOX1/PC (Canceled in 2017)



So you guys really believe that a small company that has in its entirety at best 200 devs, was developing by themselves 3 of their own in house console games, a relatively big expansion and a mobile game while also developing 7R.



Whatever they were doing on 7R, was definitely not as big as most people believe. CC2 was doing labor work and like we saw earlier, they weren't even the only company SE was outsourcing to.



SE losing 2 years worth of 7R development just because they pulled all their assets back in house is utter bulls*** and makes no sense at all.



All in all, this guy is a confirmed thief, a confirmed liar and this rumor started and gained traction by popular sites actually LYING to readers, saying that Dan Tsukasa was the art director of the original FF7, which is why more and more people started believing in this rumor.



Articles like this for example

https://gamerant.com/final-fantasy-7-remake-development-progress/

According to Dan Tsukasa, a game designer and Final Fantasy 7’s art director

LOL at this young nobody being the art director of FF7.

Yusuke Naora was the original's art director and Shintaro Takai is the art director of the remake, he was also the Special Magic Effect Director of the original game.



In all his comments Dan Tsukasa kept saying "i can't confirm i have worked for those companies or disclose where i work now but i can confirm i live in Japan"

Literally the only thing this guy could confirm is that he lived in Japan, that was probably the only thing he said that wasn't made up bulls*** since he stole money to go there and when people saw proof of him living there they thought he is a long time Japanese developer.



People should really stop believing in this rumor and should really stop acting as if this is confirmed and valid info. We have no way of knowing what happened to CC2's work or the work the other companies were doing, what we do know is that evidence points to their work being fine as it was designed/planned/directed by the people who are STILL working on the game so these guys scrapping their own work just doesn't make sense.



The end. The realization of one of my dreams came with the beginning of a nightmare. - Roberto Ferrari 2016 Lastly it would be literally impossible for CC2 to have worked on 7R by themselves as the entire company has about 200 devs RIGHT NOW, in 2018.For arguments sake i will assume that CC2 was just as big in 2015 and 2016.These are the IN HOUSE projects CC2 was developing.JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven - PS3/PS4.hack//New World - MobileNaruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 - PS4/XBOX1/PCNaruto Shippuden: Ultimate Ninja Storm 4 Road to Boruto - Hefty expansionProject Venom - PS4/XBOX1/PC (Canceled in 2017)So you guys really believe that a small company that has in its entirety at best 200 devs, was developing by themselves 3 of their own in house console games, a relatively big expansion and a mobile game while also developing 7R.Whatever they were doing on 7R, was definitely not as big as most people believe. CC2 was doing labor work and like we saw earlier, they weren't even the only company SE was outsourcing to.SE losing 2 years worth of 7R development just because they pulled all their assets back in house is utter bulls*** and makes no sense at all.All in all, this guy is a confirmed thief, a confirmed liar and this rumor started and gained traction by popular sites actually LYING to readers, saying that Dan Tsukasa was the art director of the original FF7, which is why more and more people started believing in this rumor.Articles like this for examplehttps://gamerant.com/final-fantasy-7-remake-development-progress/LOL at this young nobody being the art director of FF7.Yusuke Naora was the original's art director and Shintaro Takai is the art director of the remake, he was also the Special Magic Effect Director of the original game.In all his comments Dan Tsukasa kept saying "i can't confirm i have worked for those companies or disclose where i work now but i can confirm i live in Japan"Literally the only thing this guy could confirm is that he lived in Japan, that was probably the only thing he said that wasn't made up bulls*** since he stole money to go there and when people saw proof of him living there they thought he is a long time Japanese developer.People should really stop believing in this rumor and should really stop acting as if this is confirmed and valid info. We have no way of knowing what happened to CC2's work or the work the other companies were doing, what we do know is that evidence points to their work being fine as it was designed/planned/directed by the people who are STILL working on the game so these guys scrapping their own work just doesn't make sense.The end.

User Info: SolaFide SolaFide 1 year ago #5 "There is more mercy in Christ than sin in us."

-Richard Sibbes Neith once again providing the actual facts about Nomura as opposed to speculations based upon rumors and ideology. No one ever reads them though :(

User Info: YungLeviathan YungLeviathan 1 year ago #6 We may not see eye to eye often, but this is a very well put together post.



The amount of unwarranted s*** being spewed at Nomura and FFVII Remake from the, quite frankly, low IQ individuals who want to correlate every time FFVIIR doesn’t show up at E3 or a game conference to XV’s disastrous development cycle just because both had Nomura at the helm is quite blatant.

User Info: LordlyLord LordlyLord 1 year ago #7 PSN: TheLordlyLord

FGO: 899,648,000 Well done

User Info: WhyitEarp WhyitEarp 1 year ago #8 I like ya Neith but we’ll just have to see when the game finally gets released

User Info: ChipNoir ChipNoir 1 year ago #9 ...You worry me a little sometimes.