During PAX Prime, Siliconera spoke with Final Fantasy Type-0 director Hajime Tabata, and one of the things we asked him was if he was doing anything with the HD version of the game that he couldn’t on the PSP.

“The biggest point that I wanted to revisit and refresh was the combat balance,” Tabata replied. “We’re still in the midst of doing so, but we’re definitely revisiting the combat balance for the Xbox One and PS4 versions.”

“In addition to that, I really want players to play to the end. The PSP version was very fast-paced, and very hard, and there were many players that didn’t reach the end. That being said, I wanted to include difficulty modes into this version, which we’ve done, and it’s really helped to balance the game as a whole. Hopefully this will let people play until the end.”

“Obviously, RPGs are long and they can take quite a bit of time to get through, but I put care into making the conclusion worth your while. I think it’ll be something that hits the player emotionally—and I really, really want players to make it to the end!

Tabata gestured towards his translator, and mentioned that while speaking with her on the way to the expo, he found out that she herself was unable to complete the game! “There’s an emotional vision in the story and I really want people to experience that,” he said.

The PSP version of Final Fantasy Type-0 had local cooperative multiplayer. We asked Tabata if this would change in the HD version of the game, and also if he had any plans to replace the sleep-mode levelling feature from the PSP game.

“There will be some type of feature implemented to replace the sleep-mode leveling, but we’re in the midst of talking about how to go about doing so,” Tabata replied. “As for the ad-hoc multiplayer, that function was originally created under the assumption that people would come together to play their PSP game in the same room. When thinking about what to do for the console version, whether we would include it or whether we would focus on the story, we ultimately decided to cut the multiplayer option out of the game.”

“The reason being, we really wanted to bring the game to fans as early as possible. Rather than do something half-hearted, we wanted just cut it.”

Tabata then leaned back, and asked, “How do you feel about that decision?”

“I don’t think it’s a bad decision, though I think it goes without saying that there will be disappointed fans,” I replied. “ At the same time, the outcry for bringing Type-0 abroad has been loud—and I’m not convinced that that feature alone is responsible for that. I’m curious, though; would you have designed the story differently if it was being experienced by multiple players at once? Does the degree of intimacy change the more or less players you have?”

“Even if, say, there are a bunch of people in a given room, if everyone is able to, without embarrassment, delve into the game to the same degree, it wouldn’t really matter how many people are there,” Tabata said. “If you’re able to fully focus on the game, I feel like the reaction you’d receive is probably the same.”