June 5th, 2015 
Mark Final Fantasy XV has changed quite a lot since it was known as Final Fantasy Versus XIII when it was originally announced all the way back in 2006. As part of this week’s Active Time Report video broadcast, Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata spoke at length about how the game has evolved in that time.
As Eurogamer sums up, basically, much of what you’ve seen and heard previously has changed.
“After we had switched from Versus to XV, the first decision we made was to make sure that XV would have a complete, coherent story in one game,” Tabata said.
“That was an important decision–one made at the company level, too,” he added. “So I started thinking about how we could get a full, coherent story in a single game. And the crux of that was which elements from Versus XIII we could carry over and which would not fit into the new structure as XV.”
As part of this effort, Tabata said he “went through everything in detail” to determine what needed to be changed. By this time, Square Enix had already shared “a fair amount of information” about Versus XIII’s story, and Tabata wanted to keep as much of this intact as possible.
“But it would have been very difficult to carry over absolutely everything as it was,” he explained. “We considered what was possible with the new-gen hardware, as well as what elements absolutely must be included in XV but might fall through if not given top priority. It was not easy to nail down what was essential for the story to be contained in one title. Everyone involved was very sensitive in dealing with this, and we patiently debated numerous times, but we still couldn’t come up with a definitive answer.”
“We considered what was possible with the new-gen hardware, as well as what elements absolutely must be included in XV but might fall through if not given top priority” — Tabata
Tabata went on to say that he worked directly with Versus XIII’s Kazushige Nojima in his effort to “be as faithful as possible” to the original story.
One of the key changes is that the character Stella, a woman who was originally pegged to be a co-lead alongside Noctis in Versus XIII, has been removed from the game. Taking her place is Luna.
“We wanted to keep her as a heroine in FF XV’s story, and pursued ways to tie her into FF XV’s design as well, but we found it increasingly difficult to make sense of Stella’s character and role within FF XV,” Tabata explained.
“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?” he went on to say. “And after a lot of consideration, we decided not to include Stella in FF15. Instead, we have a new heroine named Luna, who has a different role within the story.”
For lots more on the changes from Versus XIII to Final Fantasy XV, including the removal of certain scenes and lots more, read the full story at Eurogamer.
Other stories from this week’s Active Time Report follow below:
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