FFXIII had a "lack of shared vision"

Director Motomu Toriyama and Akihiko Maeda of Final Fantasy XIII reveal the troubles that plagued the game’s development, citing a lack of unification.

The ”root of many conflicts” lied in the team having no ”shared vision” for FFXIII. They juggled far too much, and ”did not agree on key elements”.

”The trailer was merely a visual concept, and we had not yet created anything playable at that point,” Toriyama-san and Maeda-san revealed, referring to the E3 2006 rendered video for Final Fantasy XIII’s debut to the fans.

”However, it became clear that, at the time, there were actually very few members who saw the trailer as a representation of what we wanted to achieve with Final Fantasy XIII. This lack of a shared vision became the root of many conflicts that arose later in development.”

The game may have been unveiled in 2006 but it didn’t release in Europe until March 2010, with Japan enjoying earlier in December ‘09. It was announced as a multi-platform release in the West and this ambition had been giving them some serious problems.

”Because we were so focused on creating an engine for next-gen hardware that could be utilised across all platforms, we made the mistake of trying to accommodate every single project that was in progress at the time,” the creators explained.

”This created a standstill between the engine and game development teams, because if the engine’s specs couldn’t be finalised, neither could the game’s. As the debates continued without resolution, the timetable was also affected.”

Square Enix were ”very conscious” of the Western market becoming ”increasingly harsh” toward the JRPG formula with linear stories and their command-based battles being ”perceived negatively” by most. Would Final Fantasy XIII be accepted?

”Because Final Fantasy XIII’s mission was to succeed worldwide, we could not ignore this issue, as we felt it could deeply affect the future of the franchise,” said the duo.

”Even at a late stage of development we did not agree on key elements of the game, which stemmed from the lack of a cohesive vision, the lack of finalised specs, and the remaining problems with communication between departments.”

It was the FFXIII demo that brought them back on track, proving itself an ”essential key learning point” where the team woke up to what they had left to accomplish. They never missed a milestone again. FFXIII has sold over 5.5m copies globally.