Cognition Dissemination: Final Fantasy XV is Out. What’s Next for Square Enix Japan?

It’s been a long, long road from start to finish, but Final Fantasy XV is finally available worldwide. Even better, it’s actually reviewing well, as most critics are finding it to be an improved experience over the Final Fantasy XIII trilogy. Given the tendency for development hell-laden games to turn out disastrously, it’s a remarkable achievement, particularly from a developer that’s still yet to completely adjust to working with HD consoles. The fanbase has been similarly impressed with the product, though whether it will sell in worthwhile numbers to those outside them remains to be seen.

Now that it’s out, with DLC in the pipeline, it begs the question: What’s next for Square Enix Japan? They have three AAA-level games in development in Kingdom Hearts III, Final Fantasy VII Remake, and Dragon Quest XI. But having the same publisher isn’t all those games have in common, as each is running on middleware engine Unreal Engine 4, which implies that FFXV might signal the end of their use of Luminous Engine for big-budget games. Using middleware won’t erase any managerial issues they could have with those projects internally, though, and whether these will have them remains to be determined. But it’s worth examining where they stand now.

It’s been three-and-a-half years since Kingdom Hearts III was announced, which occurred alongside the introduction of Final Fantasy XV at Sony’s E3 2013 conference. That it’s still not on the horizon isn’t a good sign, but they admittedly have at least one excuse. The project was running on the aforementioned Luminous Engine when it started, but the development team switched it to UE4 in late 2014. They unsurprisingly never said why, but all signs point to Luminous being a royal pain to utilize.

That doesn’t explain why it’s gone into hibernation for so long, though there’s a partial excuse for that too. Square Enix has recently been promoting Kingdom Hearts 2.8: Final Chapter Prologue, which will release in January worldwide. It includes an HD remaster of Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance and HD cutscenes from Kingdom Hearts Unchained χ (that’s pronounced “Unchained Chi”), but most importantly for this post, it includes a sampling of KHIII in the form of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep 0.2 – A Fragmentary Package. (What’s up with these names, anyway?) While that sampling will star Aqua from Birth by Sleep, it will nonetheless offer a chance to experience what the next mainline game will present before the main course arrives, which could be enough to tide people over.

If you’re among those who need to catch up on the entire KH series, though, Square Enix finally confirmed that Kingdom Hearts 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX will come to PS4 in March. It would have been better to release these before 2.8, but they presumably felt this was close enough.

The fanbase will only be satisfied if Square Enix shares KHIII info on a constant basis after KH2.8 releases, and for their sake, hopefully it’s not too far off. That the team still hadn’t decided on a theme song as of early-October, according to co-director Tetsuya Nomura, also isn’t encouraging, but we’ll see for sure how far it is in development early next year.

If you believe Nomura there, you also have to believe him regarding Final Fantasy VII Remake. We haven’t learned anything significant about it since its showing at PlayStation Experience last year, where it was confirmed that it would have an action-based battle system and be released in multiple parts. Also, while a team at Square Enix is handling the game’s direction, its actual development is being handled by CyberConnect2.

Unfortunately, it may be a while until we learn more, and it might miss this year’s PSX keynote on Saturday. Good thing fans have FFXV to bide their time with, and perhaps World of Final Fantasy. The Final Fantasy Versus XIII team was shifted over to this project after it became FFXV, so hopefully its development pattern doesn’t mimic that one.

Meanwhile, Dragon Quest XI has the rosiest future of the three. If you’ve been following the little info that’s been provided about it, you’ll know that it’s coming to both PS4 and 3DS in the form of two different games, similar to Level 5’s Ni no Kuni games. Nintendo’s Switch will get at least one of them, though which has yet to be confirmed. Both will have the same story and characters, but their presentations and dungeon designs will be different. It looked great the last time we saw it, which happened to be the unveil in July…of 2015. Square Enix has been sitting on info about this one for far too long.

Thankfully, they agree, which is why it will wake from hibernation in December for two separate events.  Square Enix released a list of games they’ll be showcasing at Jump Festa 2017, and not only will DQXI be present, it will be part of the DQ stage show on the 17th. Following that, it will be shown as part of the “Dragon Quest 30th Anniversary” special program on NHK in Japan on December 29th. Depending on how much is shown, they could instill confidence that it will still release during the 30th anniversary year timeline they previously set, which ends in late-May. It’s nice that one of these titles could be on schedule.

The last thing anyone involved here needs is for one of these to enter development hell, and FFVIIRemake is especially prone to this considering the team, though it’s episodic schedule might mitigate that. Square Enix’s managerial issues are ideally better than what they used to be, so logic dictates we should be seeing each title in due time. If not, they’ll have to seriously reevaluate how they approach game development. Again.