@Thanatos2k: You're conveniently ignoring Nomura's history with the project. They obviously knew he was willing to do the job, it's foolish to imply otherwise. Him being surprised had to do with Kitase not taking the job, who has seniority over Nomura.
As far as your unsolicited advice goes, keep it to yourself.
@Thanatos2k: Honestly, in Nomura's shoes, I'd view it as a promotion. It's not like he was getting booted from FF XV to I am Setsuna. I imagine the title of director would net him a hefty pay raise over lead character designer as well.
Also, the situation isn't as black and white as you've laid out. He's not some first time director, he has history with the game, he tried to reboot the game before and he was heavily involved with the game during preproduction. In this context, he wasn't moved so much so as the team wasn't finalized yet. Everyone involved knew he was going to be a major contributor to the game, and it was either going to be him or Kitase in the directors seat. If he just wanted to do character design and not direct, he wouldn't be going to the higher ups and making a pitch to reboot FF VII in the years prior. In that regard, I don't see him as some unwilling participant being taken advantage of, or a doormat as you say who is being "forced" to work on games.
@Thanatos2k: So let's get this straight, if your boss put you in charge of a project that you suggested they start during the years prior, you'd quit? You honestly think FF VII Remake just showed up one day and took Nomura by surprise? He was consulting them during preproduction and obviously doing the character designs. The picture that's been painted during interviews is that Kitase and other SE higher ups liked his ideas enough to put him in the directors seat.
The meddling that you bring up falls under the Yoichi Wada timeline, and like I said the new CEO appears to be doing a better job, at least from the outside looking in. As for the rest of your views, you're honestly making this out like Nomura is chained to a desk with a gun pointed to his head. Enough with the misinformation already.
@Thanatos2k: I was mostly referring to the CEO reshuffling their business divisions, and the steady stream of games that have come out since he took over, along with Dragon Quest XI in a few weeks.
As far as Nomura getting the director chair by surprise, you think he wasn't happy to find that out? The original FF VII was the first game in which he had significant responsibility, and by all accounts the game holds a special place in his heart. Also the way Nomura found out that he was in charge came from an internal memo, and it seems that it was a deliberate surprise on Kitase's behalf.
@Thanatos2k: I know it's easy to blame Nomura, but most of the problems came from higher up. By prioritizing XIII over Versus XIII, they took staff away from Versus XIII and tailored their "universal" engine so much for XIII that it couldn't even handle the open areas for Versus XIII. The game was essentially sabotaged from within.
With proper staff and not having to deal with their own proprietary engines, development should go along much smoother. If you take that into consideration, along with the people they have working with Nomura, on FF VII in particular with Kitase and Nojima, there is no reason to believe that Nomura couldn't handle overseeing the two games.
Also speaking of the execs, things have been better since the new CEO came in 2013.
Is Dragon Quest XI really confirmed for E3? I hadn't heard anything about it, but that's great news if so. I imagine we'll get a localization announcement and a possible release date or window, I'd love for it to make it West before the end of 2017.
Either way I'm glad the game will get some exposure on stage, with proper marketing the series can finally take off outside of Japan.
@7tizz: This feature in particular makes games run better that would otherwise experience slow down on the regular PS4. So games like the Evil Within posted above, run noticeably better on the Pro now. This applies to all games that were released before the Pro came out and never received a PS Pro patch.
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