I would like to straight up clarify a few things to those of you bashing Nomura for not being able to deliver FFvXIII because he was incompetent.
The truth is, no, he is not incompetent. Hes one of the most capable game developer/director in Japan aside Kojima. Japanese are not very creative enough to think outside of the box, Ill give you that. But Nomura actually had the lore of Eos/crystal/versus concepts completed by early 2008 and he has been working on the plot points since 2002/2003. He even carries around with him a small book where he writes all his ideas in (these infos were from a personal source of mine, take it with a grain of salt if you want). Im not sure if these were actually scripts but they are more like story treatments that were ready to be transcripted into a screenplay in film making. By then, he also had an idea on how the gameplay would look like (i.e KH style with character switching), the only problem was, he didnt have a team to complete the rest. The Fabula Nova Crystallis borrowed elements derived from Nomuras lore, because the other writers couldnt come up with better concepts?.
So, no, Stella was not the character that were only concepts. She already had a story to begin with, a complete one in fact but it was never fully realized into a game. Because of the changing direction of SE management (they changed the President), a lot of things from the original concept of FFvXIII had to change; some of the reasons were (not a complete list);
1) Wider/more global target market: Things like worshipping reapers/yakuza family /dark mythos had to be cut out to make the game more acceptable. It wouldnt pass China or Australias requisites for example. This global release was also the reason why FFXV gets a very slow/delayed release. Had they released for Japan only first, well probably be getting it 6 months earlier. Apparently, localization for other countries and their ridiculous legal issues are hampering speedy progress. You cant expect the world to work like Japan (his description). Same reason why they cant make more of the UCE. He (my source) originally predicted that the game will only be ready for 2017, but Tabata was being too ambitious and gave that 2016 release date.
2) Luminous engine: The engine could not handle the games design. It was too complicated? (Im not sure myself, because I didnt understand what he meant about game and engine)
3) Development time cut short: I dont understand the whole reason behind this, but apparently, they want the game cut short for financial reasons. The original concept was to have 3 games a least from FFvXIII but it was taking too long and costs too much, so they want to compress it by just one and save money.
So to those who bashed Nomura, I didnt think it was fair. He didnt get off easy on this by handing the reigns for Tabata to complete. I feel Nomuras pain more than any stress Tabata had to endure. Imagine having something youve been working on for 10 years taken away from you
.. Plus, Nomura has stated that Noctis was his new boy. Now, he only has Sora
