Kitase speaks: Rivalry with Nomura, old DQs better than FFs

 Is there any truth that there’s a bitter rivalry between Square Enix icons Yoshinori Kitase and Tetsuya Nomura? Is this the reason why they’re supposedly working on separate Final Fantasy Versus XIII games? What does he think of former boss Hironobu Sakaguchi‘s work with the Final Fantasy franchise? All the answers in the full article.

A cool interview with Final Fantasy VII co-director Yoshinori Kitase was recently posted over at NeoGAF, and there were a lot of interesting questions thrown at him. Among those concerned his relationship with current and former Square Enix creative minds Tetsuya Nomura and Hironobu Sakaguchi.

There have been rumors for some time now about Kitase and Nomura having a bitter rivalry from within Square Enix, so much so that they’ve stopped working with each other. Case in point, say rumormongers, is the fact that the two are working on separate Final Fantasy XIII titles. Kitase is producing Final Fantasy XIII while Nomura is doing character designs for Final Fantasy Versus XIII.

Kitase, however, denies that there’s any in-fighting going on between him and Nomura. He started by pointing out the often-overlooked fact that Nomura is also designing games for Final Fantasy XIII. He says  what’s happening now is absolutely not a matter of them being unable to work in one team.

“But ok, there are differences between us, what we want to accomplish and how we create games,” Kitase concedes. “ItÂ’s not a hostile rivalry, but we donÂ’t share the exact same goal.”

He added that things would be “boring” over at Square Enix if he and his colleagues all agreed on the same things all the time. “My view of it is that weÂ’re two creative minds who work together sometimes and then move on on different paths, but always meet up (together) again.”

Moving on in the interview, Kitase was asked about the status of his relationship with former colleague Sakaguchi who has left Square Enix and helped bring up Mistwalker. Kitase said all was well and that they recently had sushi together.

He said they talked about RPGs and where the genre is going. Kitase narrates that he and Sakaguchi agreed on the subject of command systems evolving from the menu-driven interfaces of today. He says that both men realize that this system has been a big part of RPG identities through the years, but changes have to take place to keep things fresh.

Lastly, Kitase was asked if he knew what Sakaguchi thought of the Final Fantasy titles that came out after he joined Mistwalker. Kitase said he didn’t know what the old boss’s opinions were, but he did share his view of the franchise during the time that Sakaguchi was handling it.

“It was honestly speaking really only a worse copy of what Enix was doing at the time,” he said. “Dragon Quest was much better!”

Via NeoGAF