I thought I remember
Nomura and the whole team working on Versus XIII being pushed and shoved around to different projects for years, like patching up FFXIV, and the final straw being them just having him finish KHIII. Everything I've heard makes it sound like Nomura has a ton of shit on his hands,
supposedly he didn't even know he was directing the FFVII remake. the level of shit he gets from FF fans when the only thing he ever directed (co-directed, and did not write) was Advent Children seems unfair.
There's truth to this, but it's a fairly reductive viewpoint of it also. Like, it's true that pieces of the Versus 'team' (which was basically the KH2 team) were pulled to assist on both 13 and 14 when the former hit dev troubles and the latter had to be rebooted, but it's also pretty standard form in game development to start with a smaller team that builds concepts and ideas, then progress up and staff up that team when you pass certain milestones and proof-of-concept designs. Even without people being 'stolen', the stumbling block for Versus was that for years a solid, absolute vision of what the game might 'be' (story aside) was never really solidified, and that was with a core team being relatively solidly on the project. You can compare some key staff credits from KH2 to FF13 and FF14 to see who got shunted around, in fact. And from that, you can see who stuck around.
But Nomura was, for a long time, the absolute 'face' of Square Enix, so another part of the problem is work load: he wasn't ever
just doing Versus; he was overseeing character design for FF13, which in the SE hierarchy means he's also signing off on all the FF13 action figures and stuff - looking at proofs, suggesting changes, etc. He's doing the same for other games he designed characters for, like FF7, 8, 10 and so on. Then he's signing off on HD Remasters, like new models for characters in FF10, and then he's working on a bunch of KH spin-offs. So he was doing a lot, and that was probably another part of what helped to really 'kill' Versus as it was.
It was also undoubtedly impacted by FF13, because that game's star had certainly faded by the third in its trilogy, and it was divisive at it was - but they could've rebranded it as-is if there was a killer game there... but there wasn't. After years of concept and systems design work.
But anyway, what I'm saying is - the narrative some fans like to push that the only thing that went wrong on Versus was
other games stole its team away - it's bunk, or at least bunk alone. My understanding consistently throughout Versus' development was that it was a rocky road and a bit of a mess, and there was never very much of it to show beyond what was in the trailers. It was an idea in search of direction, and it never really found it until Tabata came in with a very tight mandate from upper management and took a machete to Nomura's ideas to create a plan that could ship within the parameters he'd been given. Nomura didn't like that, obviously - that's no secret - but Tabata can't be blamed for making the best of a bad scenario.
Ultimately what Tabata shipped is a different game, though, which is where all the fan arguments begin and end, I guess. But the truth is they should've announced FF15 as if it were an all new thing and then in the interviews/media blitz at E3 the following day explained that the Versus project was cancelled (when Kotaku reported this, they were right, but there was more to the story - it was more like it was on hiatus) but elements of its concept were being reused in an all-new title, cos that's what it was. The mistake was assuming that the continuity between the two projects, one logo exploding into the other, would be a positive, hype generating thing. And it was, for a while, but then the reality set in and Nomura refused to continue to be involved/associated with it, and that was that. The endlessly combative FF community latched onto it all and created a warzone. But even in that announcement you have elements of Versus that wouldn't make the cut, demonstrative of what was a seven-year tug or war over what that game could be and its potential identity coming to a head.
Ironically, this mad shit might be the best thing to have happened to Versus - as if Nomura really, truly believes it can still work, whatever he sees in it can hopefully be expressed divorced from what came before with the excuse that it's part of Kingdom Hearts that's merely tributary to Versus... which is an opportunity FF15 never had, to stand on its own away from the expectations of Versus.
EDIT: I want to add, also, that Tabata has actively said that if he'd been given the choice, he would've made an all new game. But it was mandated they had to build from the ashes of Versus, and this is down to a company attitude thing. Some of it is very noble: like with FF14 ARR, they didn't want to let fans down, so they wanted to 'make good' on the original promise, but unlike with ARR they made this decision knowing they would not be able to deliver on the original promise, just something that looked a bit like it and used key pieces of it. A mistake, imo, but 15 is a fine game regardless. Some of it is a bit pigheaded: admitting you've canned something is an admission of failure - of the company, of the team, of the director, and they didn't want to do that. So that's why it had to be the way it was, I suppose.
Regarding him 'not knowing' he was directing FF7, the communication at SEJ can be pretty mad sometimes but I absolutely refuse to believe this is true, as it displays a level of flippancy and a lack of communication that'd actually be genuinely shocking. No wonder they can't ship a game without some sort of mess in the middle if that really is true.
