If I hold any major executive position at Square-Enix, the first thing I will probably find is someone breathing down my neck, telling me that I will have to get the finances on track. So something off the bat such as remaking Final Fantasy VII will be beyond my ability to even greenlight, if I'm even willing to in the first place. It would have to be a project for the next-gen consoles, with a total cost that I don't think anyone will be able to properly predict. The only thing we know is that it will likely be the most expensive project yet, and unless it's done properly, the most hardcore of fans would incessantly cry foul.
A future mainline game definitely needs fresh blood. Maybe a newer generation of ambitious leaders and designers able to inject something fresh into the franchise, and preferably in a way that it doesn't hark back to grander old days such as FFVII, or contemporary benchmark-setters of the day as a point of comparison or inspiration. So I will say to the teams that we must cease focusing on things like: "let's beat Skyrim" or "let's make this even more successful than FFVII!". No, no, no. Don't walk in there with an approach like that, because it's distorting and will more than likely to incite disappointment with a product than anything. I would prefer a future Final Fantasy game to be distinctly its own thing, as opposed to some reactionary response to something else in the market, or a callback to an earlier, successful game. It would do so much better for the franchise if we remember that Final Fantasy is at its best when it leads, not follows.
I would absolutely love to get the point across to the company that we should break out of old cliches and paradigms. Even something as superficial to begin with such as a non-human protagonist. Or a more rugged, battle-worn, elderly person as the hero instead of a teenager or someone in their early twenties. We allegedly almost got there with Basch for FFXII, but because the exec at the time decided to bow to his own interpretation of what the Japanese demographic wanted, we got Vaan. How about a Final Fantasy game with a narrative that is told through ways that isn't conventionally told? Final Fantasy XIII actually had an interesting idea of starting in media res, with a succession of disjointed flashbacks that come together like a puzzle. What about something interesting like seeing things happen through multiple, interactive perspectives? Character X witnesses an event and sees it in his or her way, and the player shifts to controlling Character Y who investigates the aftermath of the event, discovering his or her own interpretations of what has happened. Why not have a game where we see things through the eyes of both the protagonist and the villain?
It is a shame that everyone is shifting to the action-RPG front nowadays. I myself adore action-RPGs, so this isn't a huge shame for me, but I realise that not everyone is wired the same way, and many would prefer at least one high-profile turn-based game on consoles. Final Fantasy XV, coupled with Kingdom Hearts 3, is just not offering that glimmer of optimism for them. And why not have a turn-based Final Fantasy on a console? Is the market at the moment so fixated on cinematic "Press A to awesome!" game design at the moment that no one will ever bat an eyelid at a turn-based RPG? I don't believe that, and I do hope FFX HD will trigger back the realisation that "hey, turn-based is quite cool!". I also hope that the XCOM games (not the shooter) continue to garner more and more success for the turn-based front. I would absolutely not be opposed to greenlighting a future Final Fantasy game with turn-based combat, or at least, a form of satisfactory hybrid.
In terms of recouping costs: okay, let's admit it. It has been a very difficult - at some points, calamitous - generation for the company. I can't see next-gen (or this gen? Do we count PS4/Xbone as current gen now?) being that much easier for them. I am accepting the reality that more direct sequels will become the norm, unless miraculously the costs of developing the original game is dwarfed enough by commercial success that it doesn't need to spawn a "saga" or "epic" of its own. But if we're going to create sagas/epics again, let's do it properly. Let's make them coherently managed this time, and not unlike the transition from FFXIII to FFXIII-2, start veering off to inexplicably do some time travelling. I think the best thing we can do with sagas, is to limit settings and scopes of conflicts to something more...local and smaller-scale? Something I like about FFXII is that the Ivalice they talk about, and the Ivalice we see, is only a part of the world. We don't see Rozarria, much less the whole world, and something like that produces enough room for a decent sequel set in this same grounded world without having to constantly open up portals to weird voids, or through time.
Something will have to be done about the time it takes to produce one game, and the inevitable chaos and office politics that goes on in the development background. It's something we can learn from western developers. How do we go about creating a large, ambitious and expensive project without having to write off 6-7 years from the eager fans? How do we improve communications across the team(s), and how can the leadership best be placed so that someone like Nomura is not so completely swamped that it can destroy a man like Matsuno? Maybe it is for the best that we do a bit more outsourcing now and then, and contracting another studio in to give a hand? I would talk further about finding ways to cut costs and boost efficiency, but I don't know what the current state of Square-Enix actually looks like, and nor am I an expert.
Toriyama does not get to hold significant power over a Final Fantasy game until he has taken an intensive training course in writing. Watanabe can go with him, along with whoever penned the scripts of the FFXIII games so far. Kitase can stay, so long as someone else can rein in his excesses. If Tabata feels ready to head a mainline project of his own, I would give him all the support he needs. I would even reach out to Matsuno and ask him whether he would like to collaborate with Square-Enix again, but this time for a smaller-scale project in the veins of Final Fantasy Tactics (ignoring the fact that the man is already doing Unsung Story for mobile platforms).
Speaking of mobile, I'll have to confess and say that with the market as it currently is, it does not make sense for a company to go around nuking their support for iOS and Android. Final Fantasy: All The Bravest however, would never have happened on my watch. I would put actual effort into iOS FF offers without churning out a consumer-hating product that exists only to vacuum-suck a poor, hapless fan of their wallet. An original little Final Fantasy game that has had some love and effort put into it, with a fun use of the touch interface without the compromises would be something nice to see, but done sporadically enough that it doesn't look like we're "whoring" out the franchise as much as possible. I wouldn't slap an action-RPG for mobile platforms though. That's a case of disregarding the touch interface instead of being more creative about it. Microtransactions are fine, so long as a player isn't stronghanded into spending money just to progress.
When announcing a new game, I would make sure that it's far enough in development to be announced first, otherwise we'll end up pissing more people off with Versus XIII revisits. I'm looking at you, Kingdom Hearts III.
Finally, let's give FFV and FFVI the proper treatment and remake them in 3D. For handhelds, and down the line, for mobile. I can't fathom why they've re-released FFV for mobile like that, but are remaking The After Years, a game that...no one asked for?