I am slightly obsessed with Final Fantasy Versus XIII.
It's one of the most fascinating tragedies of the industry.
I think you could compare it to Alejandro Jodorowsky's vision for Dune as far as unrealized epics.

As far back as 2002, you could see the beginnings of what Nomura was hoping to do, with Kingdom Heart's "Secret Movie"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOtXZp3B-tc
This sequence was essentially re-created as the first trailers for Versus XIII in 2006
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuWmF0uBgqQ

The Final Fantasy XV "Omen" trailer seemed to hint heavily at a story element that did not end up in the game at all. Possibly a significant story beat originally intended for Versus XIII
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcDTgR0drG0

Forgot to mention Stranger of Paradise. That one should be obvious.
Story of Stranger of Paradise looking really interesting in light of the Omen trailer. Hadn't put that together until these posts.

Tetsuya Nomura is unsung as a writer.
His stories (especially entries in the Kingdom Hearts series) have extremely high concept (essentially sci-fi) ambitions, comparable to authors like Philip K. Dick and Jorge Luis Borges.
Everyone who knows, knows PKD from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", the inspiration for Bladerunner (which can be argued to be an influence on the visual style of Versus XIII) but he also wrote stories like "We'll Remember it For You Wholesale" and "The Adjustment Team" - which, whether or not Nomura has read them, have interesting conceptual overlap with games like Chain of Memories and 358/2 Days.
There is an incredibly interesting tension in how such grand ideas in Tetsuya Nomura's games are counterbalanced (or perhaps shackled) by the Disney trappings of the Kingdom Hearts series.
There is of course, also the possibility that Nomura's intentions can't quite work out without some lightness and Disney-esque comedy to temper the chunni edge; but regardless a part of me still aches for the Versus XIII we'll seemingly never get.
Nomura completely unchained, and loose to create the dark vision he's been nursing since at least 2002. Played straight and without compromise.
I would have loved it, and I cherish what glimpses of the vision we have.

I blame Square Enix and whatever occurred in their company, probably corporate sabotage by the chinese or some shit. Or maybe the higher ups were just retarded.

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>>736424704
i don't think it's Square Enix to blame.
was watching some Versus XIII trailers prepping to make this post, and one of them seemed to have some overt political themes certain types of people wouldn't like.
I'm going to divert away from starting a discussion of world politics; it's a shame that something so cool relentlessly cool died in the womb regardless of whatever reasons why

>>736424704
Part of the shit show around FF15 is it was censored because Square Enix wanted money from China. We don't know every little thing that was changed, but it's easy to think Nomura got pissed off that the story was rejected for not appealing to the Chinese enough, and even the final version wasn't what anyone wanted to make.

>>736426410
man, xv is so frustrating. if you squint you can see glimpses of what it was meant to be, but it's very obviously missing a very critical thing.

>>736426410
NTA, I've felt for a while that China is used as a scapegoat for censoring things in the west.
I have no real evidence to confirm this, except that tons of suspiciously neolib western values were pushed onto media being released in the west and it was claimed to be due to Chinese censorship guidelines.
Even though it was exactly what certain groups in the west wanted.
Either China wants the same things, or they're scapegoated, or there's some sort of back rooms dealings between the West and China.
Whatever the case is it stinks.

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>>736427093
>China is used as a scapegoat for censoring things
Hmm, I wonder if the development staff on FF15 ever talked about censoring content for China.

>>736428305
What I'm trying to say is, yea China had some extreme demands in the late 2010s (which they've seemed to walked back a bit), but I wonder if those demands weren't informed by ... lets say "globally interested parties" who wanted certain ideas censored globally, and used China as a vehicle for these censorship demands.
The skeleton stuff is ridiculous, but the top example seems like Western prudery in a Chinese skinsuit.

>>736422268
>sequences intended for Versus XIII were re-created in Automata
first time i'm hearing this

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>>736431485
parts of Versus XIII's story featured a death goddess named Etro, secretly worshipped by the Lucian royal family