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The Last Story: Gameplay over Narrative

Siliconera reports that The Last Story director Hironobu Sakaguchi said the game’s system took precedence over the story in an Iwata Asks interview. "During 23 years there are 3 times when I considered the [gameplay] system first" said Sakaguchi. The first was the original Final Fantasy and the second was Final Fantasy VII. "There was a considerable amount of trial and error." Final Fantasy was when they first set up the systems that the RPG would use for decades, while Final Fantasy VII was the first shift to three dimensions.

Hironobu Sakaguchi created the Final Fantasy series in 1987 with the last of then Squaresoft's money; the game was named ironically as Sakaguchi expected it to be his last game. He went on to be the head of Squaresoft all the way through Final Fantasy X-2, soon after which he left the company to form Mistwalker with funds from Microsoft. Mistwalker's games have been critically successful, but haven't been the financial hits they were expected to be. There is some speculation that The Last Story may also be ironically named, fueled by a mistranslation that Sakaguichi was quitting the industry after this title.