Eidos Montreal's "really cool" Final Fantasy game that never was

From True Achievements: "Square Enix originally gave Eidos-Montréal — the developer of two Deus Ex games and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy — the task of making Final Fantasy XV, former executive art director Jonathan Jacque-Belletête confirmed to TA.

This week, TrueAchievements spoke with Rogue Factor’s creative director Jonathan Jacque-Belletête at Nacon's Bigben Week about his work on the upcoming philosophical, supernatural, non-violent third-person action game Hell is Us. Speaking about his time as an art director with Eidos-Montréal, he confirmed that Square Enix — before it sold its western branch to Embracer group for $300 million — removed the Canadian team from a “really cool” Final Fantasy XV project."

[-Foxtrot]

I don't know why they didn't just let someone try doing a spin off game as an experiment

[smashman98]

It’s because square as a company is currently being horribly mismanaged. How else could you justify square placing a traditionally AAA single player developer Like crystal dynamics at the helm of a major live service game?

Not to mention their repeatedly tone deaf mentions of nft and crypto.

[Pedantic91]

Final Fantasy is still a household name, the name itself is important enough for them to be hands-on at all times.
Could've ended up diluting the series and potentially damage the brand if not handled with utmost care.
That's not to say the last few flagship titles (FFXIII/-2/Returns, FFXV) have been great so who knows, maybe if a western development team tried we might've had something very experimental, weird, fresh and maybe even something really cool.

[CDbiggen]

We did get stranger of paradise though.