At the Final Fantasy Gallery today, Square Enix held a stage titled The Future of Final Fantasy. The stage was actually a recording session for an upcoming Square Enix Channel radio broadcast which will air on September 13. It consisted of a series of questions, submitted by e-mail, and answered by some Final Fantasy VIPs.

The following members were in attendance.

• Hajime Tabata (director, The 3rd Birthday and Final Fantasy Type-0)
• Naora Yusuke (art director)
• Yoshihisa Hashimoto (Square Enix CTO)
• Mitsunori Takahashi (director, Dissidia Final Fantasy)
• Motomu Toriyama (director FFXIII, XIII-2, Lightning Returns)
• Isamu Kamikokuryo (art director, Lightning Returns)

The first question asked about the possibility of a Final Fantasy Monsters, akin to Dragon Quest Monsters. Naora said that this is his 20th year at the company, and showed an image of some of the early sprite work for the series' monsters. Hashimoto showed some of the enemies from the recent Agnis Philosophy demo, adding that if they did make an FF Monsters using the latest technology, it could look like this. Takahashi gave a quick idea of possibly having Young Barret as a main character.

The next question was from a fan who, noting that most current FF games have a strong western or sci-fi image, suggested that it would perhaps be nice to make a Japanese-style FF. Naora agreed that a Japanese-style FF would be nice. Tabata went a bit further and actually showed image boards that they'd had artists make to show what a Japanese FF might look like. Even Isamu Kamikokuryo contributed to the brainstorming.

Unfortunately, the image boards were shown exclusively to the stage show's attendees and were blocked out from the Nico Nico viewing audience. You can see teeny-tiny versions in the viewfinder of the camera to the lower right (the cameraman quickly turned off the viewfinder):

After introducing a few images, Tabata said that he feels it would be nice to make a Japanese-style FF using the Agnis Philosophy visual quality.

The third question read, "I've never played the Final Fantasy series, but I think I'd like to play the series if you made an otome FF game." Yes, this did get some laughs, but Tabata apparently took the question very seriously and had his staff create an elaborate fake design document. You can see some images and details in this story.

After Toriyama and Kamikokuryo took the stage, the MCs conducted a few surveys. They asked the panelists which job looked like it would be the most attractive -- ie, get the most girls, be the most successful, etc. Tabata responded "Soldier 1st," although he admitted that this isn't actually a job in the traditional sense of the series. Kamikokuryo responded with Final Fantasy XII's Sky Pirate. Hashimoto said Black Mage, and Takahashi said Thief.

For the audience, Knight was top with 20%, followed by white mage with 15%, and thief, black knight, bard, and ninja with 7.5%.

The event closed off with a montage of clips from Visual Works, then some closing words from Tabata. Tabata mentioned Final Fantasy Versus XIII's development, then said "Tetsuya Nomura wanted to give the message that he'll soon show the future of Final Fantasy." It's unclear if Nomura's comment was in reference to Versus, or if he plans on showing something else shortly.