Jan 13, 2010
In an interview with Square-Enix art director Isamu Kamikokuryou, it’s been revealed that during the course of the game’s development, a great many locations that’d been built and running on development hardware had to be cut. The game was prototyped in 2006 and released in Japan in 2009, so S-E had a lot of time to create a lot of assets.
“More than enough (assets) to make another (game),” says Kamikokuryou.
Kamikokuryou says that the game’s volume and balance had to be taken into account for the finished product, and as such, S-E was forced to cut certain locations for the sake of the final product.
Waste not want not, however, those assets will likely find their way into other Square-Enix games before long.
Sq-Enix says that about every FF game prior to release. Yet aside from FF X-2 they do nothing about it.
It's amazing how much you have to cut to make room for all those ellipses.