I don't know that not having a female is necessarily a sexist issue. The overall story will determine whether or not it was an essential move or an arbitrary one. I mean, it kind of sucks either way, but the reactionism is a little silly. If the story warrants an all-male cast than that's what it should have.

That said, I can't wait for SE to get past FFXV. I'm actually looking forward to the game now, but I'm also more looking past FFXV toward them finally giving us some real old-fashioned quality JRPFFG love, with Real FantasyTM, elements, crystals, moogles, knights, castles, airships, fun (if ridiculous) weaponry, CLASSES/JOBS, bad guys with mmmph, bad guys who are psychotic and fun, stories that suck me in and keep me playing for hours and days and weeks, plot twists and sacrifices, dirt and grime and ugliness*, honest-to-goodness humo(u)r, a world I actually want to experience and can experience, and lastly but not leastly a cast I can give a smurf about. Seriously, when 16-bit sprites evoke more emotion than your million-dollar CG centerpiece, you're doing something wrong.

*Final Fantasy used to do dirtiness so well. FFVI, FFVII, FFVIII, FFIX, FFT all had a certain level of grittiness and ugliness built into their worlds that juxtaposed so nicely with all the prettiness, and also came across as more realistic and more poignant. The heroes weren't shiny and sleek. They weren't perfect. Think of any character from any of those games: they all had serious and interesting flaws that added tension to the characters, that added tension between the characters, that propelled the stories' plots, that made the player feel involved and made the player actually care. Steiner, one of my favorite characters, is a typical knight-in-shining-armor, except he's a bumbling idiot, his armor is rusty, his valor and honor are unbalanced, in short he's a wreck of a character, AND SO THERE'S SOMETHING TO DEVELOP. For a while there, SE was using characterization to play with but also work against tropes, against archetypes (some of which they had created in the first place), in some very interesting ways, and it feels like that's all been lost now. The tension, that beautiful sexy tension, that flowed through the games during those glory years seems all but lost.

So yeah, what were we talking about? Oh, yeah, woo-hoo, road trip.