Quote Originally Posted by Bolivar View Post
Like what?

They paid homage to VII in certain ways - every environment was different from the last and continued pushing the story forward but certainly they did not set out to realign the boundaries of the medium - like they consciously did in VII and VIII.
In an interview with one of the developers on the game either about Lightning or something else who said something along the lines of "We wanted it to be widely well receive as FFVII." It could have been taken out of context, but no one ever challenged it, so I never questioned it until now.

Thinking about it more that might have been more about the Fabula Nova Crystallis Final Fantasy than any one specific game.