Do you think Square-Enix is doing a good job?

[Sephiroth]

Man, you're really hating on Ardyn aren't you? Technically, my statement would cover all your complaints about Ardyn and the open-world design, so I'm not sure what your point is here.

Exactly what my post implied: That you totally generalize to make the expanding and nostalgia thing an automatically bad thing. Which is even more highlighted by using the obligatoric bad-tasting "milking" term for these situations.

And to answer your question: Ardyn is the only character in the entire franchise I dislike. Simply because I cannot like when the execution of pleasing someone leaks of just that alone. That is why I never became a fan of Naruto. The series might be cool, but from the very beginning it reeked of me as the "lets make a story of ninja because ninja are cool, many people like ninja" creation. It might be a bit unfair because the series might not be that bad but that alone makes it unattractive to me. People hate fan service overall. I do not. I hate "obvious smeling fan service that was not utilized well".

SE did to XV with all the VI milking what XIII was doing with all of the VII references, so yeah, again my point has been made that SE falls back on reminding us about the "good times" instead of building a world and story that can stand on it's own.

Actually it did not. XIII has a few hommages to VII, sure. XV by trying to be a love letter to the franchise - which I in general think is a good thing - takes a lot from many games. As a matter of fact that was even the intention of a character called "Safeiroth" being in the game which can still be seen by the MagiTek mechs having the letters "SAF" on them. It is not even that XV takes it to the next level because I am Final Fantasy addicted and therefore love the throwbacks. The VI influence itself is not what I do not like. It simply is the execution of that influence, such as with Ardyn or the heavily Open World influenced "we got criticised by the fans for XIII so it has to be like that now" thing that can just be felt even though as I very often say XIII-2 and Lightning Returns very much already did a good job of listening to fan wishes AND YET at the same time doing what the creators themselves want and not just "wanting what the fans want". I have no problem with throwing one a bone. I do not call that "milking" and I do not associate the term "fan service" with something evil. It is all about the modalities. And XV with its trophy that literally says "The Open World" fitting its open world design and the forced Ardyn is just too extreme. Same goes for Breath of the Wild. As I always say. Breath of the Wild is basically nothing but a cool sounding alternative to "Zelda: Open World": I do love XV and BotW a lot. But especially this whole "we have to force ourselves to make an open world and all" thing does not appeal to me when I can feel it that much. Hate XIII as much as you want, but XIII never even was advertised as being like normal Final Fantasy. In 2009 Kitase-san already explained it is a "genre straddler" and that it is supposed to be different, supposed to be something else. And I would not even need that. As far as it seems you are the one who wants diversity even more. What I am talking about though is that I simply want a product that, when it actually wants to throw you a bone, does not fail at its execution, thus the mentioning of Ardyn and the Open World factor where I cannot help but feel WHY exactly they are in there and are bundles with an overkill of that instead of moderately executed integration of those aspects.