Connections to FFT.

[Aria28]

This seems to be the quotation you keep leaning on (even though they're not the words of Matsuno himself).

He was understandably mum about the plot, though he did confirm that there are no direct connections to any previous game set in Ivalice--it's the same world, but don't expect any familiar faces.

Everything considered, it's not at all a conclusive statement. By "the same world," he easily could have been referring to the consistent atmosphere and fantasy setting that pervades Ivalice in its numerous incarnations. It can be taken either way.

I think it's a whole. There's this quot, plus other from members of the development team (if you check the other interview) who say basically the same thing, the fact that the maps of the different games related to "Ivalice" seem to work together (Edit: I know someone put FF XII's and FF T's, maps one after the other, so that the Ordalia parts of the FF T map and of the FF XII map are aligned and they work very well as a continuation of each other - check Spatvark's post above). Plus small things, from one game to another, that seem to indicate continuity. I'd say it's a lot of coincidences if those are all completely different worlds

But I agree, any of those elements alone isn't convincing per se - and even with all of them, it's still not 100% sure if it's one and the same world or parallel ones. That being said, in the interview with team members (direct quotes this time), they are asked directly at one point if it's the same world, and the reply is "[....]I would say that this is another version, maybe, of what you've seen previously. We'd like to show a different version of Ivalice." I would think, if it wasn't the same world at all, saying so would be much more simple. But, again, that doesn't tell us whether they are parallel worlds or on the same timeline.

Oh well, with Matsuno gone from SE, we may very well never know for sure....