I don’t want to rudely make a post that’s just quibbling, though: Ogre Battle was a year before FF6, and Matsuno’s path to involvement in FF was probably that Quest was published by Enix, who would go on to merge with Squaresoft, those connections. Matsuno’s of the era of Japanese business where he’s politely quiet about sensitive details, but based on interviews he’s given it seems like he had already been hired at Square briefly before development began on FFT (and from there Sakaguchi pounced on now having the TO director at the company, it’s very well-regarded in Japan).
I’ve never heard that of FF9 either, other than the early concept art having some visual similarity. Like that article alludes to, FF9 began development at the now-defunct Squaresoft USA branch office in Hawaii, and had more input from the western staff than maybe any other entry (such that at first they would not commit to it being a mainline title, lol). Various aspects of development were for the first time outsourced to non-Japanese studios: a few years back, in response to some Neogaf sleuthing (and probably figuring enough time had passed) some of the American and Canadian CGI artists who had been contracted for background art put out their originals, for example.
Matsuno is currently fully writing the scenario for the “Bozjan Southern Front” content in FF14, itself tied in to the preceding Ivalice raid series and now inextricable from the lore/setting of the game as a hole; and it’s rife with incredibly niche references to the OB series in turn. Head honcho of FF14, Yoshida Naoki, who is a younger man, has said that Tactics Ogre is his favorite game of all time and that he hoped upon joining S-E to someday work with Matsuno; well, now he does, and seems to have been responsible for convincing Matsuno to work again with the company— and after the big success of FF14’s reboot, Yoshida is now producing FF16. So what I’m saying is, even if Matsuno doesn’t have an out-on-out credit on 16 (and I’m sure he’ll get at least ‘special thanks’) it’s safe to say it’s not just inspired by his work but that he’s touching the project in this way.
