Wow. 13 Months seems like this project was indefinitely shelved, but I promise this is absolutely not the case, DFFT is still in the works and is constantly going from one drastic redesign after another. While I am just one man with limited resources and even more limited experience in the broad field of game design, others have accomplished more with little more than what I have, but there comes a time when a guy has got to acknowledge his limits.
That being said: Project DFFT will be shifted into an entirely new direction. Instead of making a full-blown, fully functional game in any respect, I will instead turn the entirety of the project into a fully planned out, designed, printed-and-bound strategy guide.
Before scoffing out the disappointment of this apparent downgrade, hear me out! One with my education and resources was meant to do a project like this: book arts and illustrative design were apart of my Studio Arts bachelor's degree, so this is something squarely in my purview. Also, I cannot escape the beautiful irony of publishing a game that may very well never exist in an art form that has slowly but surely been dying off over the last couple of decades (despite how short-lived said art form has been thusly, but the point stands).
Besides, far be it for me to take this plan of action just because it's easier (though there certainly is that), but I also have an end game to this process. When the final product is complete in PDF form--which will freely be published over the world wide web as an act of love that it has always been--the next step will be to print and professionally bind two copies in full-on glorious physical form: one for myself as a keepsake and one to be sent as a final endeavor to Square-Enix itself as an earnest and heartfelt appeal to make this game in house where it truly belongs. Perhaps I'm being a little too optimistic on that last one (I'm more likely to receive a cease-and-desist if the gaming industry is consistent), but like many things in life, its the journey rather than the destination that makes this all the more interesting.
Sometime soon I'll be posting updates on some of the more extreme game-play tweaks I have suggested and also a link to the Google Docs file where all my research and ideas have so far coalesced. Once I've gotten to where I'm comfortable that my ideas can bear the scrutiny of the often cruel internet critique, I shall share my results with fellow series fans that would like to add their input as well.