While Sony's late-era PS1 JRPG The Legend of Dragoon became a cult classic, it was often seen at the time as pretty direct imitator of the Final Fantasy series. While the success of Square's role-playing series might've helped convince PlayStation to foot the bill for its $15 million development budget, Legend of Dragoon only happened in the first place because its developers genuinely wanted to make it.
Former PlayStation Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida, who served as producer on Legend of Dragoon during his tenure with the company, felt so strongly about the JRPG that he once crashed a stream of the game from gaming personality Kyle Bosman. Bosman suggested that Legend of Dragoon was meant to be Sony's "own Final Fantasy 7," and Yoshida appeared in Twitch chat to say "No one told us to make any kind of game. We wanted to make this game."
