Square Enix's Development Studio 1, the team led by director Yoshinori Kitase and responsible for Final Fantasy X, plans to unveil its latest project at the Tokyo Game Show this coming weekend, as was announced last week.

The identity of said project is of course tightly under wraps, but a few scraps of information compiled by the modern-day wizards of Quiter point in an interesting direction: towards a spinoff of the ground-breaking Final Fantasy VII.

The first oddity has to do with Square Enix's recent Final Fantasy merchandising efforts. Since early this year, a lineup of licensed widgets paying homage to the Shinra characters -- the business-suited thugs from early in the game -- has been available in Japan. That campaign is continuing now into fall, and Cafe Reo, the character-goods manufacturer which produces the bulk of Square Enix's FF merchandise, has announced a new premium for purchasers of licensed stuff.

That premium is pictured to the above left -- a limited-edition bag bearing Final Fantasy X-2 on the one side and silhouettes of the Turks and company on the other. It's likely that this is the same premium that will be given away to customers at the Square Enix shop booth at TGS this weekend.

The second oddity may be found on the Japanese Square Enix web page, where the link to the Final Fantasy VII has disappeared from the archived list of FF games. The FFVII page is still on the server, but there's no link to it from elsewhere in Square Enix's archive.

This is mostly idle speculation, but it's something to keep in mind leading in to Friday's announcement, and the prospect of the Turks starring in their own games is a pretty amusing one. Stay tuned for details when the deal goes down in Tokyo.

Click to enlarge.