Sounds like a more active version of FF XII, as do the environments (and their appearance in the trailer), and this pleases me.
For all the automation that FF XII, using Gambits actually allowed me to be far more involved in not-automated tasks than other FF games. In other FFs, you'd never bother most of the abilities or spells, but when you have your Gambits set-up in XII and play on Active Mode, that automation actually frees up time to do other things. None of which are necessary but are certainly fun.
I actually find that I spend far more time customization my Gambits or using Abilities in real time in XII than I ever do in other FF games other than spamming Attack, Attack, Attack, Attack, or maybe some Cure or Draw for variety. To be sure, FF XII suffered from the same balance issues as FFTs in that you can easily over-level or 3-4 abilities can break the game in the same way as TG Cid. But if you choose to avoid those flaws, much in the same way you can choose to use Geomancers instead of Cid in FFT and not over-level, there's a lot of things you can do with the combat.
I find I appreciate FF XII's combat more when I look at it not as an active combat battle system but a battlefield management or strategy system. The whole point is that you set up your strategy for reactionaries, conservation, etc before entering the battlefield, and half the fun is actually watching your strategy unfold and work by itself. It's similar to how you build a town in Settlers and the enjoyment is watching a perfectly designed city be navigated by your peasants, or when you set up the perfect strategy of supply routes in Romance of the Three Kingdoms and watch your automated 'eco-system' in effect.
So, seeing this influence in XV is not something I dislike. If anything, I think it can free up time for other things. A clear design goal is the relationships between the characters, and I think some level of tactical automation can actually bolster that. If the system is similar to Gambits, you could set up triggers where 2 characters interact in a way that is simply not possible in real-time, such as how, when you're control Basch, you could half Balthier use a Handkerchief on Penelo if she gets the Oil effect -- see the relationship and story reference there? With automation, these things could also tailored by the player and are a way to add personal style to the relationships. That's the logic, at least, and obviously balance can effect how practical or necessary it actually is.
But personally, as someone that found customizing and management Gambits and then using their automation to enjoy the smaller less-relevant abilities as much more involving than any other FF game, I welcome any XII influence in XV. I think it actually has a lot of potential for a game that is supposed to about how 4 characters interact.