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We can't know how chess is going to evolve, but we can do a little
thinking on where it could go. Capablanca and Fisher seem to have set the
stage for the current debate. On 8x8 boards, FRC and similar variants seem
to have it all tied up. Really, with the same pieces, there is a limit to
what you could do. I suppose there is a slight possibility the pawn could
be tinkered with, but, on an 8x8, could the pieces really change? I
suspect it's unlikely.
On the larger boards, the new pieces of choice have all pretty much been
the standard trio, namely the long-range sliders with the knight move
added. This has the virtue of being instantly recognizable to the typical
chess player, and gives that player some more power pieces to play around
with. But I lean toward George's point of view [unsurprisingly, given my
design history] that the game then suffers from too much power, especially
as the power pieces can now leap as well as slide indefinitely. The idea of
eliminating the leap by using moa and mao [non-leaping knights] as the
additives does reduce that power a bit. But I'd like to examine some
other possibilities. One possibility that might be interesting [though
just as an experiment, it's unlikely mesing with the knight will catch
on] is to replace the knights in Falcon Chess with the bent Hero, which
does include all the knight's moves as a subset of its move.