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[Draugoth]

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Final Fantasy 16 Producer Confirms It Won't Be Open World - IGN

In a new interview with IGN, producer Naoki Yoshida talked about Final Fantasy 16's inspirations, in the process confirming that it won't be open world.

www.ign.com

Final Fantasy 16 Is An Ambitious, More Mature Entry In The Series, Says Producer

Naoki Yoshida talks about what fans can look forward to in the next mainline entry in the Final Fantasy franchise.

www.gamespot.com

• The team played a lot of different modern AAA games to get a feel for what people like these days and for reference. (this shouldnt come as a surprise as Yoshida has always said that the biggest fault of Square devs and devs in general is that they dont actually play games their competitors are making and thus often make outdated design choices.)
• NOT fully open world aka one seamless map. Instead will have Big Areas that are basically different parts of the continent(s) of Valisthea to give players a better feel of a truly “global” scale.
• "In the 35-year history of the Final Fantasy series, it’s always been the guiding policy that each new installment has to be the very best game that the director at the time can put together, no matter how the game world, the characters, or the battle system might change. Because of this, gamers and Final Fantasy fans around the world have very different ideas of what a Final Fantasy game should be—but to me, it’s those elements I mentioned."
• His orginal reaction to being asked to make the next FF “Thanks, but I have my hands full with Final Fantasy XIV, so let me think about it.”
• Team started as a small core team split from XIV team and then eventually grew over the course of several years as dev continued. Didnt want this to have any impact on XIV's continued development.
• the game is fully playable from start to finish. Currently doing multi language VO, fine tuning difficulty, final touches on cutscenes, full scale debugging etc
• His fav summon is Bahamut
• jump straight from story cutscenes into real-time battles and back again without any loading times thanks to the power of PS5
• The titan battles are only a small part of the full experience. That said, each titan battle itself is long, with different phases, stages changing all in real time one of these battles is reminiscent of a 3D shooting game, another feels like a pro wrestling match, while another, like the one with Titan, incorporates an entire area as the battlefield
• Some UI was removed from the trailer for spoiler reasons
• One of the main themes explored in Final Fantasy XVI's narrative deals with the inevitable clash of values and ideals when you get multiple different people with different ideals in the same room; what is truly right and what is truly wrong?
• No plan for any tertiary content. XVI will be a complete experience.
• We follow the life of Clive Rossville through three different stages: his teens, his 20s, and his 30s.
• Lots of background lore, and reading material in the game itself.
• Game is rated 18+/M for mature because they felt it was necessary to allow us to explore those more mature themes that the game tackles.
• Combat is fast paced and you'll switch between different summon abilities on the fly (sounds kinda like weapon/style switching from DMC). Allows for a lot of customization and personal creativity.
• FFXVI is more medieval because of the personal preference of lead devs on the game. They saw a lot of people finding the modern settings of FF kinda static so decided to use this as a chance to go the other way instead.
• Already working on readying a third trailer for release this fall.

 

[FalsettoVibe]

Hopefully the new trailer will appear at the rumored PlayStation Showcase.

 

[Draugoth]

Hopefully the new trailer will appear at the rumored PlayStation Showcase.

September Showcase

 

[Tomi]

Yess

 

[Kev Kev]

to be fair, they did say there would be 4 large open zones, and possibly smaller open areas along the way. they will also have hideouts along the way where there will be hunts, side quests and other optional content. so although not open world, there will be a few open areas. but FF13 was brought up multiple times in a recent interview as a way to compare what FF16 will be like (oof)

it sounding very and combat action heavy. ~95% of what they have shown and talked about points to it being a third person action game. party members will be AI controlled, there will be some giant eikon (summon) battles that will all be very different (im thinking these will be big cinematic set pieces but i have no idea), and they will include options to make the combat easier for people who dont like action games and just want a more story driven experience.

all of that sounds very disappointing to me tbh. theres another thread on here with all the details of the interview. anyone interested in FF16 should absolutely check it out...

edit: i just realized you already put all that in the OP. lol sorry

 

[Punished Miku]

The summon stuff sounds a lot like Platinum Games. Should be a good time.

AI party members isn't great, but that's pretty much what everyone expected.

Not being open world is fine with me honestly. Kind of encouraging. Might be more variety.

 

[AJUMP23]

I would like an open world. But who knows maybe the game will still have a good story.

 

[mortal]

After all these years were finally getting an M-rated mainline entry.
I remember thinking Versus XIII would be the first one, prior to its FFXV reboot.

 

[Captain Toad]

Thank goodness. Final Fantasy should never be open-world. FFXV should never have been a mainline entry.

 

[Pagusas]

every bit of information coming out about this game makes it sound worse and worse. So glad Rebirth was announced, will help eas the annoyance of this game ends up as bad as it’s looking and sounding.

 

[TheGodfather07]

Is it PS5 only or cross gen?

 

[Draugoth]

Is it PS5 only or cross gen?

PS5 only

 

[CrimsonSquall]

Game looks fan fucking tastic. So many websites have more info. I think the Famitsu one said you will play as other characters briefly in story bits.

Development started in 2015 and the game will let you respec at any time and it’s sounding like you will have a wolf companion at your side potentially? Also Dominants turning inti Eikons may come with a cost.

All in all, Im just as hype from the reveal up till now. Can’t wait, they are putting their all into this. XV was a major disappointment but they seem to have learn from their mistakes (if FFVII Remake wasn’t enough to show us)

Edit: CG Cutscenes still tbd

 

[Kerotan Frog]

Honestly, I love what I'm hearing. This game sounds really good and after Yoshida saved XIV, I trust him. I'm glad this isn't crossgen at all.

 

[Swift_Star]

Thank goodness not open world. Wide linear is the sweet spot for JRPGs.

 

[Metnut]

Not exactly what i was hoping for from a new FF but I’m still excited to play it. Seems like he has a clear vision for what he’s trying to do with this game and development seems to have gone really well.

Day 1.

 

[Azzurri]

Open world is such a turn off to me.

It was cool 10 years ago, but now it's just a slog.

 

[UltimaKilo]

Huge open zones is good enough.

 

[Sub_Level]

Yoooooo the multiple life phases is some Mortal Kombat Deception shit.

 

[TrueLegend]

• No plan for any tertiary content. XVI will be a complete experience.

My man rules

 

[Kev Kev]

• No plan for any tertiary content. XVI will be a complete experience.

My man rules

i do like this. square did a good job making ffvii remake feel complete, only adding intergrade. and despite my criticisms for the content of Remake and intergrade, it refreshing to see a developer release a polished experience and not "fix it later" while they are simultaneously trying to shovel skins, DLC and add ons into the game.

 

[Graciaus]

How can they say they make the very best game possible when they made the 13 trilogy and also 15?

 

[Kev Kev]

Open world is such a turn off to me.

It was cool 10 years ago, but now it's just a slog.

Huge open zones is good enough.

more zones would have been nice though. FF12 had like dozens of zones, and all of them together made the world feel massive. only having 4 zones in FF16 is a little troubling to me.

im expecting FF13/FF7R linearity with 4 gran pulse style open zones along the way. which doesnt sound that bad, but i would have preferred more than just 4 big zones. hopefully the smaller explorable areas along the way are enough to satisfy my adventurous side.

im kind of under selling it, to be fair, but id rather set myself up for disappointment and be surprised, rather than vice versa

Not exactly what i was hoping for from a new FF but I’m still excited to play it. Seems like he has a clear vision for what he’s trying to do with this game and development seems to have gone really well.

hard to disagree with this. the game seems to be in really good hands

 

[Roxkis_ii]

I'm sad turn based OG final fantasy is gone, but I'm excited for what's in store. I did feel some DMC vibes form the action scenes in the last trailer, so I think this game is in good hands action wise.

I'm really looking forward to playing this game more with each bit of info released.

 

[Rush2112]

not open world. already better than XV.

 

[mortal]

How can they say they make the very best game possible when they made the 13 trilogy and also 15?

Not the same teams that made those entries.

 

[LordCBH]

more zones would have been nice though. FF12 had like dozens of zones, and all of them together made the world feel massive. only having 4 zones in FF16 is a little troubling to me.

im expecting FF13/FF7R linearity with 4 gran pulse style open zones along the way. which doesnt sound that bad, but i would have preferred more than just 4 big zones. hopefully the smaller explorable areas along the way are enough to satisfy my adventurous side.

im kind of under selling it, to be fair, but id rather set myself up for disappointment and be surprised, rather than vice versa



hard to disagree with this. the game seems to be in really good hands

I think it’s laregely going to depend on the design and depth of those zones. I’d take a tighter but much more dense area over something large but relatively empty.

 

[Sub_Level]

How can they say they make the very best game possible when they made the 13 trilogy and also 15?

The XV team is working on Forspoken. The XIII Trilogy alumni is working on VII Remake, including Naoku Hamaguchi and Motomu Toriyama.

The XVI team is the XIV team also known as Creative Business Unit 3.

 

[Spaceman292]

• No plan for any tertiary content. XVI will be a complete experience.

My man rules

But my experience is not complete without at least a mobile game, a shit anime series and a shit movie

 

[Swift_Star]

How can they say they make the very best game possible when they made the 13 trilogy and also 15?

13 is not that bad. 15 is trash.

 

[Kev Kev]

I think it’s laregely going to depend on the design and depth of those zones. I’d take a tighter but much more dense area over something large but relatively empty.

yeah i can see where youre coming from. but for me, more than a "tough area" (i assume you mean tough combat wise?) i want areas with verticality that are fun to explore, have mini games and fun side stuff to do, NPCs to interact with, puzzles to complete, chocobos to ride and other ways to traverse terrain, hidden bosses, side dungeons, powerful weapons and armor to find, etc.


edit: oh you said "tight" lol sorry my eyes are still waking up

 

[mortal]

Openworld wouldn't have been a deal breaker for me tbh, but the giant hub/zone design could allow for better variation and density within the environments.
I miss the globe-trotting traversal of past FF games, and this could potentially serve as a happy medium between the old school small scaled overworld and modern day openworld

 

[Wandering Leopard]

How can they say they make the very best game possible when they made the 13 trilogy and also 15?

• "In the 35-year history of the Final Fantasy series, it’s always been the guiding policy that each new installment has to be the very best game that the director at the time can put together, no matter how the game world, the characters, or the battle system might change. Because of this, gamers and Final Fantasy fans around the world have very different ideas of what a Final Fantasy game should be—but to me, it’s those elements I mentioned."

 

[Celcius]

Reading through the comments I feel like I’m the only one who enjoyed ff15.
Regardless, the UI seemed kinda busy in the last trailer so it’s weird hearing them say them hid things…

 

[mortal]

Reading through the comments I feel like I’m the only one who enjoyed ff15.

There were things I enjoyed about FFXV, but it was a very flawed game imo.
Lots of great ideas and concepts, but the execution left a lot to be desired. Its turbulent production history certainly didn't help.

 

[Sub_Level]

Openworld wouldn't have been a deal breaker for me tbh, but the giant hub/zone design could allow for better variation and density within the environments.
I miss the globe-trotting traversal of past FF games, and this could potentially serve as a happy medium between the old school small scaled overworld and modern day openworld

I'd imagine we're in store for FFXII/FFXIV style big zones. TBH I prefer that to the world map. The world map battles in FF are almost always braindead easy and traversal doesn't get fun until you get an airship or flying chocobo. FFI is the only one where traveling on the world map felt like you were on an epic journey in my opinion. In the SNES and PS1 games its just kind of an awkward transition between the actually detailed areas. Of course finding the secrets on the map was fun, like the Chocograph stuff in IX.

 

[Kev Kev]

Reading through the comments I feel like I’m the only one who enjoyed ff15.
Regardless, the UI seemed kinda busy in the last trailer so it’s weird hearing them say them hid things…

i looooooved 15. i loved the huge world, although it would have been way better if they lets us drive the car off road, and the combat was fun despite its flaws. there were dungeons, chocobos, NPCs, side quests, mini games, etc. everything i was sayng int that post above essentially.

but there could have and should have been alittle more to do in the big open wrld, and i have to admit the game fell apart in the last half. but you are definitely not the only one. personally i htought FF15 was a massive step in the right direction as far as making FF feel big and adventurous again. but it was flawed at the same time and jrpg fans seem to lean more toward linear experiences these days

13 is not that bad. 15 is trash.

its a spectrum.

13 had great combat but the linearity of most the game sucked. 13 also had an amazing story and some of the best cutscenes in all of FF, but no mini games and very little to do in terms of exploration and side content.

15 on the other hand wasnt linear at all and i loved that but the world was almost a little too big. there was side quests to do, mini games, chocobos and other fun stuff, but it only lasted for like the first half of the game. the story was great, but it was told poorly and the last half of the game suffered.

youre of course allowed to say the entirety of a thing is garbage, but it really makes me question youre critical analysis skills. imo, like all things, its a spectrum of some good and some bad. but i dont think any mainline FF game is wholly and completely "trash"

 

[LordCBH]

yeah i can see where youre coming from. but for me, more than a "tough area" (i assume you mean tough combat wise?) i want areas with verticality that are fun to explore, have mini games and fun side stuff to do, NPCs to interact with, puzzles to complete, chocobos to ride and other ways to traverse terrain, hidden bosses, side dungeons, powerful weapons and armor to find, etc.


edit: oh you said "tight" lol sorry my eyes are still waking up

I fat fingered the hell outta the word tight so it auto corrected to tough and I did’t even realize it when I hit post lol

 

[LordCBH]

Reading through the comments I feel like I’m the only one who enjoyed ff15.
Regardless, the UI seemed kinda busy in the last trailer so it’s weird hearing them say them hid things…

15 had its flaws but damn did I have fun with it. Largely the only issues I had was how disjointed the story was and how most major events happened off screen.

 

[Doom85]

Party-based combat confirmed, LET’S FUCKING GO!

I do hope there will be some level of being able to customize their battle strategies, plus the usual equipment and skill customization. But regardless, glad to hear it. I’m down with solo character action RPGs but for other games, it’s not what I want from a main FF, so glad to have the confirmation.

 

[mortal]

I'd imagine we're in store for FFXII/FFXIV style big zones. TBH I prefer that to the world map. The world map battles in FF are almost always braindead easy and traversal doesn't get fun until you get an airship or flying chocobo. FFI is the only one where traveling on the world map felt like you were on an epic journey in my opinion. In the SNES and PS1 games its just kind of an awkward transition between the actually detailed areas. Of course finding the secrets on the map was fun, like the Chocograph stuff in IX.

I always figured the overworld/world map segments were like abstract representations, due to the technical limitations of platforms of that time.
Like they wanted you to imagine what journeying might've looked like on a 1:1 scale. It's sort of analogous to using miniatures /practical FX in film production to create that illusion of scale.

Although it's technically now possible to replicate globe-trotting traversal closer to a 1:1, I think it would come at the expense of that hand-crafted look and feel.
The alternative being what they did in FFXV, where you are limited to a single continent with a few biomes.

Yoshida mentioned that they've played other AAA games for R&D, so I hope they take a page out of the FromSoftware book of level and map design, wth worthwhile points of interest and allow for player discovery.

 

[Fbh]

Open area is fine with me and it will probably allow them to make more varied environments which is good.
The summon battles sound disappointing, sounds like they'll be really gimmicky which usually doesn't work out well. I hope they are at least better than those in FFXV which were all style over substance.

The rest sounds great. Can't wait for this.

How can they say they make the very best game possible when they made the 13 trilogy and also 15?

The best game "that the director at the time can put together".
Also to be fair neither the director of XIII nor XV had any particularly amazing work prior to them working on a mainline FF. Toriyama made like FFX-2 and some NDS FFXII Spinoff, and Tabata had stuff like Crisis Core, The Third Birthday and FF Type-0.

It should also be worth mentioning that as much as the entire marketing for this game is centering on Yoshida, the actual director is Hiroshi Takai. Who has previously only directed The Last Remnant,

 

[Kev Kev]

Party-based combat confirmed, LET’S FUCKING GO!

I do hope there will be some level of being able to customize their battle strategies, plus the usual equipment and skill customization. But regardless, glad to hear it. I’m down with solo character action RPGs but for other games, it’s not what I want from a main FF, so glad to have the confirmation.

if they are going with just AI for party members then i imagine there will be some level of customizing their actions. maybe like the gambit system from ff12 or something similar

 

[ANDS]

Glad for the people who are excited about this, but none of this sounds at all appealing. Say what you will about FFXV (and there's a lot to say, but given the troubled history of that game that it turned out as inoffensive as it did is something of a miracle), but it still gave me FF vibes. Maybe this one will as well, and I guess it is the naturally progression AWAY from party-based gameplay that they've been on, but it is still not what you wanted to hear.

. . .if the combat is just THAT good and if the world they are designing is one full of mysteries and side-content, then sure. Just not getting that vibe and seeing this less as a world to explore and enjoy and more of just another in a long line of "FF experiments. . ."

At minimum, we don't have the absurd clash in aesthetics that FF:SOP and FF:XV have (cars and gas stations exist, but the fucking royalty look like they are out of a bad HEAVY METAL story).

 

[Doom85]

maybe like the gambit system from ff12 or something similar

While some elements of 12’s gameplay didn’t vibe with me, the gambit system was not one of them. That level of strategy detail was next level.

 

[Joelenheimer]

Thank goodness. Final Fantasy should never be open-world. FFXV should never have been a mainline entry.

FFXV never should have been a FF, twas straight spitt'n in the face of the franchise.

 

[Swift_Star]

i looooooved 15. i loved the huge world, although it would have been way better if they lets us drive the car off road, and the combat was fun despite its flaws. there were dungeons, chocobos, NPCs, side quests, mini games, etc. everything i was sayng int that post above essentially.

but there could have and should have been alittle more to do in the big open wrld, and i have to admit the game fell apart in the last half. but you are definitely not the only one. personally i htought FF15 was a massive step in the right direction as far as making FF feel big and adventurous again. but it was flawed at the same time and jrpg fans seem to lean more toward linear experiences these days


its a spectrum.

13 had great combat but the linearity of most the game sucked. 13 also had an amazing story and some of the best cutscenes in all of FF, but no mini games and very little to do in terms of exploration and side content.

15 on the other hand wasnt linear at all and i loved that but the world was almost a little too big. there was side quests to do, mini games, chocobos and other fun stuff, but it only lasted for like the first half of the game. the story was great, but it was told poorly and the last half of the game suffered.

youre of course allowed to say the entirety of a thing is garbage, but it really makes me question youre critical analysis skills. imo, like all things, its a spectrum of some good and some bad. but i dont think any mainline FF game is wholly and completely "trash"

I do think that the entirety of XV is bad apart from the combat system and graphics.

 

[Kev Kev]

I do think that the entirety of XV is bad apart from the combat system and graphics.

yeah see youre one of these smug FF fans that i have encountered in other threads on here. thanks for letting me know

 

[Graciaus]

Not the same teams that made those entries.

Irrelevant to my point. "it’s always been the guiding policy that each new installment has to be the very best game that the director at the time can put together"

And those games were awful.

 

[Swift_Star]

yeah see youre one of these smug FF fans that i have encountered in other threads on here. thanks for letting me know

You can’t handle people not liking XV? Wtf lol