Final Fantasy 16: New gameplay and story details

Game Director Naoki Yoshida shares some new info on the upcoming role-playing game Final Fantasy XVI. In addition to the current development status, he goes into details about the story, world and combat system.

With Final Fantasy 16, the latest part of the popular role-playing series awaits us in about a year. Producer Naoki Yoshida, who pulled the coals out of the fire for his employer in Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn, reveals new bits of information about the role-playing game.

No open word, effective fights

First of all, Yoshida explains that a large open game world was deliberately omitted in order to avoid idling. Instead, the protagonist Clive, who can sometimes also count on a few companions – controlled by the AI ​​- moves in marked-out areas that are based on a medieval setting. The story encompasses three periods of the young warrior’s life. Starting with Clive as a teenager, it continues in his twenties and he will also age another ten years until the story closes.

At a certain point in the story, Clive has the power to summon giant beings to aid him in battle. Formerly called Summons, Shiva, Ifrit and Co. are now called Eikons. According to Yoshida, the abilities of the Eikons can be combined, and switching is always possible during action-packed battles. Yoshida did not yet want to answer whether the cute wolf pup Torgal can also intervene in the dispute.

Ryota Suzuki, who is also responsible for the crazy on-screen action in Devil May Cry 5, is responsible for the combat system. There should also be fights in which the Eikons – like in a Godzilla brawl – compete against each other. These kaiju fights should then be different, sometimes reminiscent of a shooter and sometimes of a wrestling match or an arena fight.

That’s still to be done

The current development status of FF16 raises hopes that the planned release can be held in summer 2023. According to Yoshida, the game is already completely playable, of course the gameplay and cutscenes still need to be further refined and improved. The sound recordings aren’t finished yet either, and there’s still a lot of debugging to do to get to the last remaining bugs.

Finally, the producer states that no further DLCs are planned for FF 16, with the purchase of the game the player gets a “complete experience” that should not miss anything. A brand new trailer is also set to be released later this year.