Final Fantasy 16 will not follow in the footsteps of its predecessor when it decided not to become an open-world RPG.
Square Enix decided to design Final Fantasy 16 with a focus on creating a number of explorable areas, similar to Pokemon Legends: Arceus.
Square Enix has had a lot of big news for Final Fantasy fans over the past few weeks. The second part of Final Fantasy 7 Remake was shown with information revealing that the project will have three main game parts. Along with a number of other exciting titles at the June 2022 PlayStation State of Play event, Final Fantasy 16 had an explosive gameplay trailer that revealed more about the latest installment in the series for fans.
Excitement has spread throughout the online Final Fantasy community, with many gamers curious about how the story, characters, and gameplay will evolve in this new version. Recently, the game’s producer Naoki Yoshida sat down with IGN to discuss some more details about the game, including confirming that Final Fantasy 16 won’t have a massive open world like Final’s. Fantasy 15.
“To give a story that feels like it spans the entire globe and beyond, we decided to avoid designing an open world that limits us to an open space,” says Yoshida. only. Instead, Square Enix decided to design Final Fantasy 16 with a focus on creating a certain amount of explorable areas, similar to Pokemon Legends: Arceus, a game that was also originally supposed to have an open world but Instead, it provides players with different spaces separated by loading screens.
Final Fantasy 16 might not have been as seamless as an open-world title at first, but this will give the game a true “global scale,” according to Yoshida.
This means that Final Fantasy 16 might not have been as seamless as an open-world title at first, but according to Yoshida this will give the game a true “global scale”. These regions will most likely include the six kingdoms of Final Fantasy 16 that were introduced to fans in an update last October. Each kingdom in Final Fantasy 16 has a Dominant, who holds the power to summon an Eikon that can “raze nations”. Moving away from this open-world gameplay could help make kingdoms and Dominants more unique, if the game’s design reflects its context.
Yoshida also states that in “extensive user research” they have found that many young gamers have never played Final Fantasy or have any interest in the series. To be able to overcome this, Yoshida and his team played a lot of games, specifically inspired by “recent AAA open-world RPGs”. There’s no word on what games Final Fantasy 16 is influenced by, but that will probably become clear when the game is finally released to gamers.
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