Final Fantasy XVI Developer Interview – New Engine With No Forspoken Tech, Arcade Mode, Global Leaderboards

In the second half of our hands-on preview with Final Fantasy XVI, we had the pleasure of sitting in on a group interview between myself and The Verge’s Ash Parrish along with three of the lead designers on Final Fantasy XVI with Michael-Christopher Koji Fox assisting in interpretation. Among those present were Producer Naoki Yoshida, Director Hiroshi Takai, and Combat Lead Ryota Suzuki for an intimate forty-minute session digging into some of the lore and story choices as well as what both RPG and hardcore character action fans can look forward to in Final Fantasy XVI.

Ash Parrish (The Verge): In an interview with IGN, you addressed Final Fantasy XVI’s struggle with diversity. In that interview, you said the homogeneity was chosen on purpose because of the isolated nature of the politics and the world in itself and that was the kind of story you wanted to tell. You wanted to focus on this isolated place [where] people all look this same. We respect that that’s the kind of story that you want to tell but from that interview, there have been a lot of concerns and comments from fans of color that feel a [certain] way about it, thinking that because this place [Valisthea] is based on European history, that automatically defaults it to an ‘All-White’ setting. I wanted to know if you had the opportunity to hear that feedback and what you might want to say to fans of color who are turned away from the game. 

Naoki Yoshida: This is a very difficult question and it deserves great care with words and phrasing and nuance. It’s something that means a lot to different people and it can be very nuanced in how different people interpret the situation. I believe that with Final Fantasy XVI, we’ve weaved together a variety of peoples and cultures set in this sweeping fantasy narrative and world that we have strived to create with care and respect, something that’s being done with the Final Fantasy series. We hope that when players finally get able to take up [Final Fantasy XVI] in their own hands, they will be able to see what we have aimed for and will ultimately be able to connect with that unique experience. Other than that, going deep into it is something that we’ve already done and this is what we believe in and that’s all about when players get it into their hands and make that decision for themselves about what they see in the game.

Kai: Over the past decade and a half, Final Fantasy has been trending more in line with modern and futuristic settings. Why the return to High Fantasy for Final Fantasy XVI? And to follow-up: in the West, darker High Fantasy has been a very popular genre over the past few years. Is the story for Final Fantasy XVI reactionary to what’s popular in the West, or has that always been a part of your design philosophy?

Naoki Yoshida: You are correct in your observations that these past three Final Fantasy [titles] have all been very modern, but when you look back at the entire thirty-five-year history of Final Fantasy, more than half of [the titles] when you look back have been High Fantasy and it’s just that it has switched to a modern type of setting. When it came to [deciding] what kind of game to make with Final Fantasy XVI, the reason we chose High Fantasy is that, as creators, it’s the genre that we enjoy. 

To your other question about if this was reactionary towards Dark Fantasy in the West, more than that, again, we really like Dark Fantasy as well and that’s what we want to create. The minute that we knew that our team was going to be creating the new Final Fantasy XVI, the first that came to us was that if we were going to be creating it and we are going to spend all of this time and effort doing it, let’s do something that we love and that’s why we chose this genre. And of course, as we were starting [development], dark fantasy was starting to get very popular in the world and this was the perfect time to do this as well.

Ash: I remember that at the beginning of the presentation that elsewhere you wanted Final Fantasy XVI to be a roller coaster and I wanted to know why. It seems like there’s this hard pivot away from the kinds of themes and experiences that fans have come to expect from Final Fantasy. After playing the Eikon battles, [it feels like] somebody woke up and watched Pacific Rim and [decided] to put Kaiju battles into Final Fantasy XVI. I just wanted to know what your thoughts or philosophies were on why you wanted to turn away from what fans would expect.

Naoki Yoshida: It’s not like we went into this thinking that we were going to step away from expectations. For me, I was a fan of the original Final Fantasy and around the same time, the original Dragon Quest had come out. Of course, having played both, I compared them and what I really enjoyed about Final Fantasy was that it felt like a movie. There’s no opening and you’re immediately in the game. Then you cross the Drawbridge and then you get that title screen and it really felt like you were playing in a movie. That was thirty-five years ago and now we have the PlayStation 5 technology where it actually does feel like you’re in a movie and controlling the movie. That’s the thing we wanted to create with Final Fantasy XVI and going back to those Final Fantasy roots. 

Just over these past thirty-five years, we’ve seen that Final Fantasy fans are distancing themselves from the series and there aren’t as many people playing the series as time went on. It’s up to us to see how we’re going bring in new players and bring back players that left the series. Creating a game of this scale and scope costs a lot of money and if people aren’t playing your game, you can’t recoup your development costs *laughs*. There is a fear of the series becoming more niche. Final Fantasy has always been about a series where it would come out and everyone would buy it so it’s about bringing those people back and bringing new people in. To do that, the best way was to challenge ourselves and that one idea was to make [Final Fantasy XVI] full action. 

Going back to your earlier comment about how it felt like the Kaiju battles in Pacific Rim, the battle that you got to play (Ifrit vs. Garuda), again, was designed to feel like a Kaiju battle that you’d see in Ultraman or Evangelion. But that’s only that battle and that style is only used in that one battle. We have other Eikon vs. Eikon battles that may resemble a 3D shooting game or a high-speed action kind of game. Each of these battles is created from the ground up and they’re all unique with a different type of feel to them. We are going to provide players with a unique experience for each individual battle. 

Hiroshi Takai: I don’t think that, or at least it wasn’t our intent, to drift away too far from what the core series brings. We get asked by a lot of media about what we think constitutes a Final Fantasy game. I think that, for me, the one thing is how each game in the series always tries to do something new and challenge something one of the Final Fantasies in the past had done to bring something new to the series. With Final Fantasy XVI, our challenge was to go full action and have these Eikon-vs-Eikon battles. Because this change is so big, that’s what sticks out to players and they feel like it’s bigger than it actually is. 

Again, up until now especially with this event, we’ve been putting a lot of focus on the action aspects of the game, but what we have here is an action RPG. Being Square-Enix, we put a lot of pride into our RPG elements. Those RPG elements, while we haven’t talked about them much, do exist in the game; we do have side quests and weapon customizations and things like that. Hopefully, in the near future, we can talk about that and ease the fears that fans feel like Final Fantasy XVI is only action. There is an RPG here as well. If you look at Final Fantasy XVI, one game that is kind of close to how the whole game works is the most recent God of War (2018).

Kai: With this being the first Final Fantasy developed specifically for PlayStation 5, has Luminous Productions assisted Creative Business Unit III with development? Will any of the newer technologies that were in Forspoken, such as DirectStorage, be utilized in Final Fantasy XVI?

Naoki Yoshida: To talk a little bit about business, Forspoken and Final Fantasy XVI began development around the same time. Final Fantasy XVI is actually using an engine we’ve created specifically for Final Fantasy XVI, so there isn’t much sharing of technology between the Forspoken and Final Fantasy teams.

Kai: There are the Timely Accessories that help guide players into Final Fantasy XVI if they’re more used to roleplaying games. Inversely, I wanted to ask if there will be opposite accessories that will make Final Fantasy XVI feel more like a character action game or more difficult for the player. 

Ryota Suzuki: There are some accessories that you didn’t get to see in the game today that are more geared toward the action-heavy user. 

Naoki Yoshida: The overall game design here is that, first and foremost, we wanted to tell our story. For the first run-through, we want players to focus and experience that story and rollercoaster ride. While we do have a lot of different accessories that enhance the experience for those high-end users, those accessories really shine on the second run-through. 

When you clear the game, you’ll have the opportunity to carry that data over into New Game Plus. This means that you’ll have actions and accessories that you earned in late game but will have them at the beginning of the new game and force your way through the game with super strong abilities and actions and take advantage of fun there.

We always have a higher difficulty mode called the Final Fantasy mode which increases the difficulty of the game but also changes enemy placement and brings in high-level enemies into the early game to further challenge players. Again, using that data they’ve carried over [from completing the game once]. On top of that, we have other modes as well. The game is broken up into stages and we have a mode where you can go back and replay stages in what we call Arcade Mode. We’ll have global leaderboards so you can see how you stack up to players across the world. 

Hiroshi Takai: Within the Arcade Mode, we have several levels of difficulty and the highest level of difficulty is one of the hardest things that we want to challenge our high-end users to see how far they can get. Speaking back to the Final Fantasy mode, it’s not an exact copy of the game that’s harder. We’ve changed it so that it feels like something new and will challenge the players. 

We’re talking a lot about the difficulty and how hard Final Fantasy XVI is but again, we want to focus on that the first run-through is accessible for everyone to be able to complete the game. We’ve made a game where we feel everyone can get through because we’re very proud of our story so don’t worry.

Ash: I wanted to go back to where you said that you wanted Final Fantasy XVI to feel like God of War (2018). One of the things about both God of War titles is that there are a lot of really heartfelt, tender emotional moments in the game. One of the things I’m noticing in all of the media we’ve seen so far is that Final Fantasy XVI is very dark with a lot of blood and conflict and [being] super serious. It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of space for lightheartedness and fun.

I wanted to know if you were also able to incorporate those moments of levity because I’m thinking of the campfire moment from the end of Final Fantasy XV and things like that. As a follow-up to that, also speaking of God of War, when you were in New Game Plus or after the story was over, you’d have special fights against Valkyries that weren’t accessible in the base game. I’m wondering if Final Fantasy XVI will include that as well and you’ll be able to fight special monsters that you unlock. 

Naoki Yoshida: You’ve mentioned that a lot of the stuff so far seems to be very dark and sad and heavy. We’ve done that on purpose because that’s what we wanted to show that Final Fantasy has changed and we’ve gone back in a dark direction. That’s why a lot of what we’ve shown has been dark. One of the reasons that we are doing this is that in the past ten-plus years, Final Fantasy has been about how bright the series is. We still have these dark themes about how we’re going to save the world, but then it’s like we have these teens running around and going fishing even though the world is supposed to be ending. There’s not a sense of reality there. 

This is because in the real world, where there’s light, there’s always darkness and that is with the people as well. People are not all good; they’re not all bad. There’s the stuff in between that exists. We wanted to create something that again felt very real and that’s why a lot of our promotion has been focused on it. That said, we understand again that Final Fantasy is about those emotional scenes. It’s about love and bonds, and yes, we do have that in Final Fantasy XVI as well. It’s just that a lot of that is connected directly with a lot of spoilers, so it’s hard to show in promotional material without spoiling.

There’s always the fear that if we show a lot of heartfelt and emotional stuff, we get people that say ‘oh, they’re just doing the same things they’ve done before’. We wanted to show that we’ve shifted in this direction, at least for this [media event].

Hiroshi Takai: Now about the New Game Plus question. Again, Final Fantasy XVI is designed for heavy action users who can have a lot of fun while it’s accessible for players that aren’t good at action games. What we didn’t want was content that was only accessible by only a small group of players. We wanted all of our content to be playable by everyone. In that sense, for that first run-through, again, we have created a story that all of the players will be able to experience the same thing without some players getting things that are only unlockable by someone that’s playing on a certain difficulty level. On that second [playthrough] on Final Fantasy mode, that again unlocks a difficulty that will further challenge players that want an action experience without taking away from the players that just want to play for the story.

Naoki Yoshida: As we mentioned before, we did want to put monsters in the Final Fantasy mode that wouldn’t be accessible to players outside of that difficulty [setting]. When I say difficulty, I don’t just mean the difficulty of the monsters that you face. It’s monster placement and late-game enemies showing up in early-game. It feels different and unique. It’s not just the same mode ramped up in difficulty. It’s a mixture of these different things. It’s not that there are any original bosses, the game will feel completely different the second time through. You’ll have to use certain techniques to beat the bosses and it will be much more challenging. 

Kai: To follow up on that, we see a lot of inspiration from Final Fantasy XIV raid and boss fight mechanics in the design philosophy for these fights. I’m curious if we will see some similar design from the Savage tier of encounters [from Final Fantasy XIV] present in the combat. 

Naoki Yoshida: Final Fantasy XVI, being a role-playing game, has aspects of leveling up. As you level up, your character gets stronger, your defense gets stronger and you deal more damage with your weapon. The game is based around that if players are not as good technique-wise, as long as they level up their character and get that better gear and use the Timely Accessories, then they’ll be able to enjoy the story. 

You’ve mentioned the Savage tier, where you have the monster changing its actions to create a more difficult battle. We don’t have things like that. How we adjust the difficulty is by putting the player in a situation where it’s going to test the player’s actions. We cap the level and stop the ability to level up. It becomes a situation where the player has to use their own technique to defeat the battle rather than the RPG parameters from leveling up. It’s really a test of the player’s skills. 

Thank you for your time.