With less than a month before the PlayStation 5 release of Final Fantasy XVI, it's no surprise that Game Informer has dedicated its monthly coverage space to Square Enix's massively anticipated action RPG.
One of the stories is focused on why the game wasn't designed to be open world. We first heard that in June, when producer Naoki Yoshida explained that the Final Fantasy XVI team wanted to tell a global story and had therefore chosen to drop the open world option. A few weeks later, Yoshida added that a fully realized open world based on the entire map would have taken something like fifteen years to make.
In his reply to Game Informer, Naoki Yoshida reiterated all the above, but also added an example to get his point across: Square Enix wanted to avoid a situation where the open world of Final Fantasy XVI was empty, as that's what gamers hate the most.
For example, if you create this open world of the 23 wards of Tokyo, then basically, your story has to take place in the 23 wards of Tokyo, and it can’t take place outside of that. You can create more areas outside of that, but then that takes a lot of resources, and the more that you create, then the bigger chance that you have of that giant area that you created becoming empty, and that’s the one thing that players hate the most: huge open world but there’s nothing to do in it.
Interestingly, Yoshida also cited Final Fantasy XV criticism in the same article. He mentions it in relation to the story (and the canceled DLCs). Still, given that the wider context was the upcoming game's lack of open world, it's hard not to imagine he was also thinking about the criticism that FFXV received exactly because its world was largely empty.
There's no doubt that Final Fantasy XVI is better off without an empty open world. Ideally, a populated open world would have been the better option, but we have to believe the studio's assessment that it wasn't feasible.
In another Game Informer story, the developers went through the additional modes available in the game. Arcade Mode adds a score calculator and combat grade, ala Devil May Cry; New Game + lets players start the game with all the abilities they had unlocked in the first playthrough; finally, those looking for a real challenge can enable Final Fantasy Mode or Ultimaniac Mode for a New Game+ run, making the whole game much harder.
All New Game + runs also add the Chronolith Trials. These are multi-stage challenges, each based on an Eikon and split into four rounds of enemies. Chronolith Trials have a global leaderboard, but only if you are playing in Final Fantasy Mode.
Final Fantasy XVI may not have an open world, then, but it certainly includes a lot of endgame content. Look forward to our review in the near future.
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