As Final Fantasy 16 approaches its release date, the game’s creators are becoming more open about all of the hard work they’ve put in over the last six years, including some major modifications to the game’s party structure compared to FF15. A full interview with Final Fantasy 16 directors Hiroshi Takai and Kazutoyo Maehiro, as well as producer Naoki “Yoshi-P” Yoshida, was published this month in a Japanese newspaper, offering a wealth of fresh information about the next JRPG. Among other things, the creators revealed fresh information about the game’s party structure and hinted that Clive Rosfield could not be the sole playable character in Final Fantasy 16.
Since 2016, Square Enix Creative Business Unit 3 has begun working on Final Fantasy 16. Yoshida, who is directly supervising the production of FF16, heads the internal company that notably turned around MMORPG Final Fantasy 14. Final Fantasy 14, as one of the greatest comeback stories in modern gaming history, undoubtedly impacted Final Fantasy 16, yet the new JRPG won’t have much in common with the studio’s previous effort, given that it’s a standalone, single-player game.
However, this single-player game may not necessarily imply a single-character experience, since Maehiro has said that players would be able to control characters other than the protagonist Clive Rosfield, at least for the first several hours of Final Fantasy 16. It’s worth noting that the context of his (machine-translated) comment suggests that the producer was talking to an early version of the game in which the devs experimented with numerous playable characters, but whether or not that’s the case remains to be seen.
What is more certain is that, in keeping with the series’ decades-long history, the game will have a party structure. While a previously released gameplay video showed Clive battling alone, Yoshida has since emphasised that this was a stylistic decision, emphasising that Clive would nearly always be accompanied by a travel party. Final Fantasy 15 had a similar concept, although players could still swap between the four main characters in the 2016 game. That will not be the case this time, since all FF16 party members will be totally controlled by the AI, according to Yoshida. In terms of the hero lineup, the creators released the core Final Fantasy 16 character cast last month.
In the same interview, Yoshida indicated that the game is nearing completion and that the Final Fantasy 16 release date would be confirmed before the end of the year. While Square Enix had said that the game will be released in the summer of 2023, the fact that its creators are making progress quicker than planned may enable it to deliver its next AAA JRPG in the first half of 2023.
The game has long been established as a timed PlayStation exclusive, however, a new Sony promotional video revealed that the FF16 PS5 exclusive period would be rather brief, at least in comparison to the Final Fantasy 7 Remake.
