FF16 is essentially complete!? Interview with three key players
Planned for release in Summer 2023, the next numbered entry in the Final Fantasy series is Final Fantasy 16. Its newest trailer, “Ambition”, was unveiled last month on October 20th.
With that in mind, Dengeki Online got to interview three key members of this game’s development team: Naoki Yoshida, Hiroshi Takai, and Kazutoyo Maehiro. In particular, this is the first appearance for Takai and Maehiro in FF16 promotional interviews, so they had a lot to say about their feelings on the game’s development to date. Additionally, two of our interviewees are veterans of Final Fantasy 14’s development team, so the interview wound up mixing in some anecdotes about FF14 as well, so we’d love it if you could read along and take special note of those points.
A work that lives up to Takai’s and Maehiro’s aims for “Final Fantasy”
Q: Takai and Maehiro, this is your first interview for FF16, so we thought it would be great if you could re-introduce yourselves. Takai is the Main Director, and Maehiro is the Creative Director and Lead Scriptwriter - those are your titles, but please tell us about your current responsibilities with respect to FF16 in more detail.
Takai: We give direction - in the sense that both myself and Maehiro are responsible for oversight of the whole project. Within that, my role is to build the general framework for the game - to say “let’s make this sort of game”. From there, Maehiro takes that direction and turns it into tactical instructions that the development team can move forward with, and that’s how development has essentially progressed.
Maehiro: To be honest, there’s so much to do that it’s difficult to really pick one thing and say that’s my job. General game design supervision, worldbuilding, scriptwriting, plus managing the team… I don’t really know myself either anymore what my job it, so please just put something like “general miscellaneous chores” (laugh)
Q: In the interview we had the honour of conducting with Producer Yoshida in June, we already asked about the game’s development, but we’d like to hear what your initial impressions were when you first heard about FF16.
Takai: To be honest, that was a long time ago so I don’t really remember… (bitter laugh)
Maehiro: I remember that Yoshida treated me to yakiniku, so looking back on it I guess that was kind of my fee. (laugh)
Takai: As for the initial origins, I’ve heard that it all started when Yoshida was asked by Mr Matsuda (Yosuke Matsuda, Square Enix President and CEO) if Creative Business Unit 3 could handle the development of the next numbered entry in the Final Fantasy series. From there, Yoshida started looking into building a team to build FF16, and out of everyone we were chosen as the lucky victims.
Yoshida: I said this same this to Matsuda at the start, but working on FF14 and acting as Director for FF16 at the same time would result in a high risk of me becoming careless in both roles, which would be rude both to FF14’s customers and that game’s development team, so from the beginning I said that option was out. From there, I only took on the additional role of Producer, and for Director I reached out to Takai, my senpai for whom I have a lot of respect.
Takai: When that conversation happened, I said “At my age I won’t have many more chances to act as Director for a Final Fantasy title, so let’s give it a shot!” Also, at that time we were already saying “Let’s ask Maehiro to do the scenario”.
Yoshida: As for why I wanted Maehiro for this - first, there’s his achievements on FF14, but I also just really like the worlds he builds and the feel of his writing. He’s also got what I call “middle school affinity” (TN: “中二属性”, “chuuni zokusei”) that’s pretty similar to mine, so that was also a major point (laughs). Moreover, as I was casting I was thinking stuff like “I need to give the best performance I can using all the powers at my disposal”, so with that in mind the high pace he’s able to write at was appealing. For all these reasons, once I’d reached out to Takai, I asked Maehiro “If you want, how about writing this?”
Maehiro: Of course I accepted his request, but in terms of timing at that point I had my hands full writing the scenario for FF14’s Patch 3.1 (released November 2015). At the same time, I was doing balance checks for Dragon Quest Builders… when I look back on it, it was a pretty crazy schedule.
Yoshida: In FF14’s development that was around the time we were deciding whether or not we’d be releasing the Heavensward expansion (released June 2015), so ultimately handing off the production took over a year from that point. For that reason, after we first discussed FF16 there was a year-long preparatory period where we made sure to neatly hand off FF14, and we made no progress on FF16. I guess we only really got going around the time we released FF14’s Patch 3.4 (September of 2019). With that context, it’s not surprising that they only have vague memories of the time I came to them with the offer.
Q: So the real starting point was after the completion of that handoff, it seems.
Yoshida: The two of them didn’t really touch the 4.0 expansion, Stormblood.
Maehiro: I really only had input on the launch trailer.
Takai: Also, I was involved, but not as a developer, but as Warrior of Light like any other (laughs).
Q: Takai, you’ve been involved in many previous entries in the FF series, and finally you’re acting as the Director for this newest entry, but we’d like to know “What kind of Final Fantasy” you’re thinking of making for FF16?
Takai: Roughly speaking, “I don’t want it to be open-world”; “I want to make a game that pulls players into the story”; “I don’t want to make an RPG with action elements, but I want to make it a great-feeling action RPG” are about what I was thinking. Also, “I want the rating to be higher than the ‘Age 15 and up’ (TN: ESRB T for Teen in North America, PEGI 15 in Europe) that FF14 has historically aimed for”.
Q: So by aiming for a higher rating, you mean “I want to create a more adult story”?
Takai: Of course, when we think about a story, you should intend for it to be appealing to and be suitable for a certain age group to some extent, so our thinking was “We don’t want this to be juvenile”. Even more than that, though, by upping our rating we also “widen our freedom to express ourselves”.
Graphical fidelity of games nowadays is really remarkable, so we want to build something that corresponds with that. More over, since this is “Final Fantasy”, our characters will eventually be confronted with conflicts that they’re unable to avoid. When we considered showing those violent hand-to-hand battles without being able to show a single drop of blood, that wouldn’t correspond with the capabilities of a modern game. For these reasons, we knew we wanted to aim for a higher rating.
Yoshida: There are major restrictions on the things we can show under the limitations of our current rating, it’s something that really shocked us as we were developing FFXIV: A Realm Reborn. For a specific example, in the trailer for A Realm Reborn, there’s a scene where the armies of the Garlean Empire and the Eorzean Grand Companies clash with each other, but even though we’re depicting a war they told us “You can’t show an arrow piercing into someone’s body, you can’t show the instant it goes into them but if you cut the shot or have the arrow hit just barely off camera that’s OK”... If you look carefully we do stuff like cut shots away, or arrange things so you can’t see the actual wounds opening - anyway, the number of restrictions is really high. To create a “fantasy that was grounded in reality”, we knew that the rating’s restrictive walls would be a real problem so that was also a big factor.
Takai: When we had to go get confirmation if it was okay for the rating if we showed a blood spurt as someone got cut down directly in front of your eyes, we knew we’d had enough.
Q: I see.
Yoshida: Because of that, I’m sure there are people who are getting the wrong idea, that upping the rating means we’re writing a story only adults only or with real depictions of violence and cruelty, but that’s not the direction - we just don’t want to have to avoid accurately depicting the battles that happen directly in front of our eyes.
Q: To that extent, you’ve already gone through a lot with FF14, it seems.
Maeda: Within those rating restrictions we were somehow able to make the “Teledji Adeledji event scene*” happen. That’s about as far as we could go. (*Dengeki note: A shocking scene that occurs in FF14’s Patch 2.55 climax. Teledji Adeledji is the name of a wealthy merchant who plays a central role in those events.) (TN: Spoiler warning if you haven’t played FFXIV through to the start of Heavensward –
here’s the scene they’re referencing.)
Q: Certainly, while you weren’t able to openly show the decisive moment of that event, the results were pretty clearly communicated.
Yoshida: In that scene, the players themselves don’t take any direct action so we were able to get away with it. If the player characters had done that same thing it definitely would have been NG. Because of that, even though naturally there were players who wished they could have done that themselves, for that we had no choice to employ a separate character in that case. In that way, there was an impact even on the script itself.
Q: Moving on, I’d like to ask Maehiro a similar question. In writing the scenario of FF16, aligning yourself to Takai’s vision, what kind of story do you think you’re trying to tell?
Maehiro: First, there’s an awareness of wanting to write a story that’s valid for Final Fantasy. From that starting point, when Yoshida and Takai and I kicked off the process, we decided to let the Eikon summons take center stage.
Q: So the central role of the Eikons was decided at the very beginning.
Maehiro: So if the Eikons are going to be the main thing, we need to weave them into the worldbuilding or the story or else there’s no meaning. To humans the Eikons are a mythic thing that’s basically a giant fabled monster, so first we had to figure out “If summons are real, what kind of impact would that have on the world…?” and we dug deeply into those implications. In that way, before deciding on any of the other themes or concepts, we deeply considered in what way the thing we were making was valid as the next entry in the Final Fantasy series.
Q: Previously, Yoshida has said that “For people who liked the story of FF14’s Heavensward, the story of FF16 will probably appeal to them too”. From my own impressions, Heavensward is a dark fantasy tale that features “a journey with your comrades”. Is that the kind of essence we should expect here as well?
Maehiro: I’m not restricting myself only to Heavensward here, but for me I’ve always paid special attention to building up the protagonist. Similarly, in FF16, we’ve taken care to make the protagonist the heart of the story, so out of necessity we have to give the impression that he has a lot of relationships with his surroundings. The presence of the protagonist causes his comrades to assemble. This leads to “adventures in unknown lands”. I think it’s fine if you go in with those kinds of expectations.
The hidden theme of FF16’s battles was FF5!?
Q: Until now we’ve been asking the two of you about the initial conception of FF16, but are all the core decisions you made at that time still in place and unchanged now?
Takai: Nothing has really changed in an of itself, but the journey to get us to this final state hasn’t always been favorable. We’ve gone back and forth a number of times to get to this final state, and I’m sure that’s caused some problems for the staff as well.
Maehiro: The feeling of the action in particular took quite a bit of trial and error. That said, the foundational principles haven’t really changed much.
Yoshida: In truth, the Clive versus Garuda battle’s alpha version was made in a pretty early phase of development. Weirdly enough, after a whole lot of twists and turns the presentation that we were trying to achieve never really changed much. Naturally, if you look at the FF16 project as a whole there were a lot of places where things kept changing back and forth, but that never really meant that the foundational themes were wavering, but rather we took a roundabout route to figuring out how best to implement those themes.
Takai: It really took us a while for us to get the hang of things.
Q: So your image of the final shape never really changed much, but the real challenge was figuring out how to get to that final state.
Yoshida: Looking back, that’s the feeling that I get.
Maehiro: If we’re thinking about the foundational themes of the gameplay, the truth is aside from what we’ve already talked about we kind of had the idea of “Let’s make Final Fantasy V into an action game”.
Q: Oho! When you think about FF5, the first thing that comes to mind is the job change system, but…?
Maehiro: Rather than thinking of a job change system, better to imagine the ability customization system. In FF5, eventually you were able to learn all the abilities, but within that system you had to prioritize which jobs you wanted to level and customize your abilities, which settled your characters into different roles as a result.
Q: If you’re talking about ability customization, it makes me think back to going wild with both blades and magic.
Maehiro: Yes, exactly! (Laughs) That kind of playability where you can be surprised like “Oh, I can combine things in this way!”, but in an action game where you’re operating in realtime, is the kind of thinking we were after.
Takai: That kind of element, but instead of jobs we included the Eikons as a base. These days, there’s a lot of enthusiasm for players broadcasting and streaming their games, so if the different streamers had different loadout combinations we think it gives the viewers the opportunity to go “Ohh! That kind of combination exists too”. In this way, we wanted to develop “a game that plays differently for every player” to the extent that we’re able.
Q: That is to say that, in the same way that in FF5 you had the option to place abilities in different slots, the intent here is to be free to adjust your skill loadouts within the game?
Takai: As the story progresses the options that you can use will increase, but within that context you’re free to set them up how you like. Obviously, we’re trying to avoid a situation where it’s clear that “This is the right answer!”, but rather where everyone can reflect their own preferences in how they play.
Maehiro: Honestly, even as we play through the game, the staff’s various setups are really all over the place.
Takai: Yeah, they’re so divided up it’s almost funny (laughs).
Maehiro: So, “Bartz from FF5 in a realtime action game” might be an easy way to get the idea of it.
Q: That means there’s a pretty huge number of variations.
Takai: Naturally, if you take things to their theoretical conclusion, the limit of these combinations is… well, it might get to that point eventually, but over the course of ordinary gameplay experimenting with these combinations is something you can play with.
Yoshida: Some people might hear this and think “Building loadout combos sounds hard!”, but you don’t have to worry about the learning curve as you first pick up the game. Abilities are unlocked gradually as you move through the main story, and if anything there’s a number of people who get accustomed to the starting abilities and wind up leaving them equipped. On normal difficulty settings that’s plenty to be able to clear the game easily. I think where this system really shows its worth is on your second time through with the difficulty stepped up a notch. There, you’ll have to think about which of the powers you’ve been entrusted with should you select to allow you to attack most smoothly, and I think that’s where things get really interesting.
Q: This is a pretty specific question, it’s difficult for me to separate “Eikons” and “elemental affinities” as attributes that they possess. With that in mind, do elemental affinities play any mechanical role in battles?
Takai: Elemental affinities don’t play any role in battle; stuff like “the enemy is ice-aspected so fire is their weakness and they’re immune to ice” isn’t a consideration. Rather than elements, the feeling is that each Eikon has different roles and uses.
Yoshida: For people who’ve mastered the use of Eikon abilities, we have content like engaging in fights with restrictions on which Eikons you can use, and other challenge modes are available. If you want to really master your Eikon styles, please give them a shot.
Q: I suppose those will be optional content.
Takai: Correct - there’s no case where the story won’t advance if you fail to clear those.
Q: On the topic of optional content and sidequests, there hasn’t really been much info released so I’m curious how much you’ve put into the game.
Takai: All I can say for now is that I think the game is pretty packed! (laughs)
Q: Alright, since we’re here, I’ll stay on the battle system. Other than the ability to adjust ability loadouts that we talked about, is there any particular point in the battle system you’d like to bring attention to?
Takai: I guess what I’d like to focus on are the “party members” that fight alongside Clive. As the story progresses, a revolving cast of characters and companions will appear and accompany Clive. From a system standpoint, they participate in battles in a fully automated way. In this work, we made the decision that “we don’t want to burden players with control of characters other than Clive”, so we removed the need to control the details of their actions and let the AI decide the optional actions for them.
Aside from that, Clive is always accompanied into battle by his Buddy, Torgal, and we’ll provide a more detailed explanation about him in a future info reveal.
Yoshida: For the Buddy, you have the option of letting them operate entirely on auto, or of issuing him manual instructions to some extent, and you are able to switch between the two modes. For manual command, you have the option to choose from among several attack actions, or to heal, or other such options. Since that character is special we refer to them as your Buddy. Other than him, the party members are all on full auto.
Q: Regarding game modes, for people who enjoy playing within the story you have a “Story Focus Mode”, and for those who prefer energetic action you have an “Action Focus Mode”, or so Yoshida told us last time. How big is the difference between these two?
Takai: It may feel like there is a large gameplay difference between the two, but please be assured that whichever you choose you will still fundamentally get the same game experience. If you then ask, okay, well then what’s the difference - FF16 has items called Support Accessories which if equipped can do things like enabling autoattacks where spamming one button can still land cool combos, or an autododge mode where attacks are evaded. Using these Support Accessories, you can partially automate combat in various ways.
In Story Focus Mode, you start off equipped with two accessories, Autoattack Link and Auto-slow Link. The former, as I mentioned earlier, automates some of your actions, and the latter makes it so the game enters slow motion an instant before an enemy’s attack lands to make dodging the attack easier. Naturally, if you ever feel like it you can remove either of these.
Aside from that, in Story Focus Mode, enemy durability and attack frequency are both reduced. However, these parameter adjustments are really such that at a given experience level things get a bit more comfy, so fundamentally I think the biggest difference is the presence or absence of the Support Accessories.
Q: In other words, “Action Focus Mode” is what would normally be called Hard Mode.
Takai: It’s not the kind of difficulty level where you have to retry a boss over and over and keep wiping, though.
Q: That level of difficulty is reserved for the mode Yoshida mentioned earlier, where you play through the game a second time with the difficulty turned up, then.
Yoshida: That’s right. This may be obvious, but difficulty levels where you have to die over and over again to learn a fight are generally in the types of games where people are fundamentally seeking out that kind of experience, and I don’t think that’s what people want out of a Final Fantasy.
If every time you fight a boss you have to see CONTINUE up on the screen, that naturally starts to get pretty rough. In particular, we hope people will be able to enjoy this story right through to the end, so we wanted to make an action RPG that anyone can be guaranteed to be able to clear at least one time. Naturally, there will still be people who find it difficult, which is why we implemented the Story Focus Mode we discussed earlier.
I get the feeling that even in Action Focus Mode if some people wind up saying the first time through the game is pretty easy, that’s probably fine. In that case we have the hardcore extra difficulty mode, so people who are particularly skilled at action games are welcome to give it a shot. That’s where we really start to show off what a Hard Mode means to us… (laughs)
Q: I’m pretty bad at action games so that makes me feel a bit better. (laughs)
Yoshida: By the way, the development team has been getting more experience and started to get numb to the difficulty, so the game got harder and harder and we had to persuade them to lower the difficulty of the first playthrough.
Maehiro: They really did get numb to it! (laughs)
Yoshida: At present we’re already adjusting the detailed placement of things in the field areas, and I think the placement of Potions and other items is really getting to a good place. The last adjustment pass caused a bit of controversy because I asked them to lower the last boss’ endurance by another 10% or so. Since it’s an action game, there can be a pretty big differential in player skill. That said, we want the first playthrough to allow as many people as possible to feel good while playing and see the story through to its conclusion. To that end, we dedicated a lot of resources to implementing the Support Accessories.
That said, there might be people who don’t even notice the presence of these Support Accessories we’ve gone to the trouble of implementing, which is why we built the Story Focus Mode where you have two powerful items equipped right as you start. To just enjoy the story, it’s probably fine to just play through the first time on Story Focus Mode - that’s the extent its implementation has been successful. That said people who are like “I’m a badass who’s cleared a whole bunch of action games already!”, we’d love it if they started off in Action Focus Mode.
The things the new trailer aimed to convey — FF16’s core worldview
Q: On October 20th the new trailer was released to the public, so let me ask what points you were aiming to convey to appeal to the audience this time around.
Yoshida: This work is a so-called “gothic fantasy”, set against the stage of “a period of twilight and lost glory”. In a world threatened by the Blight, the fragile equilibrium between nations is shattered… and that’s where our story begins.
In reveals up until now, “I don’t really get what’s happening but these cool summons are going wild” were the main reactions were heard from people, I think. In this trailer, we wanted to explain their background, with a focus on the worldbuilding of Valisthea which forms the basis of the story. Also, a component we wanted to include was that the Dominants’ power to summon Eikons and use magic itself carries risk, and providing that rough understanding of the world and setting was our objective.
This trailer was mostly aimed at the core audience of FF16 who are most excited about the game, with the aim to invite them to learn more about the world. From here on out there will be more information released aimed at that audience, so we’d be very happy if they can keep that excitement close to their hearts.
Q: You mentioned a key word just now - the Blight - so could you explain what that is in a bit more detail?
Maehiro: In this world, there exists and energy called Aether, which allows life to grow and flourish. The Blight are regions where that Aether has been completely lost and all the surroundings all go black, where trees and vegetation can’t grow, no life or activity at all - regions of death. This is common knowledge for people living in Valisthea. The actions that each nation takes to prevent the Blight from completely engulfing the entirety of Valisthea form the main action of the game.
Q: And the things that keep that incursion in check are the Mothercrystals?
Maehiro: No, not exactly. At the beginning of the game, the cause of the spread of the Blight is still unknown. The Mothercrystals still have a significant amount of Aether remaining in them, so people gather around them and live close to them as a result.
Q: So the only areas in the world that are abundant in Aether are around the Mothercrystals, so they form the hearts of the world’s nations. Well, let’s explore those nations and other affiliations. First, about the two newly-revealed characters, Dion and Barnabas - please tell us what kind of people they are.
Maehiro: Dion is the Imperial Prince of Sanbreque, and Barnabas is the King of the Kingdom of Waloed. In addition to being important figures in their respective countries, Dion is the Dominant of Bahamut, and Barnabas is the Dominant of Odin, and both will be deeply affected by their interactions with Clive.
Q: Clive’s home of Rosaria is invaded by the Holy Empire of Sanbreque, so we’d expect there to be some animosity between the two. How will the other character, Barnabas, be affected by Clive?
Maehiro: In the story, Clive gets directly entangled with some nations and indirectly tangled with others - the Empire of Sanbreque is the former, and the Kingdom of Waloed is the latter. That said, Waloed does have an important role to play in the story… and the details there are a secret.
Also, every country has a desire to claim or steal more Mothercrystals and move to realise that aim, so Sanbreque is in a state of war not only with Rosaria, but also with Waloed.
Takai: In the trailer released in June there is a scene of Bahamut and Odin fighting, so that is evidently a scene of Sanbreque and Waloed at war.
Q: It seems that Dion has achieved many notable feats on the battlefield, so is it accurate to assume he has called down the Eikon Bahamut on many occasions?
Maehiro: There is that, but he himself also possesses incredible potential as a Dragoon. A true warrior.
Yoshida: Dion is a Prince that is kind to the people, handsome, skilled as a Dragoon, and in possession of Bahamut – a real superman.
Takai: He’s also got such a sexy voice! (laughs)
Q: It sure feels like he’d line up as a rival to the protagonist, Clive…?
Maehiro: For that we hope you’ll play and find out! (Laughs)
Q: On the other hand, the Kingdom of Waloed where Barnabas lives is also home to Benedikta, who was introduced as the Dominant of Garuda. Are there other countries that boast control of more than one Dominant in this way?
Maehiro: That is a deep question so I don’t want to speak about the specifics, but the presence of more than one Dominant in a single country is not strange or unusual in and of itself.
Q: In the previous trailer, was it Barnabas who was in bed with Benedikta?
Maehiro: That’s right.
Q: And in this trailer, there’s a scene where Barnabas is wielding a blue sword. When we consider that he is Odin’s Dominant, is it safe to say that was the Zantetsuken?
Maehiro: It was the Zantetsuken! It’s Odin, after all. We aimed to be pretty straight when it came to symbols that represent the various Eikons.
Q: Currently, when we think about Dominant characters whose details haven’t really been revealed to the public yet, there’s really only Shiva and Ramuh left at this point. Will they also be drawn into the story through their affiliation with one country or another?
Yoshida: Yes. Historically, the various countries and regions held the custom that there could only be one Dominant per country, but since Dominants are also people they might sometimes wish to change affiliations. We’ll gradually be releasing more information about the Dominants of Shiva and Ramuh, but for now when it comes to this newest trailer we wanted to introduce Dion and Bahamut as representatives of the Holy Empire of Sanbreque which acts openly and conspicuously across the world, and of the Kingdom of Waloed which acts secretly in the world’s dark underside. The Eikons that reside in these countries are Bahamut of the Light and Odin of the Darkness, so you can imagine their clash to be the confrontation of Light and Dark.
Q: About the Dominants - in the trailer there’s a line about how using the power of the Eikons turns one’s body to stone, which was a new revelation. Is this disease the fate that all the Dominants alike must face?
Maehiro: That’s right.
Yoshida: The energy that Dominants use is not natural, so while there are some individual differences none of them can avoid this fate. Outside of the Dominants, there are also exist people known as Bearers who are able to manipulate the world’s Aether into magic without the use of a crystal. Like Dominants, as they use their powers their bodies gradually petrify into stone.
Q: So, people who can use magical abilities and attacks without needing to rely on an Eikon.
Maehiro: Calling them ‘attacks’ might be misleading; better to think of them as people who are able to use their magical abilities to help with everyday life. For example, to make a cooking fire an ordinary person would need to use a crystal, but a Bearer can use the ambient Aether to start a fire without a crystal. Because of this, you’ll see a lot of depictions of them employed in towns and such and assigned to light fires as part of their duties.
Yoshida: Rather than being treated like monsters, for them it’s more like they’re the objects of persecution…
Takai: Each country has a different way of treating them, but overall they tend to be shunned even when they use their voices to call out, and that’s the kind of treatment they generally receive as a people.
Q: Harsher circumstances than I would have imagined…
Yoshida: One of the big riddles of FF16 is why these people are treated the way that they are. Furthermore, this isn’t the kind of riddle where you discover the answer as to why things are the way they are and that’s the end of it, but rather this leads to questions like “How did that reasoning come to be? Isn’t this something that should be undone?” and these questions are foundational to the narrative. Maehiro has made a pretty conscientious depiction, so if you play the game the answers we’re alluding to will become clear. To get deeper into this topic, it is better to actually experience it by playing the game.
Q: In that case, next - for the six countries that have currently been revealed, could Maehiro speak a little bit about what sort of nations they are?
Maehiro: The Grand Duchy of Rosaria is made up of land that were historically a number of separate nations, which eventually came together to form a single country. It is a country with a rich history, governed by the nobility and aristocracy, and currently led by an Archduke. That’s the man in red in the trailer.
- The Holy Empire of Sanbreque is a strict theocracy, which acts only accordings to the teachings of its religion. Put another way, it’s a country that will immediately and completely act according to any new prophecy or teaching from its God. Its leader also appeared in the trailer, and that is Dion’s father. For people who have played FF14, if you imagine Ishgard you will have essentially the right idea.
- The Kingdom of Waloed is an absolute monarchy, where King Barnabas wields complete control. As for how the nation came to be, Barnabas used military might to unite around 70 disparate tribes together, so you could call this a “country of war”. Just as Odin the horseman rides around the battlefield wreaking havoc, this is a nation that wages war wherever it goes.
- The Republic of Dalmekia has no king, but is a republic of many states that united to form a single nation. Politically, the representatives of each state come together in the legislature to govern. The Dominante here, Hugo, is not a representative but instead occupies the role of Permanent Economic Advisor, and since he harbors the enormous power of Titan he wields enormous influence over the government and is able to move the country essentially at will.
- The Iron Kingdoms adhere to the same religion as the Holy Empire of Sanbreque, but unlike Sanbreque follow a much more orthodox doctrine. They detest not only Dominants, but magic in all its forms, claiming that use of magic is a blasphemy against God. They worship their Mothercrystal as the sacred shrine of their God, and their religion has prohibitions against withdrawing Aether from the Mothercrystal. These points will be significant in the unfolding of the main story.
- Last, the Crystalline Dominion exists at the heart of Valisthea, and is a region occupying a special position. The Dominion is in possession of a Mothercrystal, and is in a location that makes it easy for each country to receive of its blessing, and therefore the other countries have joint control over the region. The government is formed of representatives of each country, and no Dominants make their home here. In addition, since the region acts as a buffer zone between the various countries, an armistice was made that no country would attack another. However, that equilibrium is in the process of collapsing.
Q: It seems these six nations form the foundation of the world, but are there any other regions that appear?
Yoshida: A few will appear, but when you start playing the game it’s mostly helpful if you remember these six countries. In particular, during the opening it’s good to remember about Rosaria and Sanbreque, which will make the story flow more smoothly, I think. FF16 can be categorized as a war story, so there are a lot of names of characters and countries with which you’ll become familiar. The countries themselves are also not all monoliths, and there might be some pretty significant discord within them at times. To help with that, within the game there is reading material and systems that help lay out the world’s history, so we’d like it if you read along while playing if you’d like to deepen your enjoyment.
Q: It might be too soon to ask, but when can we expect the next information reveal?
Yoshida: The plan is for the next release to be around the end of the year. I also think it would be nice if we could reveal something about the release date around that time, and people who are excited to buy the game might think to themselves “Huh? Maybe it’s coming sooner than I thought?” This time around the company did me a big favour and left us with a lot of time for the final polishing of the game, so I don’t expect things to be delayed past the Summer 2023 target.
Q: So right now I suppose you’re at the stage where you’re making final final brush-ups.
Yoshida: We’re already past that point and are very close to being complete.
Takai: For myself, I think it’s fine to say I'm pretty much done. (Laughs)
Maehiro: I’ve also made it through the worst of it, which is why I was able to participate in this interview. (Laughs)
Yoshida: With that in mind, the ones who are worst off right now are the sound team. Right now Soken (composer and sound director Masayoshi Soken) is climbing toward his team’s summit.
Maehiro: The other day on FF14’s annual 14-hour broadcast he came on and ranted a bit, huh. (Laughs)
Q: On the broadcast during his interview, Soken did mention that working on the FF14 orchestra concert at the same time as FF16 was pretty rough.
Yoshida: Right around now is going to be the roughest point for him, I think. That said, I think at this point, other than sound design it would be pretty redundant to add any extra development time to FF16’s timeline. With that in mind, please keep an eye out and relax until the game goes on sale.
Q: At the year-end reveal, will there be any additional information on the game systems, such as the battle system that you have started to introduce?
Yoshida: If we release too much info too soon we won’t be able to keep up enthusiasm until the game releases, so I think you can expect a lot of that info to be released starting around three months before the game comes out. Also we are planning to release a game demo, but there as well we want you to be able to play that and then buy the game immediately after if you want. Right now enthusiasm is mounting, so we want to keep that air of freshness if we can. To that extent right now people might be feeling impatient, but as release approaches we’ll start providing much more information, so please wait patiently until then.
Q: Incidentally, PSVR2 goes on sale at the end of the year - do you have any integrations planned there?
Yoshida: None at all! If we were going to release something for the PSVR2 we’d want it to be a title custom-built for VR, but we have no plans for anything like that at present.
Q: Alright, finally, to people who have watched the most recent trailer and gotten their hype up, please each of you give one point where you’d like people to pay particular attention.
Maehiro: As the latest entry in the Final Fantasy series, I believe we have made the story, cutscenes and game design all as “Final Fantasy” as we could. Please look forward to our modern visual “Final Fantasy”.
Takai: This is self-aggrandization a bit, but I really think that both the battle system and the story combine to make a game that’s a lot of fun. In particular, I think the story has become something that will be really moving. Within that, particularly… Yikes! I almost dropped a spoiler (laughs). We’re trying to make something special here, so we’d appreciate it if you could keep looking forward to it.
Yoshida: This time around, the trailer interviews focused on providing information about FF16’s world, its atmosphere, and the important countries and dominions that form it. This will form the base of the next round of information, so please wait for us to keep building on it.
Finally, Takai and Maehiro have been so focused on game development for a number of years, so I’m surprised how bad they’ve gotten at answering interview questions. (Laughs)
Maehiro: Seems like if you don’t get the opportunity to speak regularly it’s no good! (Laughs)
Takai: If you don’t speak in front of other people it’s no good, huh. (Laughs)
Yoshida: It’s been a long development period, and you’re both so full of thoughts that it’s probably like “I wonder what I should say…” I think as release approaches we’ll have to speak about this content even more deeply, so please as we move toward release help get their public speaking skills up by digging for more detailed information! (Laughs)
