There’s been a bit of a backlash to the open-world game formula in recent years, and Square Enix has taken heed. During the last Final Fantasy 16 Preview Event, Producer Naoki Yoshida discussed whether the upcoming mainline entry into Square Enix’s flagship RPG series will be open world.
In conversation with VG 24/7said Yoshida:
“In previous interviews I mentioned that Final Fantasy 16 is not an open world game. But what exactly does that mean? Does that mean it’s linear? Not exactly here either.”
Going into more detail, he explained that time wanted to bring a wide variety of environments with the highest possible quality, but didn’t want to do that for every location the player might visit. So the team focused on the areas they felt were needed, while others had a simpler design.
For those who want a big map, Yoshida notes that the game world is still huge. It just won’t be as deep as some other open-world games and should have more attention to detail in key areas like towns, dungeons, and caves. “We wanted to fully harness the power of the PlayStation 5 to create an extremely detailed world that was only possible in a video game,” said Yoshida.
Past final fantasy Games were big, even from the SNES era. Where things got a little out of hand was in Final Fantasy 15, which showed a huge world that didn’t have much in it. It looks like all the right lessons have been learned from this project, which is probably why there hasn’t been another decade between installments. Look for more Final Fantasy 16 cover here on GameSkinny.
