Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida has revealed that the game won’t feature an open world. However, it has sought a lot of inspiration from AAA open-world role-playing games. In an interview with IGN, Yoshida revealed that Final Fantasy 16 developers have opted for an “independent area-based game design” that allows them to tell a story that “spans an entire globe and beyond.”
Why Square Enix opted against Final Fantasy 16 open-world setting
“To bring a story that feels like it spans an entire globe and beyond, we decided to avoid an open world design that limits us to a single open world space, and instead focus on an independent area-based game design that can give players a better feel of a truly ‘global’ scale,” Yoshida explained.
Interestingly, one major reason that Square Enix is seeking inspiration from modern open-world RPGs is that it wants to target a new, younger generation of players. The publisher conducted research that found that a lot of young gamers have either never played a Final Fantasy game or have no interest in the series. While Yoshida wants to appeal to core Final Fantasy fans, he evidently wants to go beyond Final Fantasy’s typical audience.
“To create a game that might excite and resonate not only with our core fans, but also with that new generation, we played a lot of games ourselves, and so yes, in [Final Fantasy 16] you’ll find inspiration from recent AAA open world RPGs,” he said.
You’ll see Final Fantasy 16 quite a bit in the news today as multiple interviews are being published on various platforms. Stay tuned for our coverage.
In other news, PlayStation Store’s mid-year sale has something for everyone so make sure to check out the deals, and it looks like Sony’s rumored new PS5 headsets and monitors will be revealed on June 28th.
