Why have you chosen an action-based battle system for this game and what reaction do you hope it inspires from players?
Each new entry in the FINAL FANTASY series brings with it a new world, new characters, and a new battle system.
We get a lot of different suggestions from fans about what they want to see in future games, and unfortunately it isn't possible for us to satisfy every one of them. There are also a lot of younger gamers out there who might never have played a FINAL FANTASY game before.
With FINAL FANTASY XVI, we wanted to appeal to as wide a range of gamers as possible by setting the story in a classic fantasy world that's reminiscent of the early FINAL FANTASY games, but combining that with fast-paced, real-time action.
We have a comprehensive support system in place for players who aren't too confident with action games, so even if action isn't your thing, I hope you'll give it a try.
One other reason we went with an action-based battle system this time round is to push the boundaries of what a FINAL FANTASY game can be and expand the range of possibilities for the developers who pick up the reins of the series after us.
You've reunited with Masayoshi Soken for the game. What made him the right choice to lead this game's music?
I've been making games with Soken for many years now, and he's the composer who best understands not only what I, but what our director Hiroshi Takai and creative director Kazutoyo Maehiro imagine as the right kind of soundscape for a FINAL FANTASY game.
Of course, the most important factor in that is that his musical style inherits a lot from Nobuo Uematsu, the father of FINAL FANTASY music, and he's always striving to follow in the master's footsteps.
Producer Naoki Yoshida shares his vision for FINAL FANTASY XVI | Square Enix Blog
FINAL FANTASY XVI Producer Naoki Yoshida discusses the combat system, why the game is like a rollercoaster and more.
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Final Fantasy 16 won't be following in the footsteps of its predecessor and won't be offering a true open world. Instead, it will divide up its regions into more contained areas while still taking inspiration from other triple-A games, Yoshida said.
"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," he explains.
"We didn't want to overwhelm users in our newest trailer, so we focused solely on Clive's battles. That said, for most of his journey, Clive will be accompanied by one or more companions," Yoshida says. "These companions will participate in battle, as well as trade banter with Clive. That said, the party members will be AI-driven so as to allow players to focus solely on controlling Clive."
Remember the pup from Final Fantasy 16's very first trailer? Naoki Yoshida revealed his name while teasing that he may have a much bigger role to play in the gameplay.
"Well, let's just say he's more wolf than dog—and his name is 'Torgal,'" Yoshida told IGN. "As for him being a party member, you'll just have to wait and see. We'll have more info on parties soon."
Final Fantasy 16: Everything We Learned In IGN's Naoki Yoshida Interview - IGN
We recently had an opportunity to interview Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida. Here's everything new that we learned.
THE RECENT DOMINANCE TRAILER PUT A BIG FOCUS ON SUMMONS, OR EIKONS, WHICH TRADITIONALLY HAVE JUST BEEN SUPPORTING CHARACTERS IN BATTLE. HOW DID EIKONS COME TO BE SUCH A BIG PART OF FFXVI'S WORLD AND WHAT DO THEY MEAN TO THE GAME'S NARRATIVE?
Naoki Yoshida: To put it simply, the Eikons in Valisthea can kind of be compared to what you would call weapons of mass destruction or nuclear bombs. And so, within the world of Valisthea, there are a lot of different nations and each nation has one of their own Eikons with the being awakening inside a single individual, although the rules as to how and within who that Eikon awakens differs between them.
So the person in which that Eikon dwells, we call the Dominant, and they can summon forth the Eikon's unparalleled power by literally changing into it. As you know in previous Final Fantasies, it would always be that you'd have a summoner job who would use magic to summon forth the being from a different plane, but this time that Dominant actually summons forth the Eikon's power by becoming the Eikon themselves.
Another key word in our story is the Mother Crystals and these realms' Mother Crystals are what you can call kind of like oil fields – in the term that they supply the land with the ether which is basically the energy which is used to to power magic.
The thing is, though, that ether that's contained in the Crystals has begun to dry up. And this has prompted some nations to basically try to invade other nations in an attempt to wrest away control of those remaining Mother Crystals. And up until now, the Eikons have never really been used, because again, they're like nuclear bombs so you don't use them. You just have them, and it creates this kind of standoff. But now, to wrest control of these Mother Crystals away from other nations, some nations have begun using and deploying these Eikons and basically bringing the realm into chaos, and that is one of our main focal points of our narrative.
And so as to exactly why we decided to make a game that revolved around summons, well, we thought it would be both unique and exciting to have a game where players could actually control a to-scale summon of their own as it is something that the series hasn't really delved into and hasn't really explored yet.
IN THE TRAILER IT LOOKS AS THOUGH CLIVE CAN SWITCH BETWEEN DIFFERENT STYLES OR FORMS BASED ON THE EIKONS, CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT THAT SYSTEM OR HOW CLIVE GAINS THESE ABILITIES?
Naoki Yoshida: As it's a major plot point, I can't really talk about how or why Clive can use the power of different Eikons. That said, I can tell you that he does use the power of the Eikons as was shown in the trailer, as you saw him swapping between the different abilities.
After claiming an Eikon's power Clive will be able to unlock that Eikon's abilities in what we can call an 'ability tree'. And then Clive will earn points during regular battles and can use those points to further unlock abilities within that tree.
We want players to be able to use this system to customise their character to their own play style, to use these points to purchase abilities that they want to use or power up the abilities that they really enjoy using. That said, we also want players to be able to decide on something that really fits them and so, rather than having those those point decisions be final, we're going to allow players the opportunity to refund those points at any time and as many times as they want so they can experiment with different builds until they come to one that suits their playstyle best without having to worry about starting over.
Final Fantasy XVI Interview: The Legendary Naoki Yoshida Speaks About Final Fantasy XVI's World, Combat And Fearsome Eikons
Final Fantasy XVI Interview: The Legendary Naoki Yoshida Speaks About Final Fantasy XVI's World, Combat And Fearsome Eikons
press-start.com.au
PSB: Thinking back to the beginning of the FFXVI project, do you remember how the conversation went when you were asked to produce this new mainline entry? What was your initial reaction?
NY: I said "Thanks, but I have my hands full with Final Fantasy XIV, so let me think about it." I was truly honored that the company would choose my section, Creative Business Unit 3, to be responsible for making the next entry in the FF series. But, as you probably know, I'm already the producer and director of Final Fantasy XIV. I was worried that if I took on the directorship of XVI, too, fans of both games would have good reason to believe I wasn't giving either project my full attention.
To ensure that the development of XVI didn't affect that of XIV, we picked out a very small group of core team members to start with, and over the course of several years, slowly and carefully transitioned them across to start work on the new game, until we had the full team assembled.
PSB: How was the composition of the rest of FFXVI's development team decided?
NY: Being the director of a Final Fantasy game is a tougher job than most people imagine. Not only do you have the expectations of the fans and the media to live up to, but you're constantly under pressure from the development team, too. You always have to be up for the challenge.
I'd worked with Hiroshi Takai for many years, and he's one of my most trusted colleagues, as well as a veteran developer, so I asked him if he would take on the role—and thankfully, he agreed. That's how it all started. We brought two other members into the group, and between the four of us, we sketched out the core concepts of the game and its world, as well as the key themes that we wanted to put across, and started work on writing the main storyline. Later, we brought a few more members on board to take charge of the battle system and the graphics, and through a process of building on what worked and scrapping what didn't, we gradually moved towards full-scale development. And all the while, in the back of my mind I was thinking "Please don't let this impact on Final Fantasy XIV!"
Interview: Naoki Yoshida sheds new light on Final Fantasy XVI
In a wide-ranging talk, the producer shares fresh details on the game’s development, juggling it and FFXIV, his favorite Summon, and much more.
blog.playstation.com
How much of a gameplay factor are the big Titan battles we saw in the recent trailer? What's the ratio to those versus more recognizable FF15-like human combat?
Naoki Yoshida: So what you saw in the trailer with that Titan battle, the Eikon versus Eikon battles, is only actually a tiny sample of the battles that we have in store in the game. In the trailer, you had the one scene where Shiva and Titan are battling. Actually, this is not a playable part of the game; this is a cutscene, but while that's happening Clive will be in that same area, kind of experiencing the battle from a different perspective.
However, later in the trailer, you saw a different type of battle with Titan involved. That part of the battle is actually fully playable. But again, what you've seen there is only a very, very small part of that battle. So the battles with Titan, for example, it's only about maybe a 20th of what you actually get to experience.
So in that [trailer], the battle was tightened. The battle itself goes through many different stages, many different phases, and all of these change in real time. And the player ends up experiencing something that is large-scale, action-packed, and high-octane. And hopefully, a lot of players will see that and [think], "I can't believe you created something that's so crazy." And again, that's just the battle with Titan. There are several other summon versus summon battles and they are all unique from a game design perspective.
For example, while one of these battles is reminiscent of a 3D shooting game, another feels like a pro wrestling match, while another, like the one with Titan, incorporates an entire area as the battlefield.
And again, what we saw in the trailer, that's a good example of those battles. The [user interface] that you saw on there, again, it's showing that this is all in real time. However, that UI, we've had to actually remove parts of the UI from the trailer because they would be spoilers for the story. But we did want to show that these battles exist, and that, again, Clive will be able to control one of the summons and have these summons versus some in battle.
Are there plans to support the world with tertiary lore material, or is it more self-contained?
Currently, there are no plans to create anything, for example, like a lore book like we had in Final Fantasy XIV. So, the development team is currently working really hard to make the final release of the game a complete experience so that no other tertiary content will be required to enjoy or understand it. And so, how the story and the narrative progresses is that we follow the life of Clive Rossville through three different stages: his teens, his 20s, and his 30s.
And because we're covering such a large amount of time with those jumps, it's safe to say that a lot will be happening in the background with regards to the state of the realm. And while we have a few side quests available in the game that will touch upon what's going on in the world in the background in addition to that main scenario, we also will have these in-game compendiums, and a lot of stuff to read in-game that will hopefully help provide a lot of the lore to those people who wish to delve deeper into the game world.
There was implied nudity in the recent trailer. Is this a more adult, M-rated Final Fantasy?
So this is something you can say, not just with the Final Fantasy series, but in general, compared to the past, video game ratings have become more and more restrictive recently regarding what can or cannot be shown. That said, I do believe that ratings are very important to ensure that younger players, younger children, are shielded from extreme material.
But on the other hand, when trying to tell a story with difficult adult themes, these ratings can end up becoming somewhat of a hindrance. And you find yourself changing things that you wanted to do in the game based on that rating. You wanted to show something, but because you have this certain rating that you need to go to, you need to move the camera away. And that ends up making the entire experience feel a little bit cheaper. And so, this time, to make sure that we could tell the story that we wanted in the way that we wanted to, we decided to pursue a mature rating in most of the regions that will be releasing the game. But again, this is not because we simply wanted to make the game more violent or the game more explicit, this is because we felt it was necessary to allow us to explore those more mature themes that the game tackles.
Final Fantasy 16 Is An Ambitious, More Mature Entry In The Series, Says Producer
Naoki Yoshida talks about what fans can look forward to in the next mainline entry in the Final Fantasy franchise.
www.gamespot.com
GI: A lot of players are excited about the prospect of a single-player Final Fantasy from the developers behind FFXIV. What learnings, mechanics and systems, and storytelling techniques, if any, from FFXIV can fans expect to show up in some way in FFXVI?
Yoshida: So Final Fantasy XIV was designed as an MMORPG from the ground up whereas Final Fantasy XVI has been designed as a single-player game from the ground up, so from the get-go, you're going to have completely different design concepts. MMORPGs, as you know, are all about the long haul – you're stringing together experiences over an extended period of time to maintain that user base.
Single-player games, on the other hand, are a lot more about that, I guess you could say, instant gratification. They're speedy, they hit you with excitement. That excitement is concentrated into a smaller package. So with that in mind, you can imagine that at least system-wise, Final Fantasy XIV won't have influenced Final Fantasy XVI that much. However, that said, one of the most unique things about Final Fantasy XIV is the kind of connection that the development team has with the community, [and] the amount of communication that goes back and forth between the development team and the community. In the past 11 years, interacting with the community has given us a lot of very, very valuable information on what you know fans want and expect from the series. And so having this 11-year knowledge base, that has helped us and has allowed us to put some of those ideas in and incorporate those ideas into the development of Final Fantasy XVI.
GI: Mainline Final Fantasy games of late have skewed more toward modern timelines, with heavy emphasis on the integration of tech with magic, but FFXVI looks decidedly more medieval, or classic FF. How did the team arrive at this setting and time period when developing the game?
Yoshida: The answer to that is actually kind of simple: it just happens to be that a lot of the core members in [Creative Business Unit III] really enjoyed those classic Final Fantasies as well as that classic medieval European fantasy feel – myself included – and we wanted to create a game that had that feeling. When creating this game, we wanted to take that look, that medieval European classic fantasy look, and meld that with our own unique idea that we had, and then take all of that and try to express that with the current level of technology and make something that is really, really exciting.
As you know, the Final Fantasy series is kind of famous, or infamous, for being different with each entry in the series. That said, after doing some recent user research, we found that a lot of the users were finding that a lot of the recent Final Fantasy [games] were kind of becoming static in that vision so we wanted to use this as an opportunity to step back from that and try something different; not just for us, but thinking to the future of Final Fantasy and forthcoming projects, we wanted to try something different and maybe show that yeah, the series can go in different directions rather than focusing on one.
While we just released our second trailer, we're currently already working on readying a third trailer for release this fall. In that trailer, we hope to concentrate a little bit more on the world and the lore and the storyline, and hopefully bring a little bit more of that information to players, showing what the story is going to be like, what the narrative is going to be like, and how that's going to fit into the world.
Final Fantasy XVI Preview - An Interview With Naoki Yoshida On Eikons, Boss Fights, And When We’ll See More - Game Informer
We dive deep with producer Naoki Yoshida on the latest trailer for Final Fantasy XVI.
www.gameinformer.com
While specific details of the combat will be revealed at a later date, Yoshida is confident in the direction the system is taking. He believes that Square Enix, now with titles like "Final Fantasy XV," "Final Fantasy VII Remake" and the Kingdom Hearts series under its belt, finally has the expertise to create a compelling action combat system that players, regardless of their familiarity with the series, will enjoy.
"The Kingdom Hearts team at Square Enix has been especially helpful in contributing to those real-time combat and boss battles," Yoshida said. "It can be said that the battles in 'FFXVI' are in some ways a culmination of the company's past experiences."
The team, led by Battle Director Ryota Suzuki, formerly of Capcom, who helped design "Marvel vs. Capcom 2," "Devil May Cry 5" and "Dragon's Dogma," feels similarly confident, according to Yoshida. Issues that plagued previous games in the franchise — around battle animations, combat fluidity and messy UIs — have all been streamlined thanks to Suzuki's guidance.
Yoshida also believes that the game's story — which he says is not going to be a happy tale, and includes a setting, Valisthea, that is much darker than previous entries — will have overarching themes reminiscent of what fans of the series have come to expect.
"One of the main themes that's explored in 'Final Fantasy XVI's' narrative deals with a clash of ideals. What is right and wrong? Should the people live the life that was chosen for them, or should they have the right to choose the path that they walk?" Yoshida said.
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