Final Fantasy 16 Not An Open-World Game Thanks to Criticisms Faced by Final Fantasy 15

There is less than a month left for the next mainline Final Fantasy title to release. Ahead of Final Fantasy 16’s June 22 release date, we have already started learning details about the game, such as endgame activities like New Game+ and the title’s most difficult challenges.

Game Informer was recently provided access to Square Enix’s Tokyo offices where they had the chance to have a conversation with Game Producer, Naoki Yoshida. During the conversation, Yoshida revealed the changes that were brought to Final Fantasy XVI, thanks to the criticisms that were faced by the previous installment, Final Fantasy XV. These changes were related to the semi-open world setting featured in Final Fantasy XVI.

Yoshida stated that Final Fantasy XV faced a bunch of criticism related to the story of the game, listing out certain specific criticisms. He then stated that the “Final Fantasy series in general” is known to bring players to exotic locations where they meet diverse characters. Therefore, the world cannot be restricted to a small area. However, they cannot go too big, as the one thing players hate the most is giant open world spaces with nothing to do in them.

So the team decided that having a semi open world setting for Final Fantasy XVI will be more fitting to the way they want to tell the story to players on a global scale. “Once the core development team had seen the story and where it’s going to take us, then there wasn’t really a discussion about [making it open world],” said Yoshida.