Final Fantasy 16 will return to a “classic fantasy feel” in its world building and tone, balanced with modern combat.
Producer Naoki Yoshida has spoken in multiple interviews about the game, divulging new information about its conception.
“When it came to deciding what to do with Final Fantasy 16, I thought back to when I played the original Final Fantasy, and remembered how I felt like I was playing the leading role in a motion picture,” he said in a new PlayStation Blog post.
“I wanted to recapture that feeling in 16, but with state-of-the-art game design and the latest in modern technology. The whole development team, under the directorship of Hiroshi Takai, has come together to make that dream a reality, so I hope you all look forward to it.”
Speaking to GamesRadar, Yoshida elaborated further, stating that Creative Business Unit 3 has tried to “go back to the series’ roots” with a “classic fantasy feel”.
The team is “focusing on creating a setting reminiscent of the original Final Fantasy games, but then adding to this that real-time action that’s more reminiscent of modern games.”
So why the return to a classical setting? Yoshida told Game Informer that many core members of the Final Fantasy 16 team were big fans of the classic Final Fantasy games and their mediaeval European style.
“When creating this game, we wanted to take that look, that mediaeval 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,” he said.
The aim was also to move away from the futuristic settings of recent games
“As you know, the Final Fantasy series is kind of famous, or infamous, for being different with each entry in the series,” he said.
“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.”
A new trailer for Final Fantasy 16 was recently shown, revealing its release date as summer 2023.