For 35 years, Final Fantasy has represented the pinnacle of role-playing design. Epic worlds and heroic stories driven by casts of original characters have all propelled the video game series into one of the most successful ever made since it first debuted in 8-bit form on the Nintendo Entertainment System. And it’s been on a hot streak of late, with the remake of Final Fantasy 7 proving to be a bona fide game of the year contender all over again in 2020, while the online multiplayer spectacular Final Fantasy 14 continues to set new heights for storytelling with over 1.2 million daily players.
For Final Fantasy 16, developer Square Enix has upped the stakes even further. The latest numbered entry in this franchise comes seven years after its immediate predecessor, bringing new changes to tone, character and gameplay style. After an hour and a half spent with this lavish new RPG, we sat down with the game’s producer Naoki Yoshida (who also directed, produced and ultimately saved Final Fantasy 14 after its disastrous launch) and art director Hiroshi Minagawa, to explore how you add a big new game to such a storied lineage. Not to mention the pressures and excitements that come with creating standalone epics from the ground up.
This is a game that’s pitched firmly at attracting new players to Final Fantasy, taking cues from western titles such as The Witcher III and Skyrim in an attempt to ground in a more gritty, human reality. From what we've played so far, this feels like one of the most expensive video game productions ever created (the facial qualities in particular look incredible), setting a darker tone akin to Final Fantasy’s take on Game of Thrones. Meanwhile, a new and more modern real-time action combat system gives you direct control over the action.
With three decades of lore and expectation from established fans to contend with, coming up with new ideas while appeasing old fans – and getting those newcomers on board – is no small feat for any developer. Here’s what the duo told us about the challenge of reinventing Final Fantasy at the sixteenth time of asking.
Where do you start making the sixteenth game in a franchise?
Naoki Yoshida: This is the latest numbered entry in a series with 35 years of history. So we needed to do research on what players around the world think of the series in general. More than the positive keywords we focused on the negative words, and then tried to figure out how to take those negatives and turn them into positives, and kind of overturn those preconceptions of the series. Not only in the story, but also the gameplay going into full real-time action.
So what’s different this time around?
Yoshida: We got a lot of feedback about how the Final Fantasy series felt very classic or old or maybe even stale. Or that the story feels very juvenile, focused on younger characters for younger players. I'm going to be 50 years old this year. I look at the real world and I see the trouble in the real world. To have something like that in a game, I think is important.
Was there a pressure to contend with the three decades plus of history behind Final Fantasy 16?
Yoshida: We don't really go out of our way to look at what came in the past and then actively avoid that. That said, we've created a high, medieval, gothic fantasy type of world and in that world, we have concepts that are very Final Fantasy. For example, with the mother crystals in Final Fantasy 16, we compare those to giant oil fields – so you have these fantastical things that are grounded in reality. Visually, a lot of the recent numbered Final Fantasy games have trended towards a very modern, science fiction feel – we wanted to go more into fantasy. You have to go back to games early in the series, around Final Fantasy 9, where you still had that.
Hiroshi Minagawa: For me, I wouldn't necessarily say it was a lot of pressure. As the art director, you have to bring things in from past games like monsters or characters. It was fun to figure out how I was going to change those and arrange those, keeping that core but also change it for Final Fantasy 16. Before I was a team member, I was a fan. Although, I have a large team and sometimes I would do something and the staff would be like, "Are sure this is okay to do this?" There is that pressure that, maybe, I've gone too far. But otherwise, it was a very exciting experience.
There must be something liberating about making these huge standalone epics. Do you think it’s that freedom that’s given Final Fantasy such enduring life?
Yoshida: I definitely believe that because the Final Fantasies all have their unique character stories and settings, that's the reason that has endured for 35 years. If this was like a story that had been continuing for 35 years, you'd think we'd run out of ideas.
The numbers must be difficult, though.
Yoshida: A lot of players are going to come in and they're going to look at it like a comic book where you have to read from the beginning to know what's going on now. It's hard for marketing because every numbered title that we release in the series, we have to go into it like, “It’s OK, you don't have to play the rest of them.”
Do you think you’d ever just ditch the numbers entirely? We’ve seen big franchises like God of War reboot with no numbered entries
Yoshida: That's actually something that I've discussed with the higher-ups. Maybe it's about time we removed the numbers from the title. For example, you have Final Fantasy 14. You get a new player coming in and it's like, “Wait a minute, why do I have to play Final Fantasy 14 if 16 is out?” Why don't we just call it Final Fantasy Online – just get rid of the number altogether, and that'll make it easier to understand. Whether Final Fantasy 17 or Final Fantasy 18 should have a number or not – that's going to be on whoever has to develop that game and whoever's in charge of the branding, so that's their problem, not ours!
Lastly, in our recent Greatest Games of All Time poll, Final Fantasy was joint-tied as the most featured series in all of gaming. Why do you think the series has made such an impact on players and developers?
Yoshida: It's probably all about when these developers grew up. When they were in junior high school and when they're in high school, those things are going to have a big impact on your life. If you were playing something that was as exciting as Final Fantasy, that's going to be imprinted on you forever.
Our biggest worry is, is that going to be the same moving forward? Are the young people – the next generation of developers – going to say Final Fantasy is my favourite game in your list down the road? What we wanted to do with Final Fantasy 16, with the style of game, style of combat, and changing things up is to give that younger generation a new Final Fantasy to impact them, so that in the future they can say, “This is what affected me.”
Final Fantasy 16 releases on 22 June for PlayStation 5
