Just when you thought the game couldn’t look more promising
On Sunday night Square Enix hosted a Final Fantasy XVI pre-launch celebration stream. Early in the stream, fans were presented with two special video clips, featuring some of the high-ranking personnel connected to both developer PlatinumGames and to Square Enix’ RPG franchise Kingdom Hearts.
The first was from PlatinumGames Inc. President and CEO/Studio Head Atushi Inaba.
“PlatinumGames was graced with the opportunity to develop a part of Final Fantasy XVI. We’d never had an experience to work on a title in this manner, so it certainly took us by surprise when we were first approached. But the development staff — myself included, were all extremely excited for this opportunity, saying things like, ‘it’s the Final Fantasy‘ and ‘we’ll never get another chance to work on Final Fantasy.’ So we gladly accepted this opportunity and made it happen.
Takahisa Taura, who worked with Square Enix previously on NieR: Automata, led the development staff and the team on the PlatinumGames side. He powered through thee development as leader of the team, and I’m confident that the part we handled ended up being a high quality content.
We were able to work on Final Fantasy XVI with excitement as creators, but we only partially handled the development, so we’re also looking forward to playing the content as individual fans, just like those that are watching this video. And so, I am looking forward to enjoying the fantastic world of Final Fantasy XVI as both a creator and a fan.
Our sincerest congratulations!“
Immediately following the first clip, a second was played featuring the Co-Director of Kingdom Hearts IV, Tai Yasue.
“Hello everyone! I’m Tai Yasue, Co-Director of Kingdom Hearts IV. I’m happy to announce that, in fact, the Kingdom Hearts development team had a part in developing Final Fantasy XVI! We joined forces on the battles and such, but to be honest, it came as a surprise when the idea was initially brought to us. It seemed like a daring idea!
It’s already hard to achieve a scale of this level while being an action-based game. And, it felt even crazier hearing their plan to join forces with development teams that each have different creative methods. I mean, even if it’s coming from Naoki Yoshida, the man with an asteroid named after him, we were thinking about politely declining…
That being said, as we got to know more about the game’s plan and story, the entire team wanted to make this work, no matter what. Although it was a wild undertaking, there was ultimately something to gain through its development.
Now, Final Fantasy XVI‘s release is right around the corner. In a sense, it’s been developed in an unconventional way, but in part, because of that, we feel it’s shaped up to deliver an exceptional experience, so please give it a go! Thank you!”
So there we have it. Creative Business Unit III, PlatinumGames, and the Kingdom Hearts team all worked together to make Final Fantasy XVI happen. Yoshida went on to point out that the production scale of the game was so massive, and with a new action combat system, he felt they couldn’t reach the intended scale without the fellow studios’ assistance. For spoiler reasons, he declined to point out exactly what elements of FF XVI they worked on, but assured fans we’d know after launch.
As if I wasn’t already extremely excited for FF XVI, this makes me even more so. NieR: Automata is one of my favorite games of all time, and it nothing else had a stellar combat system. And while Kingdom Hearts III may not have been the best game in the series, it was still great and the combat was fun.
If you want to try out Final Fantasy XVI for yourself, a demo just released earlier today. Otherwise, the game launches on PlayStation 5 on June 22.
Published: Jun 12, 2023 09:00 am