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| Peter Triezenberg |
Also, a brief explanation regarding the game's open world.
01.08.16 - 6:56 PM
The term "open world" gets thrown around a lot in modern gaming, to the point that it begins to lose some impact and becomes just another checkbox on the AAA gaming production list. With Final Fantasy XV, which has garnered much attention due to its vast world, Hajime Tabata hopes to combine the best elements of open-world and linear games when it comes to the latest Final Fantasy title's structure.
"As you travel through each region, you'll see different kinds of enemies and will take different paths that make you do unique things in each one of them. As you move through each region, the options for character growth and the different skills will start branching out as well. Each region will move the journey forward." That's all well and good from a gameplay perspective, but how about the story, what some would consider the bread-and-butter of a Final Fantasy game? Tabata explains that "how the story is handled, it's not 100 percent pure open-world, but it's also not a pull along the rails kind of story. It's very much a hybrid of those two styles, which I think is the best of both of them."
Well, there you have it. Tabata also compares the main scenario of Final Fantasy XV to a popular Western title, Naughty Dog's The Last of Us. "One of the important threads of the story in Final Fantasy XV is that tale of how Noctis goes from being a young prince in waiting to becoming the king of the country. That tale is a really big part of the game," says Tabata, calling Noctis' tale a "deeply emotional" journey where he will "grow and develop as a person" along the way. "It's important that the story progresses through the gameplay in a very unforced way, in a similar way that it was done with The Last of Us, for example." It's an interesting comparison, to say the least.
Final Fantasy XV is currently set for a 2016 release, and is in development for the PlayStation 4. We will see the game in its most complete form come March. If you're curious, News Editor Colin Burns wrote an interesting editorial about some of his thoughts and concerns about Final Fantasy XV.
