At TGS 2020, final day, Square Enix held alive streamonFinal Fantasy XIVYoRHa: Dark Apocalypse, with Yoko Taro, Yosuke Saito (NieRseries Director), Toshio Muro (FFXIVGlobal Community Producer), andFinal Fantasy XVIProducer Naoki Yoshida. Yoko Taro and Yosuke Saito joined the stream once the intro was over. Yoko Taro made a joke on how now that the two of them joined anFF14stream, it became anFF16stream.
This prompted Naoki Yoshida to quickly chat about theFinal Fantasy XVIreveal trailer. Though that was obviously scripted like every Japanese show. First off, YoshiP mentioned a teaser site forFinal Fantasy XVIwill be launching in late October 2020, since they didn’t start one yet. Square Enix previously mentioned additional information will be coming in 2021, meaning the teaser site shouldn’t have anything. It’ll be a teaser site after all. For now they’re focusing on the game’s development.
Next, Naoki Yoshida mentioned that for theFinal Fantasy XVIreveal trailer, they wanted to avoid as much as possible only showing some pre-rendered cutscenes and a logo. Because people would then say “lolFF16won’t release before 2035”. Yoshida actually saw multiple English comments like that. They anticipated reactions like that, and that’s why they tried to include as much ingame as possible in the reveal trailer. Even though that was pretty difficult because they’re anything but done when it comes to optimization or tuning. I believe that would explain why the footage recorded was running on PC instead of PS5 too.
Overall, Yoshida said the trailer has pretty much no “selling points”. Instead of trying to make the game look appealing at all costs, they just showed whatFF16actually looks like for now. Obviously the game will keep improving.
Final Fantasy XVIwas announced on thePS5showcasein September 2020. While the reveal trailer from the showcase mentionedFFXVIis a timed exclusive to PS5 and will later come to PC, the Square Enix uploaded version of the trailer and the press release for the game only mention PS5 for the game’s platforms. However, it’s very likelyFinal Fantasy XVIis indeed a time-limited exclusive and will come to PC sometime after its launch one day.
Right before TGS 2020, anew reportclaimedFinal Fantasy XVIis in development for at least 4 years and will launch sooner than most people think. “4 years” is in touch with what we knew: Square Enix announced an AAA game was in development in 2016, and that gameentered full scale development in 2019. And wenow know this game wasFinal Fantasy XVI.
