Final Fantasy XV Details About Its Road Trip, Adventure, And Combat

Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata shared the latest on the upcoming game during a Square Enix presentation at E3 2016. Here’s a summary with highlights on what was discussed during the event.

• The trailers showcased during the Microsoft and Sony press conferences were aimed towards the general audience. From here on until the end of E3 2016, Square Enix will reveal more information that leans more towards the fans of the series.

• Today’s theme is “Leading-Edge” and we’ll learn about how Final Fantasy XV is “leading edge” in all three categories of road trip, adventure, combat.

• The footage shown was from a PC build of the game that is being used for its development.

• The current version of the game is more user-friendly than the one we saw during Microsoft’s press conference.

• The above scene isn’t the very start of the game, but it shows the start of the adventure.

• You’ll meet the mechanic Cidney at first, but it’s a very short cutscene. As soon as the scene is done, you’ll have complete freedom right away.

• The idea is to not make it a linear introduction, but one that gives you freedom to explore right off the bat.

• The world is realistic in many ways, but there are also plenty of fantasy elements.

• While you may have partners that travel with you, it’s a single player game at core; however, it’s designed in a way where your comrades will behave a lot more human-like, so it’ll feel like you’re traveling with actual friends.

• As the time of day passes in the game and gets darker, the nature of the environment will change accordingly. For example, you’ll get to see different personalities and characteristics of the partners when you camp at night.

• There’s a feature where Prompto can take pictures, which you can then share with friends via social network.

• You’re not simply traveling around the world, but there are various dangers lurking out there too, bringing out more of an adventurous sense.

• The characters have many abilities available for combat.

• There are many areas where you can fight, from open plains to enclosed military areas.

• Square Enix is confident that anybody can easily pick up and learn how to play the game just as well as what’s shown during the demonstration.

• There are three main buttons for combat: attack, defense, and warp. It’s a very simple system that will allow you to create huge variations by simply using those three commands. While simple, there will be plenty of depth as well.

• The combat will also feel more like a multiplayer game, where you have partner characters doing their own moves. You can also instruct them to use specific techniques as well.

• You can gather energy from the land and environment in numerous ways around you, which are then used to synthesize magic used in battle.

• You can also customize these abilities. For example, a Fire magic can be customized to have a healing ability. This allows you to freely customize Fire, Thunder, and more in a variety of ways.

• The bottom-left of the screen shows your 4 weapons, which you can switch out at any time. The actual combat styles you use greatly varies depending on your weapon of choice.

• Those who prefer action games will enjoy gameplay using the warp maneuvers to evade attacks instead of defending, but this is more of an advanced way of playing.

• Traditional FF games have Active and Wait modes. Final Fantasy XV will let you have the option to pause while making decisions in its “Wait Mode” option, which was added after fans voiced their concern about not being so good at action games but want to enjoy the battle of the game.

• Wait Mode works by having the game completely paused in “wait mode” whenever you’re not pressing anything. You can switch between Wait Mode and Action Mode at anytime during gameplay. Wait Mode will let you take your time as long as the meter on the bottom doesn’t run out. This allows you to strategize without needing to think in real time. Keep in mind that it’s not a mode added to make the game easier to play, but to add it a different strategic approach that lets you enjoy it in a different way.

You can watch the presentation in its entirety below:

Final Fantasy XV will release worldwide on September 30, 2016 for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.