Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida talked about the upcoming title for the first time since its announcement during a special FF14 program on Square Enix Presents at TGS 2020.
The talk about Final Fantasy 16 in a Final Fantasy 14 program started courtesy Yoko Taro with the following:
Yoko Taro: “So today, we have the TWO of Yosuke Saito and Yoko Taro for a 14 (FF14) program, so that means you have the numbers 2 plus 14 to make 16!”
Yosuke Saito: “16?! No way, 16?”
Yoko Taro: “We’re changing today’s program for a special!”
Naoki Yoshida: “Hold on, hold on!”
Yosuke Saito: “I heard there’s a new trailer.”
Naoki Yoshida: “No, there isn’t!”
Yoko Taro: “And gameplay.”
Naoki Yoshida: “No, no, no, please wait. This program is about 14, but we indeed announced Final Fantasy 16. However, I want to wait until 2021 to release more info so that we can focus on its development, or so I thought, but I’m getting this ‘What the hell are you doing?’ vibe here from Yoko Taro here [laughs]. Anyway, it doesn’t even have a teaser website right now, but we’ll have one sometime around the end of October. I’m thinking about launching the teaser site and releasing a bit of info surrounding the characters and world. Then after that, I want to focus on development.”
Yosuke Saito: “That’s unforgivable.”
Naoki Yoshida: “What do you mean, unforgivable? [laughs]. But we did put some work into it. How do I put it, for this trailer, I wanted to avoid going with something incredibly rendered then showing the logo, like bam. I wanted to show in-game material moving in real-time as much as possible. However, we were running a bit tight on time, and we hardly did any optimizing or fine-tuning, so it was a little problematic. Especially these days since we tend to compare with other recent releases.
Naoki Yoshida: “However, if we went with a rendered trailer… then it’s like ‘I’ll see you guys in 2035!’. I’ve actually seen those comments coming from America [laughs]. For now, I wanted to show something moving (in-real time). I mean, this trailer didn’t show any of the game’s selling points, so we’ll have something the next time after giving it some more work.”
Final Fantasy 16 is in development for the PlayStation 5. Check our previous report for more on Naoki Yoshida, who mentioned last year that he wanted to see more fantasy and less machinery in the next Final Fantasy.
