Square Enix is really on the home stretch with the game’s development.
Hiroshi Takai, Final Fantasy XVI’s director, said in an interview with Famitsu that the game is being played day by day, with the “rough” elements being addressed and that rendering and performance bugs are being addressed, and then bug fixing will come. The official release date is set for summer 2023, but no one from the Japanese company has said anything more specific.
It prompted a question to Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida, also known as Yoshi-P. According to him, Square Enix will tell us shortly when we can expect the game in stores and on the PlayStation Store. A date will be revealed before the end of the year, but Yoshida stressed that it would NOT be released later than the summer, meaning we’ll be playing the JRPG, which has been announced as a PlayStation 5 exclusive, by the end of August next year. He told 4Gamer , another Japanese publication, that a new trailer will be released alongside the release date and confirmed to Dengeki that a demo is planned.
“Since I’ve grown so accustomed to the development environment of online games over these past few years, I was a little surprised at how quickly we had to go gold. (Laughs.) If you consider the production of physical discs and shipping them worldwide… all of that takes several months of physical time after going gold. So when we say development is 95% complete, some might say, ‘well then release it immediately,’ but that’s the reality of the situation…” Yoshida told Famitsu.
And the producer explained to IGN why we wouldn’t see many darker-skinned characters in the game, “This is a difficult question, but not one that was unexpected, seeing as diversity in entertainment media has become a much-discussed topic as of late. However, the answer I have may end up disappointing to some, depending on individual expectations. Our design concept from the earliest stages of development has always heavily featured medieval Europe, incorporating historical, cultural, political, and anthropological standards that were prevalent at the time. When deciding on a setting that was best suited to the story we wanted to tell—the story of a land beset by the Blight—we felt that rather than create something on a global scale, it was necessary to limit the scope it to a single landmass — one geographically and culturally isolated from the rest of the world in an age without aeroplanes, television, or telephones.
[The game] was going to be less diverse than, say, a modern-day Earth. Ultimately, we felt that while incorporating ethnic diversity into Valisthea was necessary, an over-incorporation into this single corner of a much larger world could end up causing a violation of those narrative boundaries we initially set for ourselves. The story we are telling is fantasy, but it is also rooted in reality. In the end, we want the focus to be less on the outward appearance of our characters and more on who they are as people—people who are complex and diverse in their natures, backgrounds, beliefs, personalities, and motivations. People whose stories we can resonate with. There is diversity in Valisthea. The diversity that, while not all-encompassing, is synergistic with the setting we’ve created and is true to the inspirations from which we are drawing,” Yoshida replied.
Final Fantasy XVI, which will require about 35 to 40 hours to complete, is coming to PlayStation 5 in the summer.
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