Chocobos are perhaps the most iconic elements in the 35-year-old Final Fantasy series. Don’t worry, the cute bird-like creatures will be in Final Fantasy XVI – and you can ride them. However, in an odd change, the Japanese version of the game has characters calling the chocobos “uma”, or horses. This is a new addition to the series, and it surprised me. So I asked the Square Enix development team about it.

“Initially, neither I nor director (Hiroshi) Takai thought of putting chocobos as horses in the game,” says Kazutoyo Maehiro, creative director and scriptwriter of FFXVI, adding, “When we thought about the story, world and sense of reality, a horse simply looks better as a silhouette when you ride it.”

“If you’re building a European medieval gothic fantasy world, then obviously horses are much better documented,” adds producer Naoki Yoshida. “In reality, horses are animals that can form strong partnerships with humans. We have a long history with them. The weapons associated with the horse also seem more realistic. Especially with the improvement in graphics, which is very remarkable, there’s a chance to make it harder to lie or deceive the audience, in a good way, and as a result, the sense of immersion can be reduced. The chocobos are based on birds, which means first of all that they are not on four legs and therefore harder to get on. If you compare it to a horse, you might not feel as stable riding a chocobo, and their wings are not big and strong enough to take you into the sky.”

From Yoshida’s explanation, it’s easy to see why Maehiro and Takai thought to choose horses rather than chocobos for Final Fantasy XVI. However, Yoshida did instruct them to include chocobos in the game anyway. After all, what would a Final Fantasy game be without them?

“If you want to stay faithful to the Final Fantasy elements, then yes, you should choose chocobos instead of horses,” agrees Maehiro. Not only were chocobos introduced into the game, but Maehiro assured that they have a long history in Valisthea (the game world) of forming partnerships with humans. Maehiro said the goal was to create something culturally familiar.

“However, in Japanese, we sometimes call a car ‘a foot’ or if we don’t have a car, we ‘don’t have a foot’; and in the same way, the people of Valisthea call chocobos ‘horsemen’. This means that there may be real horses somewhere in the world of FFXVI… But at least in Valisthea, chocobos function as horses.”

The English version of FFXVI will stick with the chocobo name, so most of its audience won’t notice this slight change. It has been suggested that Japanese audiences will find this a sensible choice of name, given that chocobos behave much like horses in the game.

Maehiro also highlighted the big change these iconic birds have undergone: Clive Rosfield (the game’s protagonist) will be able to ride them on his adventures in different colours: white, cream and classic bright yellow.

Final Fantasy XVI will be released on 22 June 2023 for PS5.

Source : IGN