Today Famitsu published an interview with Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida, director Hiroshi Takai, and creative director Kazutoyo Maehiro, and they had interesting information about the upcoming game.
We hear that development is about 95% complete, and the developers are playing the game every day, polishing rough edges, performance, and rendering issues, what’s left beyond that is mostly bug fixing.
That being said, the scale of the game is vast so bug fixing takes a long time and almost the whole team of programmers is working on it.
The UI that we saw in the latest trailer is being adjusted in response to feedback, but Mahehiro-san doesn’t expect it to change much.
More news will come by the end of the year, and Yoshida-san thinks this will include the release date. Incidentally, he was surprised by the fact that they have to go gold very early compared to release as he’s used to online game development (Yoshida-san is the director and producer of Final Fantasy XIV), but producing and shipping the physical editions takes months after going gold.
He’s aware that when one says that development is 95% complete, people may think a game can be released right away, but that’s not the case.
The development team is so deep into the debugging phase that nowadays there won’t be room for big changes even if the director or creative director wanted them. Yoshida-san jokingly explains that they still hear screaming from the sound team led by [Final Fantasy XIV composer] Masayoshi Soken, so he believes development will be complete when the screams go quiet.
Takai-san and Yoshida-san explain that they’re obsessed with the sound, so they’re imposing on the sound team, and due to the extreme nature of some of the adjustments they requested, they’ve been lectured and asked “are you sure you want to finish this?” Yoshida-san apologizes for the trouble he caused for the sound team, but since this is an action JRPG, the timing is really important and Soken-san and his team have to work very hard on that.
Once that is done, it’ll be time for the final bug fixes and then preparing for release. So, again, he Yoshida-san believes they’ll be able to announce the release date by the end fo the year and he doesn’t think there will be delays beyond summer 2023.
Maehiro-san thinks they managed to create something really fun, and a very good game, including the story and battles.
Takai-san is also very proud of what the team has accomplished, having managed to develop a game combining visceral action and a great story. He believes it’s a game that we’ll have trouble putting down.
Yoshida-san concluded by mentioning that the style of the game was never going to be “a hopeful adventure under a bright, clear blue sky.” They were able to create what they had set out to do, and what they believed Final Fantasy is.
This is the first Final Fantasy with a heavy and somber atmosphere in a long time, and that is why there are so many topics they were able to touch. According to Yoshida-san the development team has done a great job and from now on they’d like to release more details that will get everyone excited, so we should look forward to it.
Final Fantasy 16 has a release window in Summer 2023 for PS5.
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