That’s why it has no round battles and no open world

The Final Fantasy series has used a turn-based combat system since its inception. Recently, however, developers have been experimenting with this formula a little, and Final Fantasy 16 will probably deviate completely from the classic combat system. At least that’s what comes out of an interview by Famitsu with producer Naoki Yoshida, which was kindly provided by VGC has been translated.

According to Yoshida, the new Final Fantasy should primarily appeal to a younger audience, who often enjoy action combat more than turn-based combat.

“Coming from a generation that grew up with command-based and turn-based RPGs, I think I understand how interesting and addicting that can be. On the other hand, over the past decade I’ve seen quite a number of opinions saying, ‘ I don’t see what’s appealing about choosing commands in video games.’ This opinion continues to grow, especially among younger audiences who don’t typically play RPGs.”

Yoshida continues to point out that RPGs are evolving from tabletop games, but now technology has advanced enough to allow for more complex combat systems.

“For several generations of consoles, all character actions can be performed in real time. Actions like ‘pull the trigger and your character will shoot a gun’ and ‘press the button and your character will swing his sword’ can now be easily performed without using a command system. It’s now common for gamers younger than me to love such games. As a result, going through a prompt like ‘Battle’ to make a decision mid-fight doesn’t seem to make sense.”

Overall, open-world titles are currently the most popular in the video game world. Despite this, however, Final Fantasy 16 will not feature an open world. According to Yoshida, this is mainly because he wants to release the new offshoot as soon as possible.

“If we had had a development time of about 15 years, we might have had the opportunity to challenge ourselves with an open world. It’s almost impossible in terms of time and cost to create a global story in an open world.”