When it comes to Final Fantasy, the franchise is known for delivering an epic RPG journey. However, for the past few titles, you might have assumed the upcoming launch of Final Fantasy XVI would come with a large open world. Unfortunately, that’s not going to be the case, as the gameplay experience will be linear this time. That’s a decision that might have some fans a bit disappointed. But, when you ask the director behind the upcoming Final Fantasy video game release, Hiroshi Takai, it’s a decision he’s willing to defend.

There will not be a massive world to explore in Final Fantasy XVI endlessly. Instead, the next major installment will have a linear approach which was a decision the development team decided on early. Recently, the director behind Final Fantasy XVI, Hiroshi Takia, was interviewed by the Japanese publication Famitsu. During the conversation, it was reported that Hiroshi Takai opted to go with a linear approach for Final Fantasy XVI for a few different reasons. For starters, it takes quite a bit of work to deliver an open-world experience.

The game director noted that the open-world experience would need a significant amount of detail. After all, you can’t have a big game release like Final Fantasy XVI set in a dull world. So the amount of detail that the development team would have needed to turn out would have likely pushed this game back quite a bit. However, there’s another reason that the development team wanted to drop the idea of an open-world Final Fantasy experience for the next mainline installment. 

One of the other main reasons this open-world concept was quickly dropped was actually because of past Final Fantasy game installments. Director Hiroshi Takai thought back to the past linear games where the focus was on characters and storyline. That’s something Hiroshi is focusing on with the game project. Players should expect a compelling narrative to keep chipping away at, along with a cast of interesting characters. But we’ll have to wait a bit longer before seeing how the storyline and characters stack up against the other iconic titles from this long-running franchise.

We’re still waiting for the Final Fantasy XVI’s launch date to be unveiled. Right now, the development team over at Square Enix has only slated the game to launch at some point in 2023. However, when the game does launch, you can find the title readily available for the PlayStation 5 console platform.

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