There’s one particular Final Fantasy XVI development story that Naoki Yoshida admits he’s unlikely to ever forget. The producer describes a particular port city that the studio has conceptualized. Its main feature: a huge, colossal wall that stretches the length of the city, separating it from the surrounding ocean and which has successfully protected those behind it from invasion for more than three centuries. It’s a visually impressive sight, one that fits perfectly with the larger fantasy world of Valisthea. There was, however, a problem.
“You look at these drawings,” Yoshida-san explains, “and in the furthest corner of town, on the sea side, there is a natural cliff. And this cliff is maybe 15 meters high. And the head of this town, the most important person, is housed just there next to that. What stopped the hackers from arriving, destroying the house and taking over? It made no sense.
The result was a proverbial – and literal – return to the drawing board to correct the oversight.
It is a memory that articulates the meticulous work to make this fantastic world believable, lived. And this story is just one of many examples of the complexities that the producer, alongside art director Hiroshi Minagawa and localization director Michael-Christopher Koji Fox navigated as they built Valisthea and the player’s journey. through her.
Designing a world, of how Valisthea rests at a crossroads between multiple studio teams – environmental artists, level designers, combat teams and more – is the focus of an insightful conversation with the three mid- way from their two-day stopover in London. This stay is just one stop on a multi-country tour for the game they’re tied to, with each stop giving attendees several hours with the near-final PS5 game.
It is a robust practice. First we sample the game’s opening hours, a look back at a key period in Clive Rosfield’s youth that sets the stage for what’s to come. (It’s this section that players will experience in a public demo that will drop before the full game launches.) We then play for the full two hours and switch directly after this demo concludes. Finally, we’re left to wander for thirty minutes through one of the game’s open areas, a lush valley filled with optional beasts to defeat and side quests to undertake.
During this collective period, we walk through the gardens and hideouts of the castle, weaving our way through more guided scenarios, taking part in a spectacular cinematic clash between Eikon and Eikon. Thus, we get a better understanding of the structure of the game, the design of the environment. I’ve answered a question I never thought I’d ask: what version of gardening tools is Final Fantasy?
Boss battles, whether it’s Eikon vs. Eikon or Clive’s clashes with greater threats, promise to be one-of-a-kind encounters. FFXVI has a specific team, a small group of game designers, animators and programmers, dedicated to creating them.
Chocobo stables, ruined towns amid murky swamps, mountain landscapes under Eikon’s repeated devastation, it’s all a lavishly detailed production. On this first long look at least, everything placed is useful, each area has a story. This, of course, takes work and collaboration. (“You’ve made us remember things we don’t want,” Yoshida-san jokingly concludes at the end of the interview after revisiting the challenges that yielded such fantastic results.)
The first step was the story concept, a decision made by looking at what worked and what didn’t work for Final Fantasy XV. Although the majority of Final Fantasy game stories are standalone adventures, they don’t stay in a bubble. Adding to the greater tapestry naturally meant going back to what had come before. Yoshida-san points out that players are unhappy with FFXV’s story. “It was incomplete. Things have been promised, things have not been delivered. So that’s what we wanted to avoid for FFXVI.
Then they had to imagine what animated the world, animated the characters. The producer compares the mother crystals of Valisthea – a staple of Final Fantasy games – to the oil fields, the crystal’s ether production being akin to oil. Ether powers the magic, powers the world. With the decrease of this resource, a conflict breaks out. Some regions felt a natural fit for particular items, which organically led to matching those with Eikons of similar elemental power (the FFXVI version of the franchise’s Monstrous Summon). These are in turn controlled by Dominants, unique individuals who, through this power, can alter the course of conflict and are therefore valuable assets to nation states.
With these aspects envisioned and placed, the art team and writers begin work. As evidenced by a natural cliff that nearly lowered a port city, the complexities of world creation are not straightforward. Nor is it about making sure the places feel authentic to the history and traditions of that area.
The dense backstory of the world is easily digested by the Active Time Lore system. Clicking at any time brings up a shortlist of characters, factions, and nations with short text that updates contextually based on what’s happening on screen.
“It’s not something that can only be done by designers. I mean, they tried. They put things down and they quickly realized it wouldn’t work… It didn’t feel real,” he said. recalls art director Hiroshi Minagawa, recalling a time when there was an overabundance of generic barrels placed across the world. “Go to the desert, nothing but barrels everywhere”, he laughs. “You will have employees who just think ‘the more barrels the better,'” Yoshida-san interjects. “It doesn’t feel like it’s something that has lived.”
The solution: cross-pollination between teams. “We brought in a member of the Scenarios and Lore team to brief them on what this town is about, the lore of the town,” Minagawa-san explains. “We asked this person to provide images on their image of what each area would be like, what they were aiming for in the lore, working with the designers with that information to get the right feel. Something that would be more suitable for a team. And once that person from the Lore team came in, you know, joined the designers, things got a lot easier. With less clutter and wiser choices for scenery, towns began to reflect the regions they were based on, alluding to a place or people’s history through visual cues only.
The game’s vertical slice allowed the studio to refine its vision, experiment with what it could achieve visually on PS5, and use the design of that chosen area to help define what the larger game would look like. Environmental artists and level designers review and adapt to each other’s suggestions, while the battle team tests if the location is spacious enough for battle. This slice of gameplay incorporates the Caer Norvent scene, which will be playable at the start of the story campaign.
After being mesmerized by composer Masayoshi Soken’s score of the sections I played, I wonder if music is the final arc that connects any realm. “We didn’t have any music until the end,” Yoshida-san confirms, saying they have over 200 unique tracks in the game. for the different characters, and it was about taking those central themes and then using arrangements of those for the different situations.
“So for us it was also very surprising because we played them without sound…even we were moved to hear [that music] those early times towards the end of development.
The swell of an orchestra or choir is just one of many details that aim to make you feel completely immersed in Valisthea, and all of these rich details, no matter how minor, were made with careful decisions by its developers. Yoshida-san returns to this port city wall to learn how to sell an inhabited world.
“It has not been invaded, nor fallen. But certainly more than 300 years, people have tried. And so you wouldn’t have a nice, clean, intact wall after three centuries. You would have spots that are cracked and maybe crumbled, but the wall held. And just by having that visually, it tells that story. That yes, he did not fall, but people tried. And so to make sure that the story and lore that we’ve built gets to the design team so they can make sure that’s in the visuals. It’s very difficult, but it makes the game better.
Final Fantasy XVI launches on PS5 on June 22.
