Square Enix made a surprise revelation about Final Fantasy 16 in the Summer Games Fest.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Atsushi Inaba of PlatinumGames and Tai Yasue, co-director of Kingdom Hearts 4, worked on the combat systems for the upcoming action RPG.
Producer Naoki Yoshida explained that they cannot elaborate on what exactly the two companies worked n, but Yasue let a hint early when he stated that:
“I’m happy to announced that, in fact, the Kingdom Hearts development team had a part in developing Final Fantasy 16.
We joined forces on the battles and such, but to be honest it came as a surprise when the idea was initially brought to us.”
Inaba revealed that PlatinumGames was led by Takahisa Taura on their side of development. Takahisa Taura is the same Square Enix lead who worked with the studio on Nier: Automata.
This was a strong sign of a continuing relationship between the two companies. While PlatinumGames made a hit with Square Enix with Nier: Automata, the two companies then made a fumble with the poorly received live service game Babylon’s Fall.
Of course, there would presumably be less friction between the Final Fantasy team and the Kingdom Hearts team. It is worth noting that even if there are overlap between individual developers, there are separate internal Square Enix studios working on both franchises.
But mainly, this is a big move for Square Enix, indicating that they really wanted to move away from the turn based combat systems the franchise was known for.
Even in a heavily modified form, turn based combat was present even as late as Final Fantasy XV. Final Fantasy XV Active X Battle system, modified for the game’s open world, did allow you to execute attacks, combos, and parries in real time. However, there were also cooldowns in between these actions, so this was as close as the Final Fantasy team went to real time combat without officially going there.
Not everyone is going to like that the combat had changed so much. While not everyone is into turn based combat, it adds a layer of tactics that is the appeal for players who are into these sort of games.
Make no mistake, there is a real tension about this design decision for Final Fantasy fans. We are about to find out if this gamble to change the combat system pays off for Square Enix.
Final Fantasy 16 will be released exclusively to the PlayStation 5 on June 22, 2023.
