Since the first trailer for Final Fantasy XVI dropped during the PlayStation 5 reveal in 2020, fans of the 35-year-old franchise have been desperate for more crumbs of information. After the game was noticeably absent from Square Enix’s 2022 lineup, panic rang out through the community–but that panic was quickly squashed by the game’s producer Naoki Yoshida.
In a January announcement, Yoshida promised that more XVI news would be coming in Spring 2022 after development on the game was pushed back almost half a year due to the pandemic. As we hoped, the producer is staying true to his word.
During a Square Enix live stream for NieR Re[in]carnation, Yoshida revealed to audiences that a new trailer for Final Fantasy XVI would be revealed soon. Said trailer is already complete and has been delayed due to “various factors,” but it looks like we won’t have to be in the dark for too much longer.
Yoshida also mentioned that the dev team has spent a long time debugging the game and giving it some final polish, and that is almost complete. This lines up with a recent magazine interview with the producer, in which he said that development on FFXVI is in its “final stages.”
“Final Fantasy XVI aims to integrate the story and the gaming experience into a single-player game. Unlike online, which portrays multiple players simultaneously, Final Fantasy XVI focuses on the individual,” Yoshida said in a recent interview. “This makes the story more immersive. It’s a very dense story.”
While toiling away on the next mainline title in the series, Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida has also continued to work on Final Fantasy XIV. In February, Yoshida claimed that the massively popular MMO will continue for at least another decade.
In March, Square Enix unveiled a new website to celebrate 35 years of the Final Fantasy series, teasing more about known upcoming titles and implying that more are in the works.
Final Fantasy XVI does not yet have a set release date, but this recent development has many speculating that the title may still arrive in late 2022. In October 2021, it was announced that the game’s main scenario had been completed.
