Final Fantasy 16 Will Have AI-Driven Party Members

Given that Final Fantasy 16 is going to be the 16^th main entry in the long-running series (somewhat–it gets complicated when you add in titles like X-2), you’d likely expect the game to be similar to what came before. Apparently, that won’t be the case, as many elements expected to be certainties are going to be altered for the sake of player convenience.

In the game, you’ll be playing as Clive Rosfield. When it comes to the battle system, you’ll only have to worry about Clive himself.

“In battle, you have these characters that will be fully AI-driven,” producer Naoki Yoshida shares. “But that doesn’t mean that they will just be there in battle – there will be party banter, they will be accompanying Clive along this journey, and you’ll have party members enter the party and leave the party, and different people come in depending on where you are in the story.”

This isn’t as traditional as many would expect, but Yoshida also made it clear that these characters will matter overall.

“These characters will play big roles in the story and have their own arcs themselves. And so it’s not just… basically having someone help you in battle, it’s having party members participating in Clive’s journey.”

Why take this path then? Because the team wants players to fully dive into what Clive can do and focus on his story.

“Clive has a massive amount of unique abilities in his fully customizable arsenal,” Yoshida says. “We wanted players to master these and customize these to the point where they can use them fluidly and stylishly. But, by spreading out battle controls, out across multiple party members, it can end up hindering the action – or just making things more complicated. And that’s why we decided we’d rather have players focus solely on just controlling Clive.”

We’ll see how it works when the game comes out.

Source: GamesRadar