It won't take long before Final Fantasy 16 is finally ready to explore. The game has kept players waiting, but for much less time than its numbered predecessors. Thanks to a steady flow of developer updates, fans know that Final Fantasy 16 has gone gold and is currently in the polishing phase of development. Clive Rosfield's journey across Valisthea to shape history will begin in just a few months, and it's not just fans who are excited about the PS5 title after the 2022 Game Awards trailer.
Recently, Square Enix aired one of its Final Fantasy 14 Live Letters, this being a message from the producer talking about the approaching Patch 6.3. The producer and director Naoki Yoshida joined the Global Community Producer Toshio Murouchi on stream, and the two spent hours previewing the new FF14 content. However, right at the end of the stream, Yoshida changes the subject to the most recent trailer for Final Fantasy 16, another game he is producing. While said trailer, “Revenge,” mostly focused on revealing FF16’s party system and teasing more story details, Yoshida emphasized how the whole thing was only possible thanks to the power of the PS5.
The PS5 Can Display All of Final Fantasy 16’s Details
Yoshida states that Final Fantasy 16’s Revenge trailer was rendered in real time on PlayStation 5 hardware. Everything was displayed without any loading thanks to the system's high specs and use of a solid-state drive. "It's become a game that is like, 'Look at the power of the PS5!'" Yoshida exclaimed. It's not hard to see why when rewatching the trailer. Turning up the resolution will reveal that every surface, from the ground to characters’ faces, is heavily detailed. It's a far cry from the accusations of using high-quality Final Fantasy 14 models levied at the game’s reveal trailer.
The ability to consistently display textures of this quality is something that has only become viable on consoles within the last few years. Square Enix and other major AAA publishers have been pushing forward on this front since the turn of HD gaming, but most will agree that it took until Sony's heavily optimized first-party titles midway through the PS4's lifespan for games to reach this ideal.
Thanks to supply shortages, it can feel like game visuals have stalled at that point, as even major first-party releases like God of War Ragnarok and Halo Infinite are coming out as cross-generation titles. Final Fantasy 16's PS5 exclusivity frees it from any shackles imposed by older hardware, and has given Creative Business Unit 3 the chance to recapture Final Fantasy's cutting-edge visual spectacle.
Final Fantasy 16 Needs Powerful Hardware to Work
Spectacle is a good word to describe what's going on in Final Fantasy 16's trailers, as there are many highly-detailed assets displayed in most scenes. Just as a baseline, Square Enix's signature vibrant special effects are on full display here. Characters and magical objects are covered in glowing marks, colored particles fill the air with every attack, and sometimes the screen is even covered entirely by special effects. For the game to even run with so much happening on-screen and a lot of variance possible in gameplay, it needs strong hardware. Final Fantasy 16's identity as an action RPG makes this even more vital, as many genre veterans would prefer it if gameplay framerates remain locked at 60 FPS.
Even when control is taken away from the player, the action doesn't slow down. Some sequences in FF16 will have entire armies clashing on massive battlefields, and while there are no doubt plenty of development tricks in play to save on processing power and the need for individualized animations, all the movement hides that from the player's eye. The intensity is dialed up even further when a Dominant summons their Eikon, and one of Final Fantasy's iconic summons takes to the field. Viewers have already seen squads of soldiers being blown away by massive elemental attacks, and there will no doubt be even more incidental devastation on display when two Eikons butt heads. It's an impressive sight to see the PS5 smoothly render quick cuts between all of this, sometimes with establishing shots that stretch into the middle distance.
Whatever FF16 Wants To Do, The PS5 Can Execute
When players reach one of Final Fantasy 16's more open environments, they will no doubt want to sweep the camera around and take in all the details. This has not been confirmed, but they may get the chance to do so in the cutscenes as well. While speaking about FF16’s Revenge trailer, Naoki Yoshida added that if one wished to turn the camera during the trailer, they could. Presumably, this means that the PS5 is able to load even more assets than what any given cutscene must display on screen, but this could lead to a lesser-known and rare feature returning.
Final Fantasy 13-2 had an unlockable Fragment Skill called Eyes of the Goddess. With it, players could control the camera during event scenes. That game used in-game models, environments, and animations during many of its cutscenes, so moving the camera didn't strain its 7th console generation hardware too much. Comparatively, the 9th generation PS5 should be able to handle this feature with little strain, and with more bespoke events happening.
Even if this little bonus isn't available, Final Fantasy 16 has been confirmed to have a photo mode, and the PS5's loading speeds will be invaluable there. When players want to line up a screenshot during gameplay, the action needs to stop quickly, and the interface should feel good no matter how many particles are in the shot. While it's unfortunate that FF16's initial launch is exclusive to the PS5, it seems like Sony's console and Final Fantasy 16 are a perfect match for each other.
Final Fantasy 16 will be released on June 22, 2023 for PS5.