Many suspected a new Final Fantasy title was to be unveiled by Square Enix during the PS5 reveal event. While Square Enix did show up, Luminous Studios' Project Athia was shown off instead, a completely different project in a new universe. Project Athia and Luminous is mostly staffed by former Final Fantasy 15 developers, while Square Enix's internal studio develops the mainline Final Fantasy games. As Final Fantasy 15's extended universe has wrapped up its long development, many are wondering what's in store for the sixteenth entry in the historical JRPG franchise.
While there was a lot to love about Final Fantasy 15, there was certainly a lot to criticize as well. Playing through the game itself is mostly a positive experience, but there are glaring flaws that detract from the story the game is trying to tell, and to a lesser extent the gameplay pacing itself. Some of that can be mitigated with the technology in the PS5 and Xbox Series X, but also based on the experience gained from Final Fantasy 7 Remake. The next Final Fantasy would do well to seek inspiration from its predecessors in multiple ways.
FF15 vs. FF16: The Power of the SSD
Granted this was likely due to technical limitations at the time, but one of the most vocal criticisms of Final Fantasy 15 was its loading screens. While one of the major themes of Final Fantasy 15's narrative was to evoke the feeling of a road trip, driving around Eos could take a long time. Final Fantasy 15's map is genuinely huge and full of unique and interesting locations, which makes traveling throughout the game's world time consuming. Players didn't have to necessarily wait and watch as the car drove through the country, and instead could opt to skip ahead, but sometimes even that took too long.
Skipping to a location in the Regalia prompts a loading screen before players are brought to an area. In some cases the downtime is massive, lasting for several minutes before players can keep playing again. Final Fantasy 15 was initially designed for the PS4/Xbox One hardware, which utilized standard mechanical hard drive technology. Now PS5 and Xbox Series X are being designed with solid state drives, a vastly superior storage technology that has higher read/write speeds. Final Fantasy 16 can now be developed for PS5 and Xbox Series X without the restrictions of weaker storage and longer load times, preventing any forced pauses in the gameplay experience.
FF15 vs. FF16: Variety and Strategy in Combat
For the gameplay itself, there's also several improvements that could be made to the combat based on Final Fantasy 15's efforts. Granted it was the series' first foray into an action-based combat system, similar to that of Square Enix's other JRPG franchise Kingdom Hearts. Eschewing the turn-based combat didn't happen flawlessly, as Final Fantasy 15's combat eliminated strategy elements almost entirely. Combat often devolved into reactionary blocks/dodges and mashing the attack button, with magic or items rarely having their uses in battle. Mashing attack was not only the most efficient combat tactic, but was encouraged without any strategic alternatives.
Final Fantasy 16 would do well to take inspiration from the innovations in Final Fantasy 7 Remake's combat systems. Along with severely reducing the attack-reliant combat systems and including strategic elements, it also made every party member's actions matter. Cloud, Barret, Tifa, and Aerith all had their own distinct play styles that players could control and use in battle. Each character had a specialized builds and could serve multiple roles in a multi-faceted combat system that wasn't strictly turn-based. While Final Fantasy 15 did have some unique and interesting mechanics like link-strikes with allies, there was very little in the way of strategy that Final Fantasy 7 Remake addressed and vastly improved.
FF15 vs. FF16: Avoiding a Disjointed Narrative
Perhaps the biggest criticism of Final Fantasy 15 was the disjointed narrative told across the game's multimedia "universe." There are several moments throughout Final Fantasy 15's story that have vague momentary recaps based on an anime series, spin-off games, an entire CGI feature film, and several post-launch DLC expansions. It's worth pointing out that the plot concepts in these projects aren't necessarily bad on their own, but the execution of the overarching plot just detracted from the game's overall quality. Any player that misses out on watching these other films or shows is practically left in the dark about pivotal characters in Final Fantasy 15's plot.
It's hard to compare the situation of Final Fantasy 15's storytelling with other games in the franchise. This was the first time such an ambitious and diverse roadmap of multimedia was planned for a Final Fantasy title, even when compared to FF7's multimedia expansions. The scope of Final Fantasy 15's universe was blown way out of proportion, long before the game itself had space to breath and tell its own story. As a result, a lot of the cohesive links for the full story of Final Fantasy 15 were left out for the exterior projects to fill in.
Even its most recent successor Final Fantasy 7 Remake, despite putting in an extremely impressive effort of telling a cohesive story, is just part one of who knows how many Final Fantasy 7 Remake episodes coming in the future. Final Fantasy 16 needs to tell a cohesive and complete story in one package, exercising restraint in expanding storylines outside of the game's experience.
There's plenty of places for Final Fantasy 16 to draw inspiration from to craft a truly next-generation JRPG. The fifteenth game stumbled in several aspects, and while it didn't make the game a failure by any means, it's not the best the series could be. Square Enix likely recognizes this, and even games like Final Fantasy 7 Remake prove that efforts are being made to reach the franchise's former glory.
Final Fantasy 16 is reportedly in development.