Fans of Square Enix have been looking forward to is the upcoming Final Fantasy 16. With the game being omitted from Square Enix's Tokyo Game Show presentation, fans were worried that the project wouldn't have any news about its progress. However, a recent livestream at TGS was able to give a small update from two key staff members of the project, Naoki Yoshida and Hironobu Sakaguchi. One of the key details discussed during the stream was regarding the story of Final Fantasy 16.
The latest entry of this long-running franchise involves returning to its high fantasy roots, as opposed to the more sci-fi and modern settings, as mentioned by Sakaguchi on the stream. This includes the return of medieval set pieces and aesthetics seen in Final Fantasy 16's initial reveal trailer for the PS5. Ever since then, the only information known is a time skip involving the protagonist Clive, as well as the giant Eikon summons, with further information about the game being kept close to the chest. Fans might be relieved to hear that the latest progress on the game is the main story being finished.
Yoshida mentioned during the TGS livestream that the team started production on the story a long time ago. The priority was mostly held on the story of the game, and that they didn't begin adding more team members until it was complete. To them, the story needed to be completely ready before the full production of Final Fantasy 16 could begin.
Aside from the main story, Yoshida also discussed the progress on other important aspects of Final Fantasy 16. He mentions that the side-quests are currently being worked on, and they need some polish regarding its quality. Sakaguchi mentioned that he wanted to write one of the side-quests for the game as well. Yoshida extended the offer to have him write a quest for Final Fantasy 14, with Sakaguchi replying that he didn't want to compete with other quest writers like Yasumi Matsuno and Yoko Taro.
Other technical aspects were also discussed regarding the progress of the game. One of these includes almost all of the models used in the game being almost completed as well. Suffice to say, if there's one thing to be taken from this interview, it would be that it was important that Yoshida's dev team wanted to finish everything to the letter before getting more manpower. There is a great boon for Final Fantasy 16 to start small instead of going big at the beginning and fumbling the development process during production.
Final Fantasy 16 is in development for the PlayStation 5.
Source: YouTube