Interview on Final Fantasy 16: Rising Tide, PC porting, and the reasons for Leviathan's demise

Final Fantasy XVI, the most current (non-remake trilogy) game in the venerable role-playing game series, was released over a year ago. The second DLC for it, The Rising Tide, will release soon, and a PC version is also planned.

Final Fantasy XVI had a generally positive reception at introduction, but since then, there has been a lot of controversy about its more action-oriented design. In any case, I found it enjoyable and, to be honest, I fit the profile for what's in store for us soon: a new DLC centered on my personal favorite Final Fantasy summon, Leviathan, with additional quests, plot, and other features.

We had the opportunity to speak with the directors of the forthcoming Final Fantasy XVI content drop, Takeo Kujiraoka, producer Naoki Yoshida, and translation director Michael-Christopher Koji Fox, at PAX East 2024. I had some questions about their thoughts on XVI thus far, what they thought they might still improve the RPG, and what they thought the future would hold for platforms other than PCs.

In addition, I was curious about the size of the sea serpent battle. The good news is that it seems to be rather substantial.

Recovery of Lost Property

Nearly a year after the original release of Final Fantasy XVI, the team's sentiments seem to be good. In addition to returning the series to its fantasy origins, Yoshida pointed out that more recent Final Fantasy games have tended toward a science-fiction aesthetic.

Yoshida said, "There was a lot of pressure on us." We were, however, quite glad when the launch came along and we saw the player reaction, comments, and how people connected with Clive's narrative and fell in love with him and these new characters.

I was interested in learning how the choice to take on DLC in the end was made going into this. The attitude changed throughout time, from having no intentions to having possibilities to what we have today. The door hasn't been completely closed even then. I questioned the group about how Leviathan came to be and why the team's opinion changed.

Regarding the initial ideas of the XVI team, Yoshida said, "We wanted to make the main game a perfect game." "That's not to say, though, that we didn't have a plan for a DLC in case the players responded favorably to the main game."

A little nugget of information remained in the account, however, as it mentioned "Leviathan the Lost," an Eikon that oddly did not show up during Clive's expedition. As it happens, there was some discussion regarding Leviathan, although very early on. Yoshida makes it clear that while the team considered the possibility of Leviathan, it finally turned out that the fabled snake would represent the missing Eikon. Nothing completed was cut out of the material, either.

Yoshida explains, "The plan was always to do those original Eikons and not have Leviathan in the main game." "And then, should the chance arise, we could incorporate it into a DLC."

Why then is Leviathan? Well, at least everyone is familiar with Leviathan. It appears often in early Final Fantasy games and continues to be a key feature in more current games such as Final Fantasy XV. What does Leviathan contribute to the discussion?

Clive has a water cannon.

Clive will get a new Eikonic form based on Leviathan, called The Rising Tide, which was disclosed at the panel at PAX East 2024. It's noteworthy because its distinguishing feature is that it's a ranged weapon, which adds something new to Clive's armory. In the DLC trailer, you can see the hero of XVI firing off different explosions and projectiles:

It was crucial for this to seem different from Clive's prior alternatives, even if it represents a minor paradigm change for him. Kujiraoka references combat director Ryota Suzuki's idea that every form should have a unique vibe.

"Up until now, the idea behind developing eikeionic abilities has been that you don't want overlap between the elements," Kujiraoka said. Every kind of set should have a distinct feel to it. Therefore, the idea behind creating Leviathan was that, once again, we wanted something that would seem entirely distinct from what was already possible.

But according to the Square team's testing and gameplay, it doesn't seem strange. The ranged attacks wind up seeming natural while remaining quite unique, blending in with Clive's playstyle and other skills.

Since we introduced it internally, several members of the development and quality assurance teams have moved one of their three, or their preferred three, to Leviathan because they like the way it functions, according to Kujiraoka.

It's Jill's turn.

Those additional resources will be useful for some of the endgame stuff.Rise of the Tide revision. This DLC is expected to include a new zone, new equipment, and much more; the director compares it to an MMO expansion, stating that you should anticipate at least 10 hours of new content, which is much more than the last DLC, Echoes of the Fallen.Fans of a particular ice-wielding fencer should take notice of the fact that Jill will be appearing in The Rising Tide in a bigger capacity. Since Jill is from the Northern Territories, a greater amount of her personality will be incorporated into the new region."One of the themes for both DLCs was that we would be embarking on this adventure together, not just with Clive but also with Jill, Joshua, and Torgal, for these two last quest lines before the end," Kujiraoka said. "So, in The Rising Tide, Jill will have more lines and a stronger connection to this story than Joshua did in Echoes of the Fallen, which was kind of more focused on Joshua and gave him a lot more of a forward role during."

The director of the DLC tells me that it was difficult to incorporate all of this into the current plot and history, but in the end, The Rising Tide should feel like a seamless addition to the original game. This also provides some endgame stuff that is harder."Clive will have all these new abilities once he gets that final element [from Leviathan] there," Kujiraoka said. "We would like him to be able to demonstrate those skills as well."In the end, it probably has to do with both the quest material and the upcoming new roguelite mode. It seems to introduce a few very challenging tasks, one of which was hinted at both Yoshida and Kujiraoka at the PAX East XVI panel and involved a covert meeting.

My Ifrit, come to me

Naturally, a new Eikon and a new set of Eikonic powers and mean a new Eikon combat as well. With XVI having just launched and The Rising Tide due to arrive on April 18, the DLC turnaround time was short, but the team still wanted the experience of battling Leviathan to be "equal" to the previous huge Eikonic encounters. While they were at it, they also wanted to change another knob."The battles between the Eikons up until now are those setpieces again," Kujiraoka said. Because they are essential to the plot and we want readers to be able to experience and overcome them in order to continue the novel, we didn't make them too difficult.But because this is the last encounter with Eikon before the game's conclusion, we wanted to make it difficult," Kujiraoka explains. "We wanted to give it that sense of being worthwhile, so we concentrated even more on the combat of this Eikon-versus-Eikon battle than we had in the past, so that players would feel as though they were Ifrit, utilizing all the skills they had accumulated in the previous Eikon battles to defeat this final Eikon."

The news that Ifrit would use more of his techniques in the Eikon battle is very intriguing. The crew refers to The Rising Tide as the "peak" of Ifrit-versus-Eikon clashes, and after seeing how expansive and exquisite the battles in the basic game were, I'm eager to see what they've created for Leviathan.

A fresh future on a new medium

The Ascending Current is not, however, the only XVI project in development. Additionally, Yoshida reports that Square Enix's PC adaptation of Final Fantasy XVI is "going smoother than we thought it would," according to the team. One project the team is working on right now is estimating where its technical specifications and optimization will end up, taking into consideration the PlayStation 5's loading speed.Yoshida said, "It produces that fluid kind of gameplay that we had as one of our primary concepts." "We desire a seamless experience with no breaks in the game." That is why we are now working on a replication of it. You will thus need a rather high-spec PC to be able to recreate it on a PC. As a result, we're now evaluating the game and our existing optimization across a wide range of systems to determine the system requirements needed to play the game in a manner that is comparable to that on the PlayStation 5.Yoshida affirms that this does indeed indicate a demo is in the works, allowing users to evaluate the capacity of their equipment. Additionally, Square Enix is trying to ensure that the personalization options "players have come to expect from a PC game" are available. Moreover, putting together a bundle that contains both the original Final Fantasy XVI and its DLC.Naturally, with Final Fantasy XIV with Final Fantasy XVI having just recently debuted on Xbox Series consoles, I felt compelled to bring up the possibility of another new platform for the game following PC. Yoshida describes it as being in front of them at the moment in the form of the PC version and DLC.I don't want this to stop with just the PC version, so after that's finished, we start working on it and considering, "Okay, can we expand this to more systems?" "I want to keep growing," Yoshida said.

The lessons learned

When the interview was coming to an end, I was interested in finding out what lessons the leads thought they had learnt from creating Final Fantasy XVI. As a back-pocket inquiry, I like to ask developers what aspects of this Final Fantasy they believed would carry over into their future projects, even though the XVI team is still working on projects like the PC version.Yoshida was concerned with the process and telling tales with the tools available today. "Now, while developing an object, you have to pay attention to so many little details and details, like how are you going to utilize that object? In what way will you make that object? What role will it play in these cutscenes? Yoshida said. "And you sort of have to have thought everything out beforehand; you can't just do it on the fly because, in the event that you run out of anything, production would cease. You must thus consider understanding what you need at what moment and how to prepare ahead of time to make the whole procedure more effective.He continues by highlighting the benefits of having thorough planning in advance, even for the smallest details, which may expedite processes and save costs. But it's not all about the cash. It assists in connecting everything to the main plot, which is an important aspect of titles such as Final Fantasy XVI.Yoshida said, "I believe that the story and the user experience of the story within the game is one thing that Square Enix uses as a selling point for a lot of their games." "And I believe that by being able to do this, we'd better tie things into that story experience and make it more seamless, and that will help us moving forward, in addition to lowering those costs."Kujiraoka observes that the team's ability to work together to create The Rising Tide shortly after the release of Final Fantasy XVI is indicative of their ability to use the knowledge they gained from creating the game to produce more quickly. An excellent indicator of this are the battles between Eikons.Because of the time that Kujiraoka and I had spent working together to create the earlier battles for the base game, we were able to streamline and expedite the process of creating these kinds of battles, which take a lot of people a lot of time to create. And, you know, perfecting this technique so that we can produce it fast and with something very intriguing. We're able to achieve that because of the effort that we put in together. Many other projects would look at this and say, "No, we don't want to do something that is way too much work, especially in this amount of time."The translation director, Koji Fox, emphasizes the unexpected dynamic that was produced by approaching Final Fantasy XVI in English first.Koji Fox said, "This project kind of spoiled me, in that we got to record English first." Games from Square Enix never do that, either. The Japanese is always completed first, and then the English and other languages must kind of take that, complete the ADR, follow the steps, and finish everything else.The localization lead continues by pointing out that this did provide some intriguingly distinct challenges. "There were more challenges, to be honest. Since you were the one creating the work instead of having it pre-made, you had to deal with ad-libs and make adjustments on the spot to keep things flowing smoothly," Koji Fox remarked. However, there is also a great deal of freedom there. Thus, returning to a project where I have to translate from Japanese will be challenging.We'll have to wait and see how all of this relates to whatever these guys go on to create. Nevertheless, it won't last for very long in the next Final Fantasy XVI stage. On April 18, 2024, The Rising Tide DLC will launch.