Final Fantasy 16 set pulses racing during Sony’s big PlayStation 5 reveal event earlier in the year, but some did criticise the presentation of the next-gen release. Square Enix is known for its beautiful JRPGs, and for many the upcoming exclusive looked like a step down from Final Fantasy VII Remake, which launched this year on the PlayStation 4. Producer Naoki Yoshida explained that’s because the graphics haven’t been finalised yet, but he wanted to focus on real gameplay footage for the title’s debut trailer.
“I didn’t want the trailer to be just a rendered cutscene and, Bam! Logo!” he said at the Tokyo Game Show, as translated by Gematsu. “I wanted to use resources that were moving in-game, in real-time, but the timing wasn’t the best for it. We haven’t tuned it or optimised it yet, so [there is] a lot of work to be done. But if we released a pre-rendered trailer, they would say, ‘Alright, see you in 2035!’ I’ve seen those kinds of comments from America. So, we really wanted to show something that was actually in-game. We haven’t shown the highlights of the game in this trailer, so that will come later when we make it properly.”
It’s a fair comment from Yoshida, and it’s true that the publisher has been criticised in the past for revealing concepts that don’t really reflect reality. In fact, it’s something that our own Final Fantasy enthusiast Robert Ramsey picked up on during the reveal event, stressing that a lot of his excitement centred on the fact that this looked like a tangible product, rather than some pie-in-the-sky target render.
