Final Fantasy 16 is currently playable from start to finish, but it isn't actually open world.
Earlier today on June 22, interviews with Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida were published from various outlets around the world. One such outlet was actually the PlayStation Blog, where Yoshida reveals that the "game is fully playable from start to finish, but we have a lot of voiceover in several languages that still need to be recorded."
Elsewhere, Yoshida revealed the development team is currently "doing a lot of playtesting to fine-tune the difficulty levels," and "putting the final touches on the cutscenes." The producer says a year (which is how long we have to wait until Final Fantasy 16 releases next Summer), is a short time in game development, so everyone's "straining" to get it finished.
In another interview with IGN, Yoshida also revealed Final Fantasy 16 isn't actually an open-world game. Many had assumed up until now that the new game would boast a fully-realized open world, but Yoshida says that isn't the case, as it instead employs an "independent area-based game design" for smaller regions and arenas for players to explore.
"To bring a story that feels like it spans an entire globe and beyond, we decided to avoid an open world design that limits us to a single open world space," Yoshida said. The producer added that Final Fantasy 16 players will "find inspiration from recent triple-A open world RPGs," although he stopped short of actually naming any specific games.
12DOVE also sat down with Yoshida for an extensive talk about the battle system's origins, the Eikons, and much, much more. You can head over to our full Final Fantasy 16 interview with Yoshida for all that and more exclusive information on the new game, including the reveal that the game actually has "fully AI-driven" party members in battle.
We also have details on how Final Fantasy 16's combat wouldn't have happened without a Devil May Cry veteran.
