The World Map Killed (Some) of My Hype for Final Fantasy XVI
The notion of traveling between areas solely with fast travel, instead of going there on your own, has me considerably less excited.
Early on, Final Fantasy XVI gives you a mission: go to a nearby town called Stillwind and clear out the goblins that have infested it. Okay, sounds like a fun little typical JRPG quest. It’ll be neat to leave the starting area and explore the world a bit, do a bit of battling along the way.
But then it goes to a level select screen and asks you to fast travel to the town. Oh. Never mind. I guess it’ll just teleport me there?
The demo for Final Fantasy XVI pulled me in on the strength of its story alone, but this moment is where it almost lost me entirely.
The Magic of the Final Fantasy Games
It might seem minor, but exploration and sense of place have historically been a big part of the magic of Final Fantasy to me. The “fast travel only” approach in FFXVI seems poised to lose that.
For all of its shortcomings, I thought the world in Final Fantasy XII and the way you could explore it was phenomenal. All of these varied, interconnected zones that you could explore in almost any order, combined with the art design and lore, made Ivalice an absolutely stunning world. The next entry, Final Fantasy XIII (which I enjoyed solely for its battle system), opted instead for a series of levels that only let you explore in two directions: forward and backward. The open area on Pulse captured that feeling again, and did work thematically to contrast the freedom of the supposed “evil” world with the oppressiveness of Cocoon, but it was one cohesive area in an otherwise fragmented world.
That’s the key for me. For all of the series’ focus on story and battle systems, the experience of playing a Final Fantasy game is always secretly held together by its world. The traversable world maps from Final Fantasy I through IX gave the player a sense of place as they explored and moved through the story. Final Fantasy X, XII, and XV managed that sense of place as well despite lacking world maps. Final Fantasy XIV also has that sense of place, and that game’s director, Naoki Yoshida, is one of the leads on FFXVI. So who knows, maybe it’ll all feel better in the full game. Supposedly, the game will have larger zones to explore, so we’ll see how it all pans out. But if they’re only connected by this fast travel system, giving everything a level-based feel, that’s not exciting on its face.
Trailers and Expectations
I purposely did not watch any trailers for Final Fantasy XVI because I knew I’d play it. I’ve been an FF fan since I was a kid, and I’ll probably play every mainline game that comes out in my lifetime. So I figured, hey, why not go in blind so that everything’s fresh?
I probably should have looked at pre-release stuff. It would’ve helped to know what the exploration was going to be like. It speaks to the nature of expectations. I thought ignorance would be bliss, but ignorance ended up being a blank check for my mind to run wild. I ended up having expectations despite trying not to have any. Besides FFXIII, every mainline Final Fantasy game has had these worlds that give a sense of place and exploration. That subconsciously built up in my head, to where the more action game/level-based structure wasn’t even a thought. So I couldn’t help but be let down.
And in the end, of course Square made FFXVI’s world with more of a level-based structure. It’s the “making towns in HD is hard'' thing that’s plagued these games since FFXIII. They literally do not have the resources to render these worlds in their entirety anymore. Even FFXV, for all of the exploration it offered, still only let you explore one continent and seemed like it had a plethora of areas left on the cutting room floor. And more recently, Final Fantasy VII Remake only remade the Midgar section of the original game. So fully designing and rendering Final Fantasy XVI’s world, as vast as it seems, would simply not be possible.
In this landscape, I think I’m going back to keeping up with pre-release info. It seems like the only way to not be continually disappointed. Find out what a game is and isn’t and you can meet it on its own terms.
Luckily, FFXVI’s story has me hooked, so I imagine I’ll quite enjoy the game if that quality of writing keeps up. We’ll see once the game is finally out.