What led to the decision for the name change from Final Fantasy Versus XIII? And what gives it the feel of being one of the numbered titles in the Final Fantasy universe?
Within the company, about to one to two years after Versus XIII was announced, we had a discussion about—because of the scale of the game—if it would be appropriate to make it XV. So we had this discussion for several years, and about two years ago, when we started hearing about next-generation consoles, we officially confirmed to make it XV. And about a year ago, we decided that all the development would shift to next-generation consoles.
Is it more of an action RPG or traditional RPG?
Yes, it is an action-based RPG. There’s not much turn-based style in it, but if you look carefully in the trailer, the command system is on the screen, as well, so we tried to keep a Final Fantasy taste. But we are not trying to make it an action-only game. Making the game Final Fantasy is the most important thing. I want everyone to imagine if Final Fantasy would be an action game—this is what it would be.
Noctis already has a huge following…
To be honest, Noct is not cool inside. His appearance might tell you he is cool, but he is not very cool. He is a very quirky guy, so in the end being ‘not so cool’ is one of his characteristics.
Does the game focus mainly on Noctis, or on the other characters in the party, as well?
In Final Fantasy games, party is necessary, I think. So how we use party members is a core part of Final Fantasy games. How to take turns and how to act is very important. Noct can battle himself, but in the trailer, you can tell he did battle with other characters, as well. So I think there will be a lot of co-operation within the team, but in a different form from previous Final Fantasy games. In the trailer, you probably saw that three players were co-operating with each other to fight with that giant, so there was some drama in it. I don’t want to make it into a systematic team play, but that it has some story to it. We are always aware that party battle is necessary in the Final Fantasy series.
In the trailer, it seems he’s able to defy gravity. Is that an ability we’ll be able to activate in the game?
Actually, he wasn’t defying gravity. He has the ability to teleport himself into the sky. I think that if we tried to make the game very realistic, it would become impossible to enjoy as a game. For example, if you try to float an enemy in the air and try to battle with tumble attacks and he falls at regular speed, it would become kind of strange. So we’re always trying to figure out the balance between realism and fantasy.
Can you discuss the platforms?
Up until about a year ago, we were making Final Fantasy XV for current generation consoles and keeping that in mind, as well. But as you’ve seen in the trailer, next-generation consoles have really good quality that make it possible to create the game in really good high quality. And I think the quality will increase even more in the development process. The way we’re developing the game has changed and is very different. Before when we said multiplatform games, we developed a game to fit to one console’s specifications and evened it out to the rest. But now, we make the game in a different way. And I always had in mind that I didn’t want to make a game that compromised the quality.
This time, we are using a different method of development. We are not looking at the consumer consoles to meet their specifications. We are making the higher quality game for next-gen consoles, but use a tool called DirectX 11 to make it. Then, whichever consoles are able to handle that tool can be used to port the game to it. So we just care about the specifications of each hardware and hope that they will maintain the original high quality of the game we are making when it’s ported to the console.
Again, it’s not like we have to care about the difference in each hardware, but it’s just about whether the console can handle its high quality. So that’s the only part we will have to be aware of.
