Game director Hajime Tabata talks structure
When I think of Final Fantasy XV, I think of driving around the countryside, hopping out to chase down and beat up monsters, admiring decadent food, and camping with my buddies. Open-world, dudes-on-a-road-trip-type stuff. But that’s only because what little I’ve played represented the very beginning. By the end of the game, who knows what we’ll be doing. Jet-setting in a flying car?
Alongside talk of Square Enix’s DLC plans for FFXV, director Hajime Tabata also recently spoke about how the long-in-development game will play out, structurally.
“For Final Fantasy XV, we’ve put in both open world parts and linear parts to make up the game’s full structure,” Tabata told Famitsu, as translated by Gematsu. “The first half is a continuous open world, but the second half is story-driven and progresses linearly.”
“By doing this,” he explained, “the entire game is tightened so that the open world doesn’t get tiring, and so that you can also get a taste of traditional Final Fantasy progression. If we assume you’ll play only the main routes of the first and second halves, it’ll take about 40 to 50 hours.”
In general, I like the sound of that kind of structure. No matter how well-crafted an open world is, eventually, I’ll want to stop screwing around and get on with the plot already. We’ll just have to wait and see how it’s paced and whether or not the characters’ motivations are compelling.
Final Fantasy XV [Famitsu via Gematsu]
