Update : the presentation is now available in its entirety below.
It’s been a month since Diogo posted his impressions of his first hands-on experience with Square Enix’s game, through a footage that had no other purpose than to highlight the combat system and limit movement. to a dark dungeon. ” If we chose to present this level, it is simply because it is the one we had finished first. Sorry, I too wanted to present a brighter environment “, had fun Naoki Yoshida during the session of answers to questions.
Do your Valisthéa, we’re leaving
And to better illustrate the extent of the atmospheres that will be offered Final Fantasy XVI, Square Enix shared a two-minute video focusing on the environments. A savory moment to say the least after a handful of trailers still edited to showcase the great spectacle, storytelling and combat, but rarely the rest of what constitutes an RPG. Well, open your eyes wide, because here are the desert expanses that can be surveyed on the back of a chocobo, the shopping alleys rich in charms, the verdant forests with trees caressed by the wind, the lake regions, the inhospitable volcanic formations or the paths that wind through the middle of a huge field of wheat overlooking a realm protected by a Mother Crystal seeking to defy the sky.
Remember that Square Enix has given up the open world structure in favor of a game divided into different regions more or less vast. Naoki Yoshida has also unveiled the menu of the world map (in 3D) with its different teleportation points and confirmed that it will be possible to return at will to places already visited to complete quests or scratch experience. As viewers could see live, teleporting from place to place on the world map wasn’t fully instantaneous like the PS5’s SSD sometimes allows, but fast travel was no more than 3 black screen seconds.
Square Enix concluded its presentation by promising to return to the charge in April in order to focus this time on the RPG elements, in particular in order to respond to purists fearing that the action dimension takes too much precedence over the rest. Note that due to technical problems, the video archive of this presentation will be available later on YouTube.