Final Fantasy XVI

[Theozilla]

And for those who need a refresher the Creative Director & Original Screenplay dude is the same dude who was the head writer for FFXIV’s base A Realm Reborn and Heavensward. And Koji Fox was FFXIV’s head localizer from 1.0 to the end of Stormblood (he’s been in an advisory role in FFXIV since ShadowBringers).

From what I got from my first watch of the trailer the Dominants of each Summon/Eikon basically will be the equivalent of the party members/major supporting cast? (I do hope there will be some form of character switching in FFXVI)

The prospect of playable Summon/Eikon kaiju battles definitely has me pumped though.

 

[Tetsujin]

Press release including screenshots and stuff

 

[Tetsujin]

I'm slightly peeved that this game has blood and fucking and meanwhile VII Remake is like "purple goo and smoke because of rating"

 

[Theozilla]

Anyways, it looks like Odin will be an Eikon of Darkness in FFXVI, instead of being unaspected. And The Kingdom of Waloed is obviously in control of Odin, while The Holy Empire of Sanbreque controls Ramuh. Jill Warrick is likely going to be Shiva's Dominant, and I wonder if Benedikta Harman (Garuda's Dominant) will also be from The Kingdom of Waloed or if she will have been from The Iron Kingdom and was persecuted there in her youth.

Bahamut I bet will be a secret/surprise Eikon associated with The Crystalline Dominion, but I wonder if it will be an Eikon of Light, as second Eikon of Darkness, or an actual unaspected Eikon?

Also since it looks like Clive and Benedikta boned in the trailer, does that mean we could consider Garuda and Ifrit fusing together in the Eden raids as “foreshadowing”?

I also wonder what the two Ifrits at the very end of the trailer means? I am guessing Clive is not the purple one.

I'm slightly peeved that this game has blood and fucking and meanwhile VII Remake is like "purple goo and smoke because of rating"

Well it looks like FFXVI is likely going to be M Rated and not T for Teen, so they don't have to worry about content standards and limitations.

 

[Tetsujin]

Well it looks like FFXVI is likely going to be M Rated and not T for Teen, so they don't have to worry about content standards and limitations.

If a mainline numbered FF doesn't worry about getting an M, VII Remake doesn't need to either - that's my point

 

[Theozilla]

If a mainline numbered FF doesn't worry about getting an M, VII Remake doesn't need to either - that's my point

Well obviously SE wants the FFVII Remake to stay within in the T ratings though, and I think it is less not having to worry about getting an M rating, but rather FFXVI was designed with the intention of being in the M rating range, while the FFVII Remake was designed with staying in the T range.
It's less a matter of double-standards and more a matter of differing objectives.

 

[Tetsujin]

Well obviously SE wants the FFVII Remake to stay within in the T ratings though, and I think it is less not having to worry about getting an M rating, but rather FFXVI was designed with the intention of being in the M rating range, while the FFVII Remake was designed with staying in the T range.
It's less a matter of double-standards and more a matter of differing objectives.

I know. I'm saying I would have preferred it if they did it differently

 

[Makoeyes987]

The FFVII-R developers need to take what they learned and leaned into with Episode Intermission and never go back to this Rated T shit ever again.

Yuffie's blood covered face as she witnessed the horror of the plate fall was perfect. They need to never try to T rate this game ever again. Especially with what's coming next. I hope that's the most consistent feedback they've heard in regards to what players want. They seem aware of the criticism of Jenova in the Shinra Building at least.

 

[Theozilla]

Anyways, it looks like Odin will be an Eikon of Darkness in FFXVI, instead of being unaspected. And The Kingdom of Waloed is obviously in control of Odin, while The Holy Empire of Sanbreque controls Ramuh. Jill Warrick is likely going to be Shiva's Dominant, and I wonder if Benedikta Harman (Garuda's Dominant) will also be from The Kingdom of Waloed or if she will have been from The Iron Kingdom and was persecuted there in her youth.

Bahamut I bet will be a secret/surprise Eikon associated with The Crystalline Dominion, but I wonder if it will be an Eikon of Light, as second Eikon of Darkness, or an actual unaspected Eikon?

Also since it looks like Clive and Benedikta boned in the trailer, does that mean we could consider Garuda and Ifrit fusing together in the Eden raids as “foreshadowing”?

I also wonder what the two Ifrits at the very end of the trailer means? I am guessing Clive is not the purple one.


View attachment 12451



Well it looks like FFXVI is likely going to be M Rated and not T for Teen, so they don't have to worry about content standards and limitations.

Actually I need to amend my speculation, Bahamut is probably the Holy Empire of Sanbreque's Eikon, based on the mural, icon background color, and the fact a light and dark army are clashing probably represent Sanbreque and Waloed clashing, and thus Bahamut and Odin.

The FFVII-R developers need to take what they learned and leaned into with Episode Intermission and never go back to this Rated T shit ever again.

Yuffie's blood covered face as she witnessed the horror of the plate fall was perfect. They need to never try to T rate this game ever again. Especially with what's coming next. I hope that's the most consistent feedback they've heard in regards to what players want. They seem aware of the criticism of Jenova in the Shinra Building at least.

Episode Intermission was still rated T though, the amount of blood added in it (which was just blood coming from Sonon's mouth that he coughed some onto Yuffie's face, his actual stab wounds were still dark particle effects like the President being stabbed by Sephiroth was) probably wasn't comparable to the amount of blood that Jenova would have left if they didn't go with the purple bodily fluids instead. The latter is probably considered "blood and gore" which crosses into the M rating, while just "blood" keeps it in the T rating.

 

[Tetsujin]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1532501682386374656

 

[ph14basicbitch]

I feel pretty meh about this, but I'll still play it because it's a main numbered FF game.

The story presented in the 2 trailers doesn't really grab my attention, the characters nor their designs really stick out. Many of them look like they were designed in FF14's character creator lol. I've played multiple games where you can only control 1 dude, but I just don't associate that w/FF at all - my first FF was 6, and going around and re-obtaining my gang in the World of Ruin was definitely part of the experience. Here we have no party members, just Clive swapping between each summons and seemingly using a magic spell (triangle) and a "special" related to each summon (circle).

The game is "takes place in ye olden days" but has a distractingly out of place modern UI with a future-y font that reminds me of FF13 and a spam of piss yellow damage numbers flying at the player, bright neon green glowing HP bar, blah blah. Tbh, I would be more interested in the game if it turns out that Clive was wandering around fucking the other Dominants to get Eikon powers (the trailer shows him in bed with Garuda's dom mommy), but alas - there's no way Square-Enix would subject their white male protagonist to that lol.

As someone who used to really love FF14 but now just sees it as "something you log in to every 3mo", I'm sure this will be a Sure Fine Video Game made by YoshiP and the boys, and all of the FF14 stans who think YoshiP is single handedly saving the company will surely celebrate its release, but right now I just can't bring myself to care that much. Like Sprites, I also thought this trailer was, idk, weird?

Relatedly: I am very tired of "Fantasy = British".

Is that Ifrit fighting Ifrit at the very end? Maybe Clive punching his out of control lil bro

There is a spot in the trailer where they show Phoenix on the left side (player character), then "Eikon of Fire" w/Ifrit's icon on the right as the enemy, Ifrit uses Hellfire, and Phoenix gets 1 shot by the move, so it seems he already 1 shot lil bro.

 

[Theozilla]

The aesthetic of FFXVI is far more FFTactics than FFXIV though, which isn’t a surprise since a good chunk of the devs are Tactics and other Ivalice veterans.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1532493430911389700

 

[ph14basicbitch]

My remark was that the characters look like they were designed in the FF14 character creator, not that the aesthetic is FF14. As in, you could open up the FF14 character creator and make a few of these characters right now without using FF14 mods. There is a joke on Twitter right now that the Leatherworker guild NPC is Benedikta, for example.

But on the subject of specific names:
- The character artist of 16 is Kazuya Takahashi, who did not work on Ivalice, but is a staff artist on FF14. It seems some of his art for FF14 is mistaken for Akihiko Yoshida's, who did work on Ivalice and also did some of the FF14 expansion key artwork.
- Hiroshi Minagawa worked on both Ivalice and 14, yes. His signature as a UI designer is, from what I recall from his FF14 Fanfest appearance, that he will always pick icons that visually communicate over just using text which is why so much of FF14 is "icon-ified" (e.g. the grand company seals are icons with numbers next to them, the beast tribe tokens are icons with numbers instead of "Storm Seals: xxx"). We haven't really had a chance to see this in FF16 yet, though I do assume the summons having portrait icons w/identifying colors on Clive's player bar are some of his influence.

 

[Theozilla]

The tweet I linked didn’t specifically mention Kazuya Takahashi though? It mentioned Kazutoyo Maehiro?

As for characters looking like they could be created in the FFXIV, character creator, I am not sure if that is that meaningful, since the point of the character creator is that it can create a great variety of characters.
The in-game engine character graphics of FFXIV is basically just a lower visual fidelity version of the style the SE Image Studio Division (aka formerly Visual Works) does for Final Fantasy in general for the past 10+ years or so.

 

[ph14basicbitch]

I brought up Kazuya Takahashi because:
1) My remark was about the character designs, and he is the actual character designer.
2) You brought up "it isn't the FF14 aesthetic, it's the Ivalice aesthetic". But Takahashi's work is, as I mentioned, sometimes mistaken for the work of Yoshida (one of the Ivalice art people) which Takahashi himself is not one of the Ivalice game artists.

 

[cold_spirit]

Here's my quickest of quick gameplay analysis.

L2:
Switch Eikon powers (trailer shows up to 3)

Up, Right, Down on D-pad:
Use items

Triangle:
Use magic/projectile (screenshot below shows Aero)

Square:
Attack

X (or Cross lol):
Jump

Circle:
Eikon ability (screenshot below shows Deadly Embrace)

R2:
Now this is where things get interesting. Pressing or holding R2 appears to switch the actions of Triangle and Square. From the trailer, Garuda turns Aero into Wicked Wheel and Attack into Gouge. These are probably powerful moves with special properties like ATB abilities in FFVIIR.





Lastly, you can see Clive switch Eikon mid-combo at 00:57. This system appears to be similar to DMC: Devil May Cry's angel and demon weapon switching, which is a good thing because it felt very fluid in that game.

 

[ph14basicbitch]

There's also the Odin gauge that pops up and starts building when Clive uses the alt skills on triangle and square:



I'm guessing it's related to the orange yellow gatorade gauge being full at 3 (when he uses the alt Garuda skills, there's no Garuda meter that pops up, but he also isn't at 3 bars), or maybe it's related to how the other games had a mechanic w/Odin and doom/death?

Edit: I guess this screenshot kind of also shows the stagger mechanic on regular mobs, if you can see it under the spam of yellow 13s. The bosses stagger bar is probably the one under their HP bars, and I'm guessing the markers/dashes indicate where the boss phase changes are. Certainly an improvement over FF7R not having an in-game indicator on their HP bars about when they phase change and/or when the stagger resets lol.

Edit 2: I forgot to include this one when I posted, but here Clive is using Shiva, with Garuda and Phoenix as the other 2 Eikons in waiting, but his R2 skills on the bottom right include purple icons one of which is a thunder skill. I guess you can set the R2 commands to be another Eikon's powers as these must be Ramuh's. (I thought you might get locked into only using your current Eikon's skills.)

 

[cold_spirit]

Yeah not sure what the orange yellow gatorade bars are for. It doesn't appear that using the alt square or triangle actions consume them. They also don't appear on Clive early in the trailer when he has more than one Eikon. My guess is that it's some mechanic that's added after the timeskip.

Good catch with the stagger! Interestingly, it doesn't look like you build up the stagger bar like in VIIR, but chip away at it at first. Below is a screenshot of Clive using a big move on the Coeurl and you can see that both it's HP and stagger bars are being depleted.



Then once staggered, you build it back up?

 

[ph14basicbitch]

Yeah I think it works more like the break gauge in Stranger of Paradise? Where the enemy starts with [x] gauge and you whittle it down. I thought the vertical lines represented phase changes or something, but after re-watching the trailer it seems they're just visuals to communicate "this is where 50% is" to the player.

I believe what your arrow is pointing to in the 2nd screencap is the stagger bar acting as a timer for the staggered state - when it fills up, the enemy is un-staggered.

Edit: My interpretation of the "loading bar" around the triangle and square magic is a recast timer.

After he uses Wicked Wheel, the icon fades (indicating it's on cooldown), and the loading bar-y effect starts.

 

[cold_spirit]

One final thing to note, you can see bar build up around Aero while Clive is attacking the Coeurl. Maybe completing it upgrades it to Aeroa? Regardless, this game definitely encourages aggression as so many meters go up and down as you attack.



I have to say, this game looks rad. I'm a bit too battle-hardened to get "hyped" like I did as a kiddo, but I'm certainly looking forward to XVI and think it has the potential to be the best single-player FF since X (and I like XII and XIII !!!)

 

[Wol]

gameplay-wise this is looking like the best put together action system ever done by SQ. But this is no surprise given the designer also worked on Dragon's Dogma and DMCV.

somehow it reminds me of the first XIII teaser, which featured a target render cinematic system + big numbers and indicators popping up in the screen. It looks cinematic as fuck.

Also the summon designs are incredible, very gritty and detailed.

 

[Roger]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1532504266019164160

 

[Wol]

I somewhat agree with the opinions regarding characters and world looking a bit bland or at least not particularly unique, but is this really important?

Development wasn't a clusterfuck
Localization and voice-acting is not sounding cringy
Battle system done by a highly competent designer
Music and presentation on point

This is looking like a case of substance over style and I prefer it this way tbh if the end product is solid enough.

 

[Torrie]

What my FFXV experience has taught me is that the characters only seem bland until you've spend a while with them and let them grow on you. I'm semi-excited about XVI because it's the first real time that I've been able to share the hype about the development and news with other FF fans, but I'm currently more on board with futuristic rather than medieval style and atmosphere, BUT it's promising to be a case of AAA dark fantasy AND it's a Final Fantasy game after all, so yeah, I'm excited anyway!

 

[Theozilla]

I don’t think we’ve seems enough of the world/environments for it to be fairly judged as “bland”.
I can more understand that feeling for the character design sensibilities, as it is definitely going for the more muted and grungy style of FFTactics than the more stylistic flourishes that FFXII (and FFXIV) had.

The only major issue that I am worrying about, is that it seems like Clive is our only playable character; and we don’t even have A.I. party members?
And to be clear, I am not necessarily trying to argue that the game will be bad with only Clive as the only playable character (and maybe the Eikons when you take control of them).
It’s more that I think (and likely others as well) that having party members (and typically playable ones) is an element pretty integral to the Final Fantasy franchise, particularly the main numbered single player entries (it’s part of why character switching being added to FFXV made many happy, or people enjoying the added Trusts and NPC-RP solo duties with the supporting cast in FFXIV are enjoyed by many FF fans). So the game could be game of the year quality, but at the same time I might still feel like something is missing if party members/other playable characters are a feature absent in the game.