Final Fantasy 15 gameplay details, demo content revealed
New details revealed this week paint a clearer picture of what players can expect from Square Enix's RPG Final Fantasy 15 prior to its upcoming launch for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Director Hajime Tabata estimates that Final Fantasy 15 is currently around 55 percent complete, though the game changed drastically after he took over the project two years ago.
"This is not the exact same game," he explained in a recent interview with Kotaku. "The director is different, and the platform was switched to the current gen. And because the platform has changed, there were things we had to re-evaluate, like what we can and cannot do or even what we have to do. The various circumstances are different."
Tabata additionally revealed that much of Final Fantasy 15's recent TGS trailer was rendered in-engine. "The FFX15 trailer was all in-game engine, except for the part with the spaceships flying." he said. "That was pre-rendered."
While Final Fantasy 15 road trip-like atmosphere is meant to inspire a sense of freedom in players, Tabata notes that the game's open-world elements are restrained for the sake of narrative. "If the game is totally open world, it kind of defeats what makes a Final Fantasy game Final Fantasy -- which is the dramatic and cinematic storytelling," he said. "The game is balanced to ideally satisfy those fans who like traditional Final Fantasy storytelling so they can feel like they're following an epic story."
Combat is similarly nuanced. "The controls aren't you simply press a button once for a single action to happen," Tabata said. "Rather, they are a continuous flow of movements. It's more about the movements that are associated with the buttons and building upon them for actions through the combat system."
Players will get an early taste of Final Fantasy 15's gameplay in a demo episode bundled with Final Fantasy Type-0 in March. Speaking to Game Informer, Tabata revealed that "Episode Duscae" will feature around an hour's worth of narrative content, though players who explore the game's world may see up to three or four hours of gameplay.
[Image: Square Enix]
