Final Fantasy XVI exists and will be coming to the PS5, a new trailer has revealed. The footage was taken from a “PC emulating the PlayStation 5 experience”.
It’s not entirely clear what’s happening in the trailer, but we do know that the new protagonist is a guard of some sort to the a young boy called Joshua. Joshua is the son of an Archduke and seems to be able to transform into a phoenix. There’s also mention of Mother Crystals, a plague-sounding threat called the Blight, and an antagonistic Imperial faction. Meanwhile, the last shot of the trailer, which shows an older, somewhat Noctis-looking version of the protagonist, implies that there will be a time skip.
It’s unclear if FFXVI’s gameplay will be similar to FFXV, FFVII Remake, or will be its own thing, but it’s certainly real-time and rather fancy-looking. It even looks a bit hack-and-slashy. Based on the trailer, it doesn’t look as if the main character will spend a lot of time with a dedicated party either. Visually, FFXVI looks more like a pure high fantasy game than FFXV’s mix of modern and medieval aesthetics, although the character designs feel like a mix of FFXIV and FFXV.
The trailer also hints that the game will be a PS5 timed exclusive, as it mentions that it will not be available on other platforms “for a limited time after release on PS5”. Kotaku also snapped a screenshot of the PS5 Showcase trailer that stated that the game would be on PC as well, although a PS5 spokesperson told them that they “have no further information on if Final Fantasy XVI will be released on platforms other than the PS5”. Given that FFXV eventually made it to PC, however, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the game happened to FFXVI.
Sony's blog post says that more information will be released in 2021. Naoki Yoshida and Hiroshi Takai are the producer and director respectively. The two had worked on FFXIV: A Realm Reborn.
