It seemed hard to see anything today that could boldly stare into the eyes of what Nintendo showed us a few hours ago with the final trailer for The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, but Square Enix s got beat up and got everyone excited. State of Play viewers entirely dedicated to the upcoming PS5 exclusive, Final Fantasy XVI.
Naoki Yoshida opened the live by advancing what everyone should already know about this game: it will be the first Pure ARPG in a main episode of Final Fantasy. The turn-based combat system is officially dead.
But before talking about the fights, the gameplay focused on the protagonist, Clive Rosfield. FF XVI will allow us to know the story of this young man in three moments of his life: adolescence, his twenties and his transition to his thirties. At each stage we will learn more about his motivations and we will witness flashbacks where he will unlock some of his abilities, such as summoning the Eikon.
Without stopping too long, we cycle through dozens of different and delightfully recreated environments where the game makes it clear that it’s set to become the new technical ceiling of the PlayStation 5, surpassing even what was seen in Horizon Forbidden West. Lighting, weather effects, landslides and their physics, fluids, reflections on surfaces and equipment… everything looks so refined and detailed that it gives us the feeling that we will spend a few hours admiring every landscape we find in the adventure when the game arrives on June 22.
And we come to the renewed combat system, entirely based on the action and the skills used by Clive and his allies. There’s a lot to be said for this, but until we get the game and a controller in our hands, it’s all in the realm of speculation. The move to an action-focused combat system is Final Fantasy XVI’s biggest fear, but if they manage to balance those skills with strategy elements inherited from turn-based games, it might even come out stronger. in the eyes of veterans. more reluctant.
And then there are the fights with the Eikon. Yoshida (who narrated everything we saw in the presentation point by point) promises us that these fights will take place in real time and that they will make our hearts race with emotion. Phoenix, Ifrit, Bahamut, Garuda, Typhoon, Titan…all appeared fighting, and the result is, for lack of another word, spectacular.
We hope to be able to bring you our own impressions by testing Final Fantasy XVI very soon, but with what we have seen tonight, everything indicates that we are facing one of the best titles of 2023, and that the PS5 has found a new flag bearer. for its technical possibilities.
You can find the full Final Fantasy XVI State of Play walkthrough below.