Un usuario de Reddit, xXRaineXx, que es traductor de Japonés, ha traducido al Inglés la entrevista de Yoshida para Famitsu. Os la pongo por aquí porque detalles muy interesantes y algunos que no he visto tratados en ninguna entrevista a medios occidentales.
"The trailer was completed and ready around March, and the only thing left was to choose the right time. However, they did not feel that it was appropriate, as International Politics was in complete disarray at the time. And as FFXVI is a story of Nations in conflict, it was only sensible to avoid releasing it. Not that Yoshida feels that things are better now.
Yoshida says that the general positive reception of the new trailer is line with their expectations.
The concept for the SoP trailer was to instill "hype", as in "Wow, this looks amazing", with massive Eikon battles and large enemy fights. So in a sense that we have no idea what is going on, have no idea what the battle system is like, but it still looks awesome.
Yoshida "wants" or is "thinking" of Autumn for the next reveal. The script/storyboard is completed for the next trailer. They need to do various things like capturing, editing, and narration etc.
The team made a big decision that they didn't have to implement "Commands" and "Open World" elements.
Planning for the development started soon after Heavensward (FFXIV Expansion 6/23/2015) was released.
Before that, FFVIIR was also announced, and this was a period where the company was dedicating development to deliver the best product possible (for FFVIIR). So it was around this time that there were talks that BD1 (at the time) would focus on the Remake, and Yoshida's Division would handle FFXVI.
Yoshida initially declined for the Director role, but instead he said he would consider it if it was the Producer position instead.
Actual development started around November 2015.
Takai (Director), Maehiro (Scenario), Gondai (Game System) was the initial core group (along with Yoshida I suppose, but he credits those three) who spearheaded in building the blocks.
These three had core roles in FFXIV as well, having their names in the Heavensward credits, but as they transitioned into the FFXVI development, they were able to pass their positions and were completely out of the XIV team by the Stormblood expansion.
The interviewer says that although it's a relatively short 3 year period from announcement to release, but in reality it was 7 years in development. However, Yoshida refutes that it's kinda not fair to the team to say it was "fully" in development for that long. As it was only a handful of people at first, and there were other complications like the timing of the next gen console, and of course covid. However, Yoshida is confident that the game is of high quality to deliver to the fans.
During the planning stage they built the core concept, theme, world building, and focused on building the core scenario of the story.
Maehiro writes the script, and Yoshida checks and provides feedback.
At the beginning, they focused setting up the foundation with limited people, as to give the utmost attention to the development and management of FFXIV (Note: Not XVI, but their focus was still on XIV before XVI).
Again, Maehiro wrote the main scenario script along with the Localization Director Koji providing advice. Yoshida says that this should be a treat for those who liked the Heavensward story.
Early in development, the first decision that Yoshida gave to the team was that they didn't have to implement "Commands" or "Open World" elements, that it wasn't essential. If there was an amazing idea for them, great, but as such things would greatly affect the development and the team; Yoshida told the team that if it was going to mess up the development, then it wouldn't matter if they didn't do it.
Yoshida made this big decision at the start as there is an immense pressure in developing a Final Fantasy title. So in order to relieve some pressure off from Hiroshi Takai, Yoshida backed a part of it by lightening the load, so the team could work freely without having to abide to such expectations.
Yoshida felt that it was his duty as the Producer of FFXVI to know what the fans were expecting and how they felt about the FF series.
When Yoshida took the reigns of FFXIV as Producer/Director, Kitase told him that FF is what the Director at the time thinks that this is the "best game".
"Final Fantasy is just a name stuck to a game that we made thinking "This is the best game", and if there is no need to be the successor, then there is no need to flatter the predecessor. If we make a game that we think is the best game, then that makes it "Final Fantasy" - Kitase.
Yoshida told Nomura that he wanted to add Limit Breaks in FFXIV, and Nomura told him; "You don't have to force yourself to match things, just do what you want to do". And with that, Yoshida decided to make the series' first "fan service" FF game, and made FFXIV with the "FF theme park" concept.
At that time (FFXIV), Yoshida was involved with Dragon Quest, and he feels that that there isn't that many fans throughout the FF franchise. He understands that FF despite being a series, is divided among the fans, with certain entries being their favorite, or certain entries not being accepted in the series. He often hears comments like "FFVII is the best!", "No, it's FF10", or "Everything other than FFIX is trash".So around the time that his team was taking on FFXVI, they did a thorough international user research. He did so thinking it was necessary to understand the different perspectives, but he was also scarred from a large number of shocking comments...
There were many wonderful opinions such as; "(FF) Is the peak of RPG with a long history", and "This is a series that always delivers emotional and shocking moments". However, Yoshida saw a lot of comments like; "This is a maniac game that has followers like a cult", and "It's a kids game".
Having to learn this, Yoshida felt that understanding both sides was necessary to make a game that players from around the world could enjoy.
Even amongst the rest in the series, (FFXVI) has taken up a considerable budget, so the sales is very important for the company. If the sales keep going down for a new title in the series, then there is a point that there may not be a next. So for (FFXVI), instead of focusing on every generation (of fans), every type of player, or whether it's FF or not, Yoshida focused on making a game that made people think "This looks amazing" or "I want to buy and play it!".
Their focus for FFXVI was; "If we make what we think is the best FF, then that IS FF".
They thought about what FF was to them, and they came to a simple conclusion; "It's about delivering the best story and game experience".
For Yoshida (also mentioned in other interviews), when he played FFI, he was amazed by the theatrical composition of the production, timing of the script, drama, sounds, and how all of this created the ultimate game experience.
He thought that this and Chocobos/Moogle is what made FF an FF game. And he felt that this element was essential for FFXVI.
It was was essential to consider the joint effort between CBU3 and the company as a whole to decide on the backbone of the game.
With this, Yoshida came to the conclusion that open-world was not suited for what they were aiming for.
[As it's an FF game, there has to be a hero to save the world] - [Maps being destroyed, I want Summons to go berserk] - [I want to release the game as quickly as possible] - [I don't want to release it in parts] - Yoshida wanted to focus on these 4 points, but came to realization that wanting everything was physically impossible.
If they had 15 years or something, then maybe it would have been possible(?). However, to create an expansive story on a global scale as an open-world game was near impossible in terms of time and cost.
He thought that this was something that would definitely cause issues in development, so when they decided to focus on creating a cinematic game, he told the team that open world was not necessary.
Of course, if they had a great idea that was feasible, he would have supported that as well. But if it was something like a "Let's just do it" half-hearted decision, he told them to do not do it.
(Note: This part, I think is important, so I will translate the whole answer)
Q: Please tell us about your decision on "Commands".
A. I am from the generation that grew up on "Command" and "Turn-based RPG games. So of course, I understand the sense of enjoyment and immersion for them. On the other hand, over the past 10 years or so, we have started to see many opinions like "I don't understand what's fun about about video games where you have to choose commands to fight". This is especially true for the newer generation of gamers, and players who don't usually play RPG games, and this sentiment is only growing even now. And over the generations of game consoles, games have come to a point where a characters emotions can be fully rendered in real-time.
[Press the trigger for the character to shoot] - [Press the button for the character to swing the sword] - We are now able to do these things without having to use commands. And although I am personally immersed in such games, for the younger generation, this has become the norm for them. As a result, this seems to be why people would have sentiments where they don't understand why there is a need to press a "Battle" command to fight when you are already in battle. I'm not saying that this is good or bad, but what I am saying is that depending on the generation, there could be a big difference like this. On the other hand, "Command" and "Turn-based" games also have their differences, but it's also easy to combine them. But that's a whole different topic.
Of course, the RPG genre started from table-top RPG games, and were played by giving verbal commands. With video games, verbal commands were replaced with game commands. Also, as I mentioned earlier, I grew up on command based games and I intend to fully understand it's charm, and I still want to make one myself. However, to deliver the FFXVI sales mark, if this was going to cause trouble within the dev team, resulting in redoing things over and over; I told them that that if it wasn't needed, then it was okay.
As I mentioned with the decision on the open world element, if there was a great idea, then it was okay to challenge it. But if it going to be half-hearted or done solely in the sense of responsibility, then it didn't matter if they didn't do it. But of course, there is a high possibilty that the next FF game may be command based, or be open-world. However, as of now, for CB3, this is what FFXVI is going to be.
(End of the answer).
A point for FFXVI was creating massive large scale battles with summons. Yoshida commented how he had an image in his head when he first saw a summon appear in FF and he wondered what it would look like if this image was recreated with today's technology. No FF has tried this before, so going headstrong in this challenge was a major point for FFXVI.
FFXVI has three primary types of battles;
First, you have humanoid sized battles. Such as Empire soldiers, small scale monsters and even humanoid bosses.
Second, is Clive in his human form, fighting enemies as big as 10 meters, and also massive Eikons battles.
Third, is where players fight with two massive Eikons. These Eikon clashes are especially flashy and grandiose among the three battle types.
(This gave me goosebumps, so I will translate the whole answer...!)
Q. So that means you can control Eikons.
A. Yes. And the most interesting point is that the Eikon VS Eikon battles are not reused, at all. Meaning that each battle is unique and has their own battle concepts. For example, one resembles a 3D shooting game, another is like a heavy and grappling pro-wrestling battle, and even a battle where the whole entire map is the battlefield for the Eikons. We are developing the foundation of each Eikon battles with their own unique game experience. All of this will be seamless and in real-time, and will be like a roller-coaster ride with battles and drama. FFXVI will deliver an exciting experience that you have never experienced.
(!!!!!!!!!!!!! SHIVER ME TIMBERS THIS IS HYPE)
Q. How would you summarize the FFXVI concept?
A. "Super High Grade Ultra High-Speed Roller Coaster" I guess.
95% of the trailer was all rendered in real-time.
Everything is in real-time. The only exclusions are for backgrounds in cutscenes and large groups of townspeople which will pre-rendered. Outside of that, everything is real-time. Including the scene where Garuda blows Ifrit's arm off, which is fully playable. Another example is when you step into a new town and the camera zooms out over the entire town. All of this is practically real-time with no loading.
The massive battle scene where the footmen clash is a combination of real-time and pre-rendering. The purpose of pre-rendering is to simply overcome the limitations of the engine.
They really focused on real-time renders.
The latest trailer was finished in March and they are now working to improve the quality even more. The final release would be little bit higher in quality.
The original trailer in 2020 was released while there were plans for a PS4 release. So Yoshida was disappointed that they weren't able to show the best quality of the game at the time.
They could have done a pre-rendered trailer, but thought that it would just be a waste of development time. So he decided to release actual gameplay footage.
As for the current development, everything from the beginning to end is tied up neatly. And as of May, Hiroshi and Yoshida completed their thorough quality check of the first half the main story.
The check for the second half begins next month.
They are playing the game whilst they are doing the checks.
As of now, 90% of the game content has been gone over, however a number of side quests need to be brushed up etc.
The game's dialogue is almost fully voiced.
There's still a lot of recording left for (the many languages).
After that, they have a large scale debugging in plan and are also moving into the optimization phase.
The story is linear, as in there is one story and the story will lead from the beginning to the end.
However, the story will be a "Super High Grade Ultra High-Speed Roller Coaster" with multiple loop-de-loops.
Although it's not open world, there are 4 major maps that's kinda like one.
There is a map that's like your base of operations, and there is a bulletin board where you can get mob hunt requests to go out and hunt powerful enemies. So you'd go out and search the map.
The field will have various points of interest with side quests and such as they prepared side content for people to enjoy.
There is also a simple crafting system, so you can craft weapons and such.
You can play the game while doing every side content, or you can simply dash on to the end of the story.
Yoshida laments how that there is data that the clear rate for modern games these days is really low, so he wants to make the game so that people would play to the end.
He wants the game to be a game where you'd be immersed till the very end for the player to think "That was amazing".
As such, the game won't try to excessively pull you out of the story with side content.
It's made so that you can relax and focus on the story.
(This does not allude to a New Game Plus mode) but there will be a super difficulty mode. There will also be a mode for streamers where there are time attack stages, and difficult challenges where certain Eikon abilities are restricted or disabled.
The super difficulty mode will have gear restrictions, and even the UI will be different from the normal mode, so that you will know immediately.
Yoshida affirms that while this is an action with with modes for hardcore players, he also guarantees easy of play for casual players who are not used to action games.
Yoshida actually wants more casual players to play than hardcore players.
When you start the game, you can choose from "Story Focus Mode" or "Action Focus Mode". However, the story does not change, and Story Focus Mode does not equate to "easy mode".
In Story Focus Mode, you will have accessories with AI driven abilities. For example, equipping a certain AI accessory will make Clive auto-dodge enemy attacks.
There are various accessories such as the above, or for people who want a bit more action, another AI accessory will slow down time just before the enemy hits you, and if you press the R1 button with a 3 second window, time will restart and Clive will dodge the attack.
There will be options with auto or manual battle elements like this.
You can put them on or take them off at any time, so you have complete freedom on how you want to play. So if you are not good with action games, Story Focus Mode will give you the option to focus on the story.
There are also options which allows you for automatic Eikon ability switching and clean combos with a specified button.
The Action Focus Mode also has these accessories.
For people who want even more of a challenge, can try the score attack mode and such.
There is no traditional party system, but there will be AI driven characters who will change depending on the story.
There is also a "Buddy" system. This Buddy will also be in almost every battle, and you can give commands to attack or even heal you. You also have the option to just let them do whatever.
FFXVI is a fantasy world where magic exists like everyday tools in medieval Europe.
Although there are some similarities with FFXVI with FFXIV as the teams are similar, they have no correlation or connection with each other.
They chose Garuda as an Eikon as the team wasn't exactly going for a "blooming flower" and more of "rough" type image. So Benedikts brute and cruel personality is portrayed with Garuda.
Yoshida explains that the Mothercrystal is best akin to an oil field, in the sense that various nations were born under the crystal and they flourished due to the Aether spurned out by the crystal.
At the same time, Dominants, were also born and were governed by laws set by the Nations.
The base of the story is that the Mothercrystal's aether is drying up and various nations have started to move to take the crystal for themselves. And as a result, the forbidden Eikon war began.
For generations, the Archduke house of Rosaria embodied the Phoenix and has been worshiped as the guardian deity by the people. However, the passing down of the Phoenix dominant is not limited by the next successor and it went to Joshua. Clive also feels a sense of inferiority due to this.
Part of Clive's journey is chasing the mysterious Black Eikon and taking revenge. However, whether this is his one-way resolute, you'd have to see for yourself to find out.
The Eikon VS Eikon element was decided from the very beginning. Eikons exist and there is a Mothercrystal, these two things became the foundation for the story. From here they went onto world building by setting up Nations based on the Eikons.
They considered the Job system a number of times, but ultimately it was not implemented.
That does not means that Jobs are completely absent, as there were Dragoons seen in the first trailer. Yoshida jokes how people commented "lol floorgoon again", but he guarantees that the Dragoon fight will be a challenge.
Yoshida cannot say how long the game will as of yet, however, he thinks that the game will have plenty of content to satisfy both players who rush the story to the end, and for completionists.
As mentioned earlier, the game is mostly in real-time with no loading, so Yoshida wants to stress the immersive gaming experience.
An immersive story driven experience; Yoshida thinks that the game will deliver an experience that no other game has. Being swept up by the story, the game will have many moments building up to shocking pivotal points.
For pre-rendered elements, Nozue's Kingsglaive team had their part, closely working the XVI team.
One reason they focused on real time rendering was the time and cost. There are time when they have to cut certain scenes, and if it was a pre-rendered scene, it would take an immense amount of time to even just make small adjustments. So real time rendering cut a lot of this time down.
The core design philosophy for FFXVI was creating a "sharp and polished action game", combined with a dreadnaught class scenario, in an adrenaline pumped game design.
Yoshida admits that their may be people who are disappointed that's not open world, but to put the story as the forefront, expanding on a global scale, this was the best choice to make.
Sakaguchi told Yoshida that "FF is about taking on new challenges". And Yoshida challenged FFXVI certain that it would lead more in the series.
Ultimately, Yoshida is doing his best to make FFXVI a "Must buy if you have a PS5"."
![[+furioso]](/images/smilies/nuevos/furioso.gif "muy furioso")
. 
yo llegué a hacerme casi todo, incluso un boss oculto que estaba por la estepa. ![[triston]](/images/smilies/nuevos/triste_ani2.gif "tristón")
![[babas]](/images/smilies/babas.gif "Babeando")
![[+risas]](/images/smilies/nuevos/risa_ani3.gif "más risas")
