Final Fantasy 16 is not open world, “but it’s not linear, either”, says dev
Let’s be honest, the setup of Final Fantasy 15 hasn’t aged that well. The semi-open world setup of the game’s main area – Duscae – provided some cool opportunities for Noctis and his pals to fart around as the world literally fell apart around them, but the meat of the game existed solely within the middle America-inspired region, with only some very on-rails (literally) story beats following up the initial area.
It seems the developers of Final Fantasy 16 have learned from the missteps of the controversial precursor to this massive new RPG experiment, though. In a hands-on preview event with Square Enix and the developers behind Final Fantasy 16, the studio confirmed that Final Fantasy 16 would not be open world.
“In past interviews, I have mentioned that Final Fantasy 16 is not an open world game,” says producer Naoki Yoshida via interpreter. “But what exactly does that mean? Does it mean it’s linear? Again, not exactly.