Final Fantasy XVI’s combat is fast, chaotic, and, most importantly, fun. There are plenty of combos to pull off, and in just the small taste of the action during my cover story trip to Square Enix’s Tokyo, Japan, office, I saw so much variance in setting up Clive’s combative abilities that I can’t wait to see what others do in-game.
I also watched combat director Ryota Suzuki play through some of the most challenging encounters in the game, and unsurprisingly, he excelled, taking maybe one or two hits in the 20 minutes he played. He used combos I didn’t really comprehend – admittedly, he was playing at a much later portion of the game than I had hands-on access with – and it got me thinking: is he excited to see what players do with FFXVI’s combat, much like I was sitting there watching him pull off intricate combos against myriad enemies?
Final Fantasy XVI Combat Director Ryota Suzuki
“I’ve always tried to give players a lot of freedom when it comes to the controls and the action in the game, and give them lots of options that they can take and then do their own thing with,” Suzuki tells me. “So I’m expecting that there’s going to be a lot of weird things that they’re going to do with certain abilities. I can’t say what those abilities are, but I already have a few ideas because I’ve left a lot of things open-ended in that way.
“I’m really excited to see what players will do with them because there are definitely things that I didn’t expect, but I do like putting that stuff out there so that they have stuff to play with and surprise me with. When they do things I expected, I’m happy, but I’m also really happy when they […] do something that is completely unexpected. It’s one of the exciting things about being a developer.”
Like Suzuki, I look forward to seeing what far more advanced players do with FFXVI’s combat, and fortunately, we have less than a month to go.
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