Though it took nearly a decade from its initial reveal as Final Fantasy XIII Versus, Final Fantasy XV is finally in the rearview, both for gamers and for Square-Enix. The company has released all of the possible DLC for the title, and even the director responsible for it has left the company and moved on to other things. Since the game’s release, we’ve also managed to get the third Kingdom Hearts game and even a release date for the remake of Final Fantasy 7.
With all that in mind, it’s time to start turning towards the future. Though VII is on the horizon, it is still a remake of a game players have already played. Final Fantasy XVI is hopefully coming sooner rather than later, and here’s a list of things we hope Square will consider about the title.
10 AN EXPANSIVE WORLD
Final Fantasy XV was pretty big, and the way things are going, it’s more likely than not that this game will be even larger. That’s fine, but make sure the size of the world has a purpose. Give a unique visual identity to every city and every country we run into. Make the monsters stand out from one another, and give the dungeons their own unique feel.
Even the kind of side content should change based on the areas we’re in. There’s no need to make the game big for the sake of being big, when the current wave is about being content dense over the actual size of the game’s world.
9 PLENTY OF SIDE QUESTS
The current wave for video games in general is to make them longer, presumably out of a desire to keep players from completing them in a week or two and taking them back to the store. If that’s the case, then make sure we can actually get something out of it.
Take a page out of the notebook of games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and offer some proper side quests. Not just a noteboard to take generic assignments from— build some stories around it, add some characters who can play as quest givers who have their own narratives.
8 AWESOME SUMMONS
This is a given, but it’s still worthy of mention. Every since the PS1 era, summons have been a major part of the series. In Final Fantasy VII, it was all about the spectacle. Then, in Final Fantasy VIII, they made Guardian Forces somewhat like partners for your characters.
Lately, they’ve just been basic spectacles (though XV went way over the top), but it’d be cool if they played a larger role in the series like they did in Final Fantasy XIII, where they were vehicles. Whatever they do, they should make each one special, hopefully centering entire side quests around them.
7 MORE CHARACTERS
Final Fantasy XV was a story about a close-knit group of friends traveling across the country, sticking together through thick and thin. That was cool, but for the next game, we want to see more all-around diversity.
Back in the day, we could have a party featuring a giant talking red lion or a six-foot rabbit girl without someone blinking an eye. It would even be nice to get back to Final Fantasy VII’s addition of optional missable characters, just to offer replay value.
6 MORE VEHICLE OPTIONS
There’s nothing wrong with the world size trending larger, but in that case, there shouldn’t be any shortage of vehicles in the game. Final Fantasy XV relied on the car for its missions and it worked (given the story it was aiming to tell), with other forms of transportation being added later as DLC.
DLC should be reserved for more ambitious concepts than access to an airship and a boat, though. If this game is going to be tech-focused, there should be a variety of vehicles available for us to purchase and upgrade. If it’s more fantasy-focused, as many fans are hoping, then it should include steampunk vehicles and monsters to ride.
5 PUT THE "FANTASY" BACK IN FINAL FANTASY
Final Fantasy XIV notwithstanding, Square hasn’t gone hardcore fantasy for their main franchise in some time. 2006’s Final Fantasy XII is the closest we’ve seen, which was well over a decade ago. Since then, Final Fantasy has flirted with the futuristic both in Final Fantasy XIII and XV, even if both games were far more fantastical than anything the real world could come up with.
Final Fantasy XVI doesn’t have to be traditional fantasy— it can and should draw on other traditional mythologies. However, with VII’s remake on the way, it seems weird to push another game in the direction of the far future.
4 BETTER DLC
Because of the way Square-Enix’s release schedules have been, Final Fantasy XV was the first time a mainline game has gotten to do DLC the way it’s done in the modern era, and... it was not the way DLC should be done.
Offering the ability to play as the other characters in an already small party is not DLC. Square should take a page from both Ubisoft and CDProjektRED to see what it means to truly add DLC to an existing game. Additional quests are good, new areas to explore with their own stories are always appreciated. Anything that seems additive rather than completing the game.
3 NOT TO BE THE ONLY NEXT GENERATION FINAL FANTASY
When all is said and done, the only new mainline Final Fantasy the generation will have seen will be Final Fantasy XV. This is pretty much unprecedented, as every console generation before then received three, and usually no less than two.
In a world where other developers are working on their flagship titles concurrently, it would be nice if Square afforded their main series the same courtesy. While they’re still hyping Final Fantasy XVI, they should really be working on Final Fantasy XVII. It would be nice to see releases of several games staggered out every two years, allowing longtime fans to get their fix.
2 ACTIVE TIME BATTLE
When Versus XIII was first re-revealed as Final Fantasy XV, it represented a paradigm shift. Instead of being a variant of turn-based combat, this game was fully action-oriented. That was the first time a mainline Final Fantasy entry had ever done such a thing.
Given the relative success of the game, it seems unlikely they’ll simply ditch it. This is a shame, as Final Fantasy was one of the few high-budget JRPGs remaining that did turn-based combat at all. The Active Time Battle system was incredibly innovative, and it would be great to see it make another return.
1 CLASS-BASED COMBAT
Final Fantasy as a franchise hasn’t done much with classes in the mainline games since Final Fantasy V. It’s easy to understand why, as future releases would decide to allow the stories around the characters to delineate all of them and allow players to customize and become attached to them.
Since then, it’s been pretty rare that the level of customization in V was present in the mainline, and class-based systems in general have been restricted to MMOs and side games. It’s about time Square figured out a way to reincorporate this into a single-player mainline title, so people can be Red Mages again.