As we continue the long wait for Final Fantasy 16, some of the franchise’s developers are working hard on another project. Fantasian, from studio Mistwalker, is nearing completion. Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi and other developers have been sharing some impressive dioramas and concept art.
Announced in 2019, Fantasian is due to launch sometime this year, and fans have been getting an in-depth look at the game’s environments. Concept art, dioramas of environments, and a teaser New Year’s card have all been available for fans to feast their eyes on - and what’s been shown so far is jaw-dropping work. The RPG will debut on Apple Arcade - an Apple subscription service tailored to exclusive games - and while there is no definite release date, Mistwalker has teased that its arrival will be “soon.”
Sakaguchi shared a “New Year’s card” back in January which featured a dusty town built into the side of beige hills. Thanks to an accompanying aerial shot of the town, fans were delighted to see that the card’s image was in fact an incredibly detailed 3D diorama of the frontier town “En” from the upcoming game. From far away, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was a model of Tatooine, or perhaps a leftover miniature from Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. However, the Final Fantasy developers are crafting Fantasian’s environments down to the last crevasse, and the dioramas are mesmerizing to look at.
Mistwalker is known to be jostling with Final Fantasy developers, and the studio as a whole shared concept art on its Twitter page. A bar from En, the Magitech Factory in Machine City, and the Secret Base and bar in The Water City of Vence were all on show, and Mistwalker also released the artwork for fans to use as wallpapers. The amount of detail that has gone into the concept art for Fantasian’s environments may be standard practice, but the dioramas are something to greatly admire.
As Final Fantasy developers continue perfecting Fantasian, the series that they’re accustomed to is about to have one hell of a year. We have compiled a guide for everything you need to know about Final Fantasy this year, including the release on Final Fantasy 16, more updates on the second act of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and possibly a new Chocobo racing game.
Source: Polygon - TAHK0 / Twitter