One of the key elements survived from Final Fantasy Versus XIII is the atmosphere of the road trip movie. In a new interview with 4Gamer, Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata and visual director Takeshi Nozue shared some new insight on the game, including elements carried over from its original vision, the human traits of the main characters and the challenges of creating an open world.

The concept of “fantasy based on reality” has been with Final Fantasy XV since the beginning. Because of this, Tabata and his team decided to enhance these elements – especially near the beginning of the game. “Older Final Fantasy fans may be disappointed with it at first but as you go further into the game the world becomes more and more fantasy-like,” he explains. “On the other hand, people who haven’t played the series might not be able to catch up with the story if we present a typical FF world from the beginning so that’s why we made the first part realistic.”

One concept of realism exists in the game’s road movie theme with the main characters visiting different places and the story told from their perspective. Among the four friends, it’s their banter that delivers the road movie feel as they travel from place to place and it’s interactions like these that give information to the players.

“While moving from place to place, we wanted players to feel that they’re actually with friends,” Tabata says. “So we built up the AI and animation system based on that. For this project, we considered the following two things as our challenge: developing a seamless open world, and developing realistic AI for Noct’s friends. Even though players control just one character (Noctis), we want to make sure they feel like they’re with friends by developing smart AI.”

There are actually many different types of AI being used in FFXV. For example, Noctis’ friends pay attention to him and move with him – walking together as people do in real life. The motion of the friends is unpredictable and allows them to feel like they’re actually alive.

One of the main features of Final Fantasy XV is its focus on writing the journey of four guys. Previously other FF titles had female characters who were typically mages, or clichéd romance partners or otherwise. Tabata admits people do ask him about the absence of female characters on a regular basis. “We can deliver an atmosphere that a male-only party can express,” he explains. “For example, we’re telling the story of father and son and within that the car is considered a key element.”

For this project, Tabata didn’t want to put in a female character just to grab attention from female users. “First we built basic values that male characters can relate to and then we try to explain how great these things are to female players.”

An example, 4Gamer notes, is from Episode Duscae where Ignis and Noctis share a moment from their childhoods under the stars. If a female character were with Noctis instead, Tabata feels the scene would have been quite different. “If a female character joins the boys on their journey, then a lot of things may change. In fact a female character does join up later as a guest and the four main characters change their attitude – they can’t help it! But this also shows how the characters are alive.”

To enforce this sense of realism, the team spent a lot of time creating the looks and traits of the four main characters. Nozue says, “We had a lot of discussion with the team – how can we make the characters someone to relate to? We talked about this for a long period of time in an effort to make them human beings.”

Near the beginning of development a special unit was formed to create the personality traits of the characters. After the traits were decided, Tabata says they shared their ideas with the team and even listened to feedback from the players. “At first Prompto’s reputation was terrible… so we took that seriously and took a look at his traits again,” admits Nozue.

“Prompto thinks deeply of his friends, and even if he’s in a predicament he never shows it,” explains Tabata. “He never lets the atmosphere get heavy so we decided to push those aspects more strongly. Actually the most difficult one to bring to life was Noctis.”

At first Tabata had a hard time liking Noctis, so Tabata considered how he could come to like him. “I imagined how Noctis was when he was a child. At the dinner table he would patiently wait for his father, King Regis. I thought a lot about his childhood, and finally I could see him as human and came to like him.”

Perhaps the most difficult decision the team has had to make so far, however, has to do with the game’s open world. In the end, Tabata decided to implement open world technology with the following caveat: “It’s okay if we end up failing.” Many of the staff were actively against the idea of introducing an open world out of fear of the game world being too empty but they decided to stick with it for a number of reasons.

First, Tabata explains, if a RPG comes out in today’s age that isn’t open world, fans everywhere would wonder why it isn’t. In FFXV the player travels all over the world so the team would definitely be criticized if that were the case. In order to put Final Fantasy back on top as a challenger, creating the open world was a must. “So I couldn’t back down,” says Tabata. “The game progresses with the story but it’s expressed through the open world.”

The idea for this open world came about a few months after E3 2013, when the game was re-branded for the new generation. It was around this time both the FFXV team and the Luminous Studio team merged and staff within Square Enix insisted it was impossible to develop and open world game with the company’s knowledge at the time. There was also this impression that – because the first HD Final Fantasy game made use of linear maps – Square Enix was unable to produce AAA open world games. While people still held those ideas, the team released Episode Duscae and suddenly the tone of fans changed. They realized that yes, Square Enix can make an open world.

On the technical side of things, Tabata says making the game open-world was a huge challenge. “The loading system, the design of the map – all of these techniques are different from usual ones. At first I was like, ‘Whoa, this is how you develop an open world!’ We looked at games like Grand Theft Auto or Red Dead Redemption and the staff became overwhelmed thinking there’s no way we could develop that…”

Eventually, the team got over those fears. Tabata continues, “We got up to speed on the technology and were able to design the map. It’s not a perfect open world but players can enjoy how seamless it is. We got really excited when we arrived at this milestone.”

Via: 4Gamer, Jirokichi.