Square Enix fans have been waiting for the next sign of news aboutFinal Fantasy 16.Final Fantasy 14director andFinal Fantasy 16producer Naoki Yoshida has carried his policy of open development over to16, and promised the game would get more news near the end of 2021. He said it could come at the Tokyo Game Show in late September, but warned not to expect the game to be there.FF16was absent from that show, and fans assumed that it could show up at The Game Awards instead.
However,Final Fantasy 16was nowhere in sight. Itskipped a State of Play, then The Game Awards, and the Christmas season passed without a sound. Yoshida was committed to keeping everyone on the same page, and on December 27 he made a public announcement to let fans know the game’s development had been delayed by almost half a year, with information now planned for spring 2022. While this is disappointing, the transparency has been received well by fans, and that could be taken as a good lesson for Square Enix’s other major projects.
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Final Fantasy 16’s Delay Was Both Routine and Exceptional
It’s no secret that Square Enix has a problem withannouncing games too early. One example is the game formerly known asFinal Fantasy Versus 13, announced as Square’s most ambitious action-RPG yet in 2006 and eventually released asFinal Fantasy 15in 2016. A remake ofFinal Fantasy 7was teased by way of a PS3 tech demo in 2005, and while this wasn’t an announcement, Square Enix took its sweet time actually announcing the full project at E3 2015.
The pattern of announcing games when only a concept trailer or a vertical slice is ready continues, including forKingdom Hearts 3with a 2013 teaser, a 2017 tech demo, and a 2019 release.Final Fantasy 14came out on schedule, but had to be restarted under Yoshida’s supervision. Even then, many agree that the strengths of this reboot weren’t readily apparentuntil its first expansion,Heavensward.
That left Yoshida and theHeavenswardteam with a solid understanding of how to manage a large project, and when Square Enix approached them with the chance to developFinal Fantasy 16, a similar plan followed. Just like withFinal Fantasy 14, nothing would be shown until things were locked down and ready to be shown. Just like14, there was to be a steady influx of informative updates every few months. Also like14’sEndwalkerexpansion, when there had to be a delay, the community was told exactly why it had to happen.
Other Games Should Learn From Final Fantasy 16’s Delay
From the first reveal trailer, Yoshida had a hand in the direction ofFF16discussions. He made it clear what state the game was in, and what tasks were being focused on next. When complaints arose about visuals in the reveal trailer, Yoshida noted it was made in a hurry, and the graphics had plenty of polish to go.Now thatFF16is delayed, Yoshida paired the announcement with why that happened, and what aspects of the game still needed work. In an industry known for secrecy and tightly controlled marketing,Final Fantasy 16was handled with grace - especially when its delay could have been waved off due to the ongoing pandemic.
Other Square Enix projects should look toFinal Fantasy 16as an example of how to handle long, tumultuous developments. Ideally, games should be revealed with something to show, but that’s too often not the case. So, it is important to give fans a rough idea of how far along a project is, when more news or a release date can be expected, and if a delay is happening and why. Transparency helps soothe fears, and it also gives the developer the appearance that it knows what it’s doing. It isn’t reasonable to expect every team to provide as much information as Yoshida, but even something as forthright asNintendo announcingMetroid Prime 4’s rebootcan go a long way.
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