With the discharge of Rising Tide, the world of Ultimate Fantasy 16 is now full. A sport about elemental gods that previously have been often known as Espers, Summons, Eidolons and extra, one factor was mysteriously lacking from FF16’s narrative. Now, with Rising Tide, the Eikon of Water joins Clive’s battle.
“You possibly can actually really feel that they’ve all powered up,” enthuses Takeo Kujiraoka, the director of Ultimate Fantasy 16’s DLC. Energy creep is frequent in video games, after all – satisfying development virtually calls for that characters turn into ever extra highly effective, till you’re swatting away beforehand lethal enemies. However Kujiraoka isn’t speaking about Clive and Jill, FF16’s good-looking leads – he’s speaking in regards to the growth crew.
Kujiraoka has stepped into the director’s chair for the post-launch interval of Ultimate Fantasy 16, taking on these duties from Hiroshi Takai. Positioned in command of discovering new adventures for Clive and new challenges for gamers, one asset was probably the most invaluable of all: the crew was pumped up and able to ship.
“Everybody gained plenty of expertise, as people, via creating the principle sport,” Kujiraoka says. “The tempo of growth for the DLC was so much quicker, so much smoother.”
Whereas different groups inside Sq. Enix have been engaged on PS5 for a while, for FF16’s builders – the thrillingly-named ‘Artistic Enterprise Unit 3’ – this was a first-time outing on the platform. Kujiraoka describes a means of trial-and-error, experimentation, and struggles to familiarize yourself with the platform that inevitably prolonged FF16’s growth. For the DLC, nevertheless, the crew was prepared. Like an RPG hero prepared for the end-game they have been, as he says, ‘powered up’.
“After we requested the crew to ‘simply make one thing new’, it meant that in a number of totally different features of the sport, whether or not that was sport design, setting, something like that, we have been ranging from this powered-up place,” he provides. “I feel you’ll be able to most likely inform from the skin as effectively – that is why we have been in a position to create two units of DLC on such a brief timeline, one in six months, the opposite in a yr.”
With builders powered-up, so too are gamers. Ultimate Fantasy 16 all the time needed to tread an unenviable tightrope, in spite of everything. As a Ultimate Fantasy sport, it wanted to be accessible and fulfilling to gamers who may solely be used to slower-paced, command-based RPGs. However FF16 can be an unashamed action-RPG, its heaviest influences most likely some mixture of Satan Might Cry and God of Struggle. However in creating DLCs geared toward gamers already within the end-game, the FF16 crew have been considerably free of these constraints, designing for gamers who can have spent tens of hours attending to grips with Clive, his ability set, and the tempo of FF16’s fight.
“For Echoes of the Fallen, we did up the baseline issue of the fight as an entire,” Kujiraoka explains. “One of many causes for that was that we had deliberately stored the issue degree of the principle sport at a barely decrease level, as a result of we needed to ensure that these gamers who weren’t so assured with motion gameplay, may benefit from the story and see it proper via the tip.
“Wanting on the proportion of gamers who managed to finish the principle sport and attain the tip, I do assume that was the fitting alternative for the bottom sport. However on the identical time, we have been conscious of suggestions on the market of gamers saying ‘I needed some more difficult battles, I need one thing to essentially sink my tooth into’, or ‘I needed an actual back-to-back string of consecutive battles as an actual problem’, and even ‘I simply needed extra time controlling Clive and enjoying as him’.”
The result’s the pair of FF16 DLCs that now spherical out the sport’s expertise. Echoes of the Fallen, launched again in December, and Rising Tide, newly launched this week. As a result of growth on the DLCs didn’t begin in earnest till after FF16’s June 2023 launch date, the crew was in a position to scour for suggestions – studying fan impressions, watching reside streams, and thoroughly dissecting participant response to FF16 with a purpose to determine precisely how far gamers and the fight may very well be pushed with the DLCs.
“That is the opposite huge benefit past the expertise we gained engaged on the principle sport,” Kujiraoka keenly factors out. “Engaged on the DLC after the principle sport has already been launched, you may get this suggestions from gamers and he can take that under consideration as you are creating. So I’m actually, actually grateful for all of the gamers and their suggestions.”
Followers diving into Rising Tide this week will discover an expertise that goals to supply a little bit bit extra of nearly every part from FF16. Requested if the DLC is extra about providing a scorching new twist on FF16, as some DLCs do, Kujiraoka shakes his head: it’s about refinement, and pushing what’s already there additional.
Exterior of the story, this manifests as ‘Kairos Gate’, a brand new mode designed to check participant mettle in a variety of more and more troublesome fight eventualities. That is the final word expression of FF16’s fight design, one thing which is undoubtedly one in all its finest options. Like Kujiraoka suggests, the mode is designed to push the methods designed for the core sport to their limits.
The story aspect isn’t any slouch both, after all. You’ll discover tougher enemies within the DLC, bombastic new strikes, fascinating new story twists, extra time for sure key characters to get pleasure from a little bit growth, and delightful new zones to discover. It maybe isn’t fairly an ‘enlargement’ within the conventional sense of the phrase as some sport updates are – but it surely’s positively on the higher bounds of what ‘DLCs’ have a tendency to supply.
The results of this strategy does supply one curious wrinkle: that is content material that will get slotted into the story, however when pressed for the way he’d outright suggest folks play the content material, he recommends gamers end the principle story first, then return to get pleasure from Rising Tide within the post-game. The DLC additionally doesn’t change FF16’s ending in any manner – however its occasions do present narrative context for followers to feast on. In the end, it is much less denouement and extra of a aspect distraction – however in RPGs, generally that stuff is one of the best half. Given the unique sport felt to battle with content material outdoors of the principle story, it feels applicable that what is likely to be FF16’s final content material drop seeks to deal with it. And on PC, gamers can have entry to this from day one – each time that day finally ends up being.
“The general idea we labored with for the Rising Tide was type of the identical strategy that you just may take for an enlargement pack of an MMO,” Kujiraoka notes. “That’s to say that we took the entire basic parts making up Ultimate Fantasy 16 and added a bit extra to them. In order that’s extra story, that is an entire new subject space that accommodates a city with aspect quests, that is new Eikonic talents for Clive, and that is a brand new Eikon battle. We put every part into this enlargement.”
“Reasonably than type of including one thing that is a little bit little bit of a twist or a bit totally different, I might say that what we have actually centered on for this DLC was offering extra and higher content material that FF16 followers are actually going to get pleasure from.”