Why Final Fantasy 15's Open World Becomes Linear

Things become more focused, but you won’t be cut off from exploring the open world.

By Andrew Goldfarb

Final Fantasy XV has a gigantic open world to explore, but it doesn’t stay that way the entire time. Recently, director Hajime Tabata has discussed the fact that in later parts of the game, XV actually becomes more linear as players start to focus more on following the story.

In an interview at PAX, Tabata explained why the game is structured this way, and clarified how much of the open world you’ll still be able to go back and explore even once you’ve reached the later parts of the game.

“Rather than it being the latter half, it’s actually very close to the end of the game,” Tabata told IGN regarding when things become more linear.

“I didn’t want to end the game in an open world type of environment,” he continued. “At the very end, when the main character and the enemy are going against one another, there’s a build up in the story. I wanted to ensure that that last part was a little bit different from the open world environment and more of a packed, condensed type of game experience.”

Tabata said a sequence involving a train is the point after which the open world gameplay instead starts to focus more on the story, but that players won’t be entirely cut off from going back and exploring.

“Once the train sequence starts, the whole structure of the game changes drastically, where it’s really focused on the story developments, and developing in a fast-paced kind of fashion thereafter,” he said. “So you won’t be able to physically go back and forth between those two areas. That said, you will be able to go back to that open world environment through the menu, so you will still be able to experience the adventure that awaits you over there, which amounts to over 200 hours of gameplay. So that is still available to the player. After the whole train sequence, it kind of episodically goes through the story and takes it up to the end. “

Final Fantasy XV will come to Xbox One and PlayStation 4 worldwide on November 29. For more, read our impressions of the opening hours, and Tabata’s comments on how Final Fantasy XV’s story takes place over the course of 10 years.

Andrew is IGN’s executive editor of news and could probably get lost exploring the inside of a train. You can find him rambling about Persona and cute animals on Twitter.

Let's block ads! (Why?)