Square Enix chucked out another trailer for its upcoming RPG Final Fantasy 15 Jump Festa 2015, an annual anime convention in Japan. There’s a little bit of gameplay, but it’s mostly cutscenes shedding more light on the game’s plot.
Which sums up Final Fantasy as a series pretty well, actually. As is traditional with the series, I spent most of my time watching this getting annoyed with everyone’s haircuts. Though the open-world style gameplay does look intriguing.
Kotaku has a very fine transcript of the entire event and press conference, so if you’re looking for concrete plot information I’d suggest checking that out. I have no idea what’s going on, but the concept of a massive road trip with drivable cars and real-time RPG combat looks very solid. There’s slightly less of the ‘over-design’ that’s plagued recent entries in the franchise, though it all still looks a tiny bit generic for my tastes.
Here’s something interesting, though; “So you see the characters approach the town in their car and they get out and enter the town, so that part is all seamless,” says director Hajime Tabata. “But as to whether the entire game is seamlessly connected like that, that’s what we’re trying to do in development, but it may turn out that for important places there will be loading. But in terms of what’s offered in the demo, everything is seamless, so you can get the feel that this entire world is connected.”
We’ll have to wait and see if the idea of seamless environments works out, but it would certainly be a bold change in direction for a series that could really do with a bit of invention. Final Fantasy doesn’t have a set release plan just yet, Square Enix will only say that the game’s “in development.” Which is not all that helpful, really.
