Final Fantasy 16 – having in-depth knowledge of the first 15 games won’t help you here (pic: Square Enix)



The series is no stranger to complex plots, but Final Fantasy 16 left even some of its own developers scratching their heads.



It’s apparent just by looking at it that Final Fantasy 16 takes more than a few cues from Game Of Thrones . The medieval aesthetic, the darker tone, the copious amounts of lore and worldbuilding; it all seems very similar to the popular TV show.



Producer Naoki Yoshida has already admitted the Game Of Thrones influences, expressing a desire to tell a complex and grand story that throws players into the thick of it.



However, it’s proved so complex that even members of the development team struggled to keep up with what was going on in the story, prompting them to take steps to prevent players from getting just as lost.



Rather than add in a bunch of ham-fisted exposition, they put together what they call the Active Lore System, allowing you to pause the game at any time (even during cut scenes) and provide access to what is essentially a lore guide.



The system covers character biographies, the different political factions, locations, and any fictional jargon that may sail over your head.



In an interview with Polygon , Yoshida recalls how the team came to this realisation in May 2019, saying, ‘We brought together pretty much the main staff from all of the sections working on the game, and we read through the entire script all together.



‘We found out that a lot of even the internal core staff were lost, they didn’t know what was going on! So we realised all of a sudden that we needed some way to support players that were going to feel this way as well. Because if we as devs are feeling it, players are definitely going to.’



This obviously sparks concerns regarding the story’s complexity. Can players still become invested in the world and cast without needing to do their homework or is it completely incomprehensible unless you memorise the politics and background lore of its setting?



Elsewhere, Yoshida touches upon how much of an impact Game Of Thrones has had on Final Fantasy 16’s development. Even from the game’s very conception, Yoshida was having team members binge watch the series.



‘We wanted to create something that really resonated with a lot of people. And when we saw how Game Of Thrones, and before that the Song Of Ice And Fire series, has really resonated with players, we knew that this was something that we wanted to do as well,’ he told Eurogamer .



‘When we first started creating the game, we had our core team of about 30 members very early on buy the Blu-ray boxset of Game Of Thrones and required everyone to watch it, because we wanted this type of feel.’



Hopefully, the team hasn’t taken as much inspiration from Game Of Thrones’ final season or at least saw it as a lesson of what not to do.



Final Fantasy 16 launches for PlayStation 5 on June 22.









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