Final Fantasy XV is “quite far into development” and “very high priority” within Square Enix, according to Final Fantasy series producer Yoshinori Kitase.
“We can’t give too much information but certainly looking at Final Fantasy XV, it’s not as if it’s in competition with Kingdom Hearts III for resources or anything like that,” Kitase told VideoGamer. “It’s quite far into development now and it is being given a very high priority within the company itself, but that doesn’t mean Kingdom Hearts isn’t.”
The producer added that the capabilities of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One allow the games to have more characters and things happening on screen.
“We are quite aware of [PlayStation 4 and Xbox One’s] capabilities and certainly one thing that’s going to come up is having battles with a lot more participants involved,” Kitase continued. “Having a lot more characters, a lot more things happening, that’s one of the things that the new hardware does really well, so to maybe make a battle system for a Final Fantasy game or a future game that fits with that, I think it would be quite good to have more characters for the player to control and more participants in the battle.”
According to Kitase, the team might utilize elements of previous Final Fantasy battle systems when considering future systems.
“In the first two of the XIII series you had the Paradigm Shift system with AI controlled teammates which lends itself very well to having lots of characters,” Kitase said. “Or maybe having even deeper customization, something that harks back to say the Gambit System in Final Fantasy XII.
“All those kind of ideas, it doesn’t necessarily [mean] that something that we’ve used before is now invalid and can’t be used, there’s certainly a possibility of taking it and bringing it back. But I think it’s going to be those kind of changes that the technology allows that we’re going to have to maybe think and adapt for.”
Final Fantasy XV is in development for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.