Final Fantasy 15 Game Director Hajime Tabata has shed light on why the critically acclaimed JRPG adopted a more linear gameplay direction during its second half.
Speaking to Game Informer, Tabata-san revealed that time and budget constraints meant that the widely-praised open-world experience that made up the first part of Final Fantasy 15 had to be eschewed in favor of linear gameplay approach.
“Based on calculations that the development time and cost would double if the latter half of the game was to be an open-world environment as well, we had already planned to make the latter half more of a journey by vehicle. The structure of this title – to create memories while traveling in the open-world environment during the first half of the game, then have the story move forward linearly using the train in the latter half of the game – was designed and intended to be that way,” he said.
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Despite criticism directed at the latter half of the game, Final Fantasy 15 still delivered the goods as an overall package, with the open-world segments very much seen as a return to form for the venerated role-playing franchise. Gamers seemed to agree too, with Final Fantasy 15 shipping over six million copies worldwide since its November 2016 release on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Source: GamingBolt