Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida has revealed that the upcoming JRPG is pushing for mature-themed content, and therefore may be the first core entry in the venerable franchise to receive an ‘M’ rating.
Typically most Final Fantasy games carry a Teen or Everyone rating, but this time around, the development team are not limiting themselves and are instating pushing for a more mature tone. Here’s what Yoshida-san revealed during a chinwag with GameSpot:
When trying to tell a story with difficult adult themes, these ratings can end up becoming somewhat of a hindrance. And you find yourself changing things that you wanted to do in the game based on that rating. You wanted to show something, but because you have this certain rating that you need to go to, you need to move the camera away. And that ends up making the entire experience feel a little bit cheaper.
And so, this time, to make sure that we could tell the story that we wanted in the way that we wanted to, we decided to pursue a mature rating in most of the regions that will be releasing the game.
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But again, this is not because we simply wanted to make the game more violent or the game more explicit, this is because we felt it was necessary to allow us to explore those more mature themes that the game tackles.
Yoshida has been conducting a number of press interviews this week, revealing that Final Fantasy 16 will not feature an open-world and will also include ‘fully-AI driven‘ party members during combat. Elsewhere, he was full of praise for the PS5’s hardware, in particular the console’s fast loading times.