Speaking during an interview with Famitsu (via GamingBolt), Final Fantasy XV Game Director Hajime Tabata revealed that the upcoming PlayStation 4 and Xbox One JRPG will take in the region of 40-50 hours to finish.
While that’s an impressive number, it’s worth noting that Tabata-san isn’t entirely sure of how long the game will last players.
“We expect 40 to 50 hours to reach the end. But, to be honest, I have no idea…! The story has been split up into chapters, but a section presumed to take an hour can end up taking far longer. I would expect the average time to be a bit longer.”
Final Fantasy XV is scheduled for a worldwide release on PS4 and Xbox One on September 30, 2016. The game is being supported by a range of multimedia content, including a web-based anime series, a CG film, and more.
The game has endured a complicated and arduous development cycle, originally starting out life as the PS3-exclusive Final Fantasy Versus XIII. This project was announced nearly a decade ago at E3 2006, though Square Enix was pretty shy in regards to providing updates in subsequent years.
However, amidst rumors of the game’s cancellation, the Japanese publishing giant re-revealed the game for current-generation systems as Final Fantasy XV during Sony’s E3 2013 press conference alongside Kingdom Hearts 3.
The company would later confirm that development on FFXV began in 2012, when FF Versus XIII was roughly 25 percent complete. Much has changed since its original incarnation however, including the removal of Stella as the main heroine alongside protagonist Noctis.
Recently, Tabata-san admitted that Square Enix had feared Final Fantasy was a dying IP that had already peaked around the time he stepped up to direct the project.