More information regarding Square Enix’s upcoming action RPG Final Fantasy 16 has been revealed. According to a recent interview with the game’s lead developers, Final Fantasy 16’s main story will take 35 hours to finish, with twice the time required to 100% the title.
In addition to the Final Fantasy 16 game length info, FF16 will also feature online leaderboards. This information comes from a recent dev interview with Famitsu, a Japanese news outlet, that spoke with game’s director Hiroshi Takai and producer Naoki Yoshida. The following is an English-translated version of the interview via aitaikimochi, who regularly covers Final Fantasy and JRPG-related content on Twitter.
Famitsu: How many hours does it take to clear the game’s main story?
Takai: FF16 is a story driven game that will take you on a roller coaster trip. You’ll see the entirety of Clive’s way of life, and the game will probably take about 35 hours to clear. If we include side content, it’ll can be double that amount.
Famitsu: Double the amount, that means about 70 hours…That’s way more than expected!
Takai: We heard people asking “if you focus on the main story, does that mean there’s not that many side quests?” That is absolutely not the case as we of course have plenty sidequests prepared.
Yoshida: When the game development was just starting out, I had the idea in mind that gamers these days are really busy with other things, so I wanted them to be able to at least aim to complete the story. I thought making the game something you can complete in about 20 hours would make sense, but more and more just got packed in.
Aside from the game’s completion time, Takai revealed that FF16 will feature a leaderboard system that would allow for “endless gameplay.” Players can also expect a more challenging version of the game in “Final Fantasy Mode,” a New Game+ mode that Yoshida mentions in the interview.
Y: For this game, we really wanted the player to be able to experience the story from start to finish. If the story length was too long, then it might get tiring to play. That’s why we want FF16 to feel like a roller coaster experience where just when you think you can see the road ahead of you, you’re pulled into another direction. As a result, the game is truly packed with story, battles, etc. that if you did not skip any cutscene, it’ll take about 35 hours for you to understand the meat of the story and complete the game. Now, if you want to master and level up all abilities, gather all accessories, do all the side quests, and fight all the monster hunts, you’re probably looking at about 70~80 hours of gameplay. Not only that, but we also included an insanely difficult New Game+ mode that allows you to carry over all your stats called the “Final Fantasy Mode.” That’ll probably add even more gameplay hours.
T: We also will implement a score board for attack points, and after the 2nd round you will see a leader board. Once you try this out, you can literally have endless gameplay and be able to compete with other players around the world, myself included (laughs).
Final Fantasy 16 launches this June 22 exclusively on PS5.