Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida—known among the Final Fantasy 14 fan base as Yoshi-P—believes that the next mainline game in the franchise should be made by someone new who is equipped to take on “challenges that suit today’s world”.
Speaking to Sony’s head of independent developer initiative Shuhei Yoshida on the Game Maker’s Notebook podcast, the Final Fantasy 14 and 16 producer responded to a joking question about whether he would direct Final Fantasy 17.
“I’ve had the chance to work on two of these, 14 and 16, so maybe it’s time for someone new, instead of having the same old guys handle the next one,” said Yoshi-P (trascription via Eurogamer). “I think in some ways it would be good to look to the future and bring in a younger generation, with more youthful sensibilities, to make a new FF with challenges that suit today’s world.”
He went on to talk about the nature of the Final Fantasy franchise, and how it tends to reinvent not just itself, but also challenges the genre and industry as a whole with its new approaches in every iteration.
“Final Fantasy is about challenging what’s been done before,” said Yoshi-P. “And while I’m certainly not looking to pick a fight with the older games, we all make Final Fantasy games thinking ‘mine will be the most fun!'”
Yoshi-P then talked about how he believes that Square Enix should continue down the path of featuring action-oriented gameplay in the next Final Fantasy title to continue challenging itself.
“I’d like to see Square Enix use this gained experience [from 16] to continue challenging ourselves in the action genre, to make what we haven’t made yet, with even greater storytelling, emotion, and impact,” he said.
Yoshi-P also spoke about his own experiences in working on Final Fantasy 14 and 16, noting how the success of the MMORPG led to him being asked to head up development on 16.
“We were taking on these huge expectations because it was part of a series, and on top of that, some aspects of the previous game were poorly received, so with this new one, we felt we absolutely had to make a comeback of sorts, too,” he said.
Final Fantasy 14 has seen tremendous success under the stewardship of Naoki Yoshida, from its humbler beginnings in the form of its original, maligned release, to more recently having crossed over 30 million players. Yoshi-P’s studio, Creative Business Unit 3, is currently working on the DLC for Final Fantasy 16, as well as the next major expansion for Final Fantasy 14, Dawntrail.
