From the early days of Final Fantasy games with overworlds to the modern era of the franchise that has oscillated between open world, semi-open world, and more structured settings, one thing that has remained constant is having plenty of methods of traversal at your disposal throughout the experience. With Final Fantasy 16, however, things will be much more limited on that front.
As revealed by director Hiroshi Takai in a recent interview with Game Informer, Final Fantasy 16 won’t feature any boats or airships as means of getting around the world, which might disappoint some franchise purists. Instead, fast travel will serve as your primary method of getting from place to place, while actual traversal mechanics will be walking and riding around on Chocobos.
“To tell you the truth, it’s pretty much just Chocobos,” Takai said. “In past Final Fantasy games, you’d have canoes or boats or cars to travel in. But in Final Fantasy 16, because our game is based on that main world map and traveling from that world map and doing fast travel from that, we found that there wasn’t really a need for any kind of expanded type of traversal systems. So yeah, currently, we only have walking and the Chocobos.”
If you were hoping that something might get added into the game following its release, that, too, is seeming unlikely for now, with Square Enix having confirmed that there are currently no plans for post-launch DLC.
Recently, new details were also revealed on Final Fantasy 16’s elaborate New Game Plus mode and its many options. Read more on that through here.
Final Fantasy 16 is due out on June 22 for PS5.