Last time we chatted with Final Fantasy XV's director, Hajime Tabata (at the Uncovered event last spring), the man from Square Enix explained how the structure for the game wasn't exactly like an open world, an element that was later underlined by the dev team.
Building on this, when we met again at this year's E3, we asked Tabata-san how they approached designing a world structure that involves huge but ultimately sectioned off areas. And it turns out, the world came first, then central mechanics, then a storyline to tie it all together. Here's his response in full:
"First thing we did to create the world was to make sure we had the world as a base, before we added anything else, we made that first. We created a wide world with all sorts of different scenarios and different places in it, and made a real living world with all sorts of creatures there and the full day/night cycle which changes with time. So we first got back down to solid base to carry on the development.
"So after we created the world as a base the next thing we did was creating the action core game systems themselves, so you can seamlessly travel through this open world to get there, go into combat as well as exploration seamlessly. The idea of travelling together with your comrade characters and they move together with you. And we wrote the storyline that obviously that you're adventuring through that world. And that's how we went about creating it."
Watch the complete interview for more on activities, Chocobos, and Xbox/PSVR development:
