Today Square Enix hosted a panel with the development team of Final Fantasy XV at the Final Fantasy 30th Anniversary Exhibition currently open at the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi, Tokyo.
The panel was reported on Twitter by user つばさ, and the information was relayed on Reddit by user chuansleisheng. It came with very interesting information about the upcoming Royal Edition and the development of the game and its DLC expansions.
Developers also teased that the Royal Edition will include additions to the story and that a new update coming to the main game in March, even if no information was provided on its actual content.
You can read the full summary below. Keep in mind that it includes spoilers for those who have not played the game, so if you want to go in blind when the Royal Edition and Windows Edition launch next month, you should probably refrain from reading further.
- Because Ignis’s characterization was more difficult to get across compared to Prompto and Gladio’s, his screen time in Chapter 1 was increased.
- Ignis’s tours were more difficult to come up with than Prompto and Gladio’s, so they used “glasses” as a starting point in the brainstorming stage.
- The car-pushing event at the beginning of Chapter 1 was initially going to be 15 minutes long.
- To increase the feelings of excitement and anticipation that a journey entails, the Rock of Ravatogh was made to be visible while the player pushes the car in Chapter 1.
- In Chapter 3, it was initially assumed that there would be more people going to Iris than to the Chocobos, but it turned out to be the other way around.
- There will be voice lines exclusive to the quest “The Sword in the Waterfall” (t/n: also in Chapter 3), so please give it a go!
- The Royal Edition will supplement the main story; please enjoy the various additions!
- The team couldn’t go into detail, but there will be another update in March.
- Episode Duscae was originally going to be “Episode Titan,” but it was later changed to be a demo centered around an open-world experience.
- You can go to the Insomnia from the Royal Edition in Chapter 14.
- A scene that was cut from the main game in which Gladio flirts with Sania was added to the FFXV Pocket Edition.
- The painting demo showed a Yoshitaka Amano painting of Luna mid-battle in the Royal Edition. It depicted Noctis fighting alongside her as well as Bahamut, who did not appear much in the main game.
- It was originally planned for players to be able to craft items in the trunk of the Regalia. For example, if you put meat into it, it would become jerky. Though this was not implemented, it evolved into plans for an event in which Cindy puts luggage into the trunk. Ultimately, the trunk was cut from the game.
- Episode Ignis was going to be like a strategy-based RPG (t/n: think Dragon Age style), but this made battles rather boring, so it became what it is now.
- Battle commands in Comrades were discussed. The team also shared problems and funny anecdotes that came up when they were developing the commands.
- Noctis was originally going to have a bachelor party in Galdin Quay, but because of Hajime Tabata, it was deemed that it would be hard to actually relax under the circumstances and was cut. (t/n: assuming そらはない is 空がない, which means something like “restless atmosphere”)
- The multiple endings of Episode Ignis troubling at the beginning. There was also debate over what would happen upon putting on the ring. The team started developing from the idea that loss of vision was not an just an aesthetic choice. As for the multiple endings, because the ending of the main game was already good, the alternate ending carries a sense of denial.
The game will be available on PC on March 6th, alongside the Royal Edition for PS4 andXbox One. If you want to see more, you can check out a trailer for each, and a batch of 4K screenshots, and some rather insane images taken thanks to Nvidia Ansel in the recently-released benchmark of the Windows Edition. In case you can’t run the benchmark yourself, you can also enjoy a video.