Square Enix released a new pair of Final Fantasy XV videos today showcasing the Epsiode Duscae demo’s cave dungeon and wildlife.
The dungeon clip takes viewers through a dark cave where Noctis and company battle a number of goblins. The wildlife video, properly dubbed “World of Wonder,” provides a National Geographic-like look at the chocobos, monsters, and other creatures of Final Fantasy XV. (And it’s really quite nice.)
Speaking during a London-based Active Time Report today, Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata shared more details about the game.
Clarifying the game’s map size, Tabata said that the Duscae region in the demo is only a single part of the entire Duscae region. The region in full is much bigger, and has some large urban areas and towns, as well as old ruins and similar areas. The full game’s map is over 10 times the size of the entire Duscae region.
There won’t be any towns in the demo, unfortunately, but there will be a lot of towns in the main game, Tabata said. The demo will have a number of interesting outposts and little facilities, however. And while you’ll be exploring a lot of the field, there will also be fun and interesting human interactions. There are some comical encounters, too. Tabata says to look out for a certain couple.
As you’ll see in the wildlife video, chocobos will be in the demo, but you won’t be able to ride them. In the full game, you’ll be able to use them for transportation around the field.
Tabata also revealed that the demo’s maximum possible character level is 99, and the slowdown effect when weapons strike enemies has recently been tweaked.
Additionally, speaking to IGN, Tabata discussed the game’s recently publicly shared ‘60 percent complete‘ number.
“It’s about 60 percent now. People may look at that and say ‘well, you’ve only done five more percent [since the Tokyo Game Show]!’ but it’s actually a lot more complicated than that.
“In some ways I’m being very conservative in my estimates there and not wanting to put out too big a number. Developing big games on a large scale like this… it’s not very even in terms of each area of the game being created, so you have uneven development processes where some things are nearly done, and others are still at prototype stage.
“What we’ve tried to do for the demo is we took what we had ready by last autumn and had some teams spend some time to make sure it’s optimized to show to the public now. The order in which you develop something obviously isn’t going to see you complete something and then move onto the next thing, so some things in the middle of development had to be shoved forward to be ready for the public and that’s what we’ve done with the demo.
“But because of the way development works, now we’ve seen a solid milestone, and using that it means the end is in sight in some ways. After that’s released and we continue on with development there may be times where we move on with massive leaps and bounds, so the overall number shoots up by 10 percent at a time. I think we’re looking at a much faster development in the near future.”
Watch the new footage below.
Active Time Report
Table of Contents
- 1:04:16 – Final Fantasy Type-0 HD gameplay
- 1:37:18 – Final Fantasy XV (Xbox One version) gameplay
- 1:41:21 – Final Fantasy XV dungeon trailer
- 2:04:18 – Final Fantasy XV “World of Wonder” wildlife trailer