A venerable mainstay of the decades-old JRPG game series, Final Fantasy 16 summons like Shiva and Ramuh will be directly controllable and you’ll get to fight against other ‘Eikons’ with them. However, producer Naoki Yoshida confirms that, despite summons being controllable, your Final Fantasy 16 companions won’t be.
While the Final Fantasy 16 release date isn’t for at least a year – and that’s not counting the possible further wait for a PC version – details are finally beginning to coalesce. In a new interview with IGN, producer Naoki Yoshida confirms what players will be able to control during gameplay and combat – including some noise that might disappoint fans of Final Fantasy’s classic party system.
First off, the good news is that summons will play a large role in Final Fantasy 16’s combat – and can be controlled in real-time, occasionally. Yoshida states that these “Eikon-driven, action-oriented battles are one of the main selling points” of the RPG game. “Some will face Clive as fierce enemies, some will be friends and come to Clive’s aid,” Yoshida explains, “There will also be times where the player will control an Eikon in real-time, battling other Eikons. The battle type and scale are somewhat fluid, and change seamlessly in real-time depending on the battle… keeping things at maximum excitement while maintaining immersion.”
Yoshida confirms that player character Clive will indeed be accompanied by “one or more companions” at most times, like in pretty much every Final Fantasy game. While they will fight alongside you in battles, however, they cannot be directly controlled by the player. “The party members will be AI-driven so as to allow players to focus solely on controlling Clive,” Yoshida confirms.
Which is a shame, but admittedly not too different from the combat in Final Fantasy 15. How will this affect Final Fantasy 16’s ranking among the best Final Fantasy games on PC? We’ll have to wait and see.