Parts of Final Fantasy 15 had to be entirely rebuilt for first-person mode

Final Fantasy XV

The complexity of designing Final Fantasy XV’s first-person mode is a big part of why the PC version of the game has taken so long to arrive. The game’s director, Hajibe Tabata, says that controls, visual effects, and camera angles had to be almost entirely redesigned.

Check out our list of the best PC games.

Tabata is keen to emphasize the extent his team went to in order to optimise the game for first-person mode. “We’ve tried to keep the overall action. We haven’t just tried to convert it using the same controls for that,” he tells us. “We’ve added in all kinds of very technical tweaks and tuning to make that work in a first-person mode, and make sure all the controls are actually working in that way.”

If you’ve played FFXV on console, you’ll know that the combat is extremely complicated, and translating the rapid movement and complex visual effects into first-person has been another significant challenge for the team. Tabata says that these effects in particular had be almost entirely redone, and that they were fully detached before being added back into the game in a way that would make sense to the players.

The process is far from over, though: “There are still lots of little things that we’re having to do. Some of the visuals that look very strange in first-person mode we have to change, and the collision detection. We’re having to keep going on with those tweaks to make sure it really works well with that first-person setup.”