Final Fantasy XV’s massive cities, difficulty modes, and aerial battles detailed

In a recent Q& A on the official FFXV forums, Final Fantasy XV developers Square Enix addressed a few questions regarding some of the new additions to their new game. The most interesting of which focused on the enormity of the cities, the ability to change the difficulty modes, and the addition of aerial battles with the use of warp points.

Massive, explorable cities

Lead Planner Ishikawa Tomonori provided some insight on the size of some of the cities, paying particular attention to Altissia (pictured below) and some of their attractions.

Q: How much of the big cities like Altissia/Insomnia will we be able to explore?

A: I can tell everyone a little about Altissia at this time.

Altissia has many and varied locations, such as multiple cafes, ship-bourne marketplaces and parks, etc. The city is of a considerable scale, to the extent that even the developers sometimes get lost there!

The player is free to take a leisurely walk around the complex maze of streets, or ride the gondola to see the sights and there is also added enjoyment to be had looking for restaurants to visit!
You are bound to encounter some unique characters when exploring the city streets.

So we have created lots of different things to enjoy in Altissia and hope everyone is looking forward to visiting!

Difficulty modes

In regards to the new addition of various difficulty modes, Lead Game Designer Takizawa Masashi talked about the ability to choose between a faster, more technical style of gameplay and one that favours a slower, more relaxed pace.

Q: How will the difficulty modes compare in terms of XP gain, enemy stats, damage, and AI?

A: The equivalent to difficulty level settings in FFXV is a system where you can switch between different battle modes. By having this ability to switch modes, we want to make it so that both players who like action-oriented, technical gameplay and also those who want to fight at a slower, more relaxed pace can all enjoy the combat in their own style. This switching system is a key part of the gameplay that we decided to introduce based on the feedback we received from the Episode Duscae demo. We will go into more detail about the system closer to the game’s launch so stay tuned for more information.

Aerial Battles

One of the most interesting new features in Final Fantasy XV is the ability to take the fight to the sky in exciting aerial battles, which sounds very similar to the Bahamut fight in the Final Fantasy: Advent Children movie. 

Q: Will large buildings have multiple warp points to allow Noctis to scale and explore rooftops?

A: Why of course they will! The warp ability that lets you teleport instantly to high up locations is a vital part of FFXV’s battle system. The ability to use multiple warp points in a strategic manner is especially prevalent in the game’s large scale battles over urban terrain. It is not just the buildings though, and we have also created exciting aerial battles with flying foes and gigantic boss enemies, so watch out for those.

Final Fantasy XV sounds like it could be the most ambitious entry in the series to date. Based on some of the features that we’ve heard about so far, Square Enix intends to push the current generation of consoles to their limit in order to bring us the most memorable Final Fantasy game ever.