Final Fantasy: Building The Perfect Sequel (1 Feature From Each Game)

One major criticism that the Final Fantasy series has faced since transitioning from Final Fantasy X onwards has been linearity. With the removal of the low-res world maps featured in the first nine games in the series, Final Fantasies X, XII and XIII (the latter notoriously) essentially became a series of long corridors with limited opportunities for exploration and discovery.

Whilst rival RPG series (such as the Elder Scrolls) and even action games with RPG elements (such as Far Cry and Grand Theft Auto) wholeheartedly embraced the open world concept from the early noughties onwards, Square Enix resisted the change.

The commitment to one for Final Fantasy XV is part of the reason the game took so long to release, but it pays off in droves with a virtual environment to rival Skyrim and The Witcher 3’s Continent in scope and content.

Lucis is far from perfect – bar Lestallum that are a distinct lack of urban environments and the latter half of the game reverts to being a cumbersome slog despite leaks that have indicated that this wasn’t supposed to be the case and that more of the world was supposed to be explorable.

Nevertheless, it showed fans of the series that it could be done and their dreams of fully traversing a world by airship, chocobo (or car in this instance) with seamless battle integration could indeed be realised.

Hopefully it’s the standard from now.