Final Fantasy XV has been all over the video game feed. First, the game released. Then a horde of updates content came out for both season pass and regular customers. After that, a mobile game was released and another has been announced. The game has taken a life of its own. But unlike Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XIII, XV will most likely not be getting a sequel. Instead, the team is focusing on quality expansions.
During Gamescom, Director Hajime Tabata talked to Polygon about the continuation of the franchise.
“If you do that full sequel model of expanding on an IP or a series, it’s good in certain ways,” said Tabata. “The negative of that is there’s a very large open period where you’re not releasing anything. In that period, you get people to move away, and their attachment to the franchise dissipates a little bit.”
Keeping the continued story as smaller story-based installments instead of a large, full-priced release makes production times shorter, keeping releases more frequent and more importantly, keeping Final Fantasy XV in people's minds. The third major expansion, "Episode Ignis" is due to release in December.
Another upcoming expansion called "Comrades" adds a multiplayer mode. Tabata stated that the premium online component is a key example of why it makes more sense to keep things based on the Final Fantasy XV experience. They seem to be taking a Grand Theft Auto V/GTA Online approach, which has proven to be very successful.
Without including spoilers, he talks about the aftermath of the original story.
"What we’re trying to do with that is to depict that missing 10 years of history right at the end of the story,” Tabata said, referring to a late chapter in the main game. Players create their own member of the Kingsglaive, the army that protected and fought for the kingdom of Eos, during the Comrades campaign.
“If we had tried to do that as a traditional, full-scale sequel, that would have been very difficult,” the director said, “but it works really well in [keeping] that continued relationship with fans.”
Personally, we can't wait to see what more comes out of Final Fantasy XV, including the PC release that was finally announced.
