Square Enix
If you held a March Madness-style event to find out the Final Fantasy hero with probably the most emotional baggage, I’d think about that Final Fantasy XVI’s Clive Rosfield would not less than make his strategy to the semi-finals. The tortured hero goes by way of one hell of an ordeal within the motion RPG’s darkish intro. First, his little brother that he’s sworn to guard will get brutally murdered by Ifrit after a climactic Eikon battle. To add insult to that damage, Clive has his life spared by a rival nation in Valisthea and is compelled to serve of their navy towards his will.
Tough break, child.
Though Final Fantasy XVI options a big ensemble of characters, it’s very a lot Clive’s story advised by way of three eras of his life. That setup would current Square Enix’s Creative Business Unit III with a singular alternative to color a bigger, extra full picture of who Clive is slightly than specializing in one story inside his life. That provides Final Fantasy 16 a a lot grander story than what was teased in its demo, however how do you retain a narrative that sprawling nonetheless centered round a relatable hero?
Ahead of the sport’s latest launch, I spoke with Creative Director Kazutoyo Maehiro and Combat Director Ryota Suzuki concerning the inventive ideation that introduced Clive Rosfield to life. For the workforce, the trick was ensuring Clive was by no means pigeonholed right into a quest for revenge. Instead, his story was constructed with development in thoughts, as an alternative drawing gamers’ consideration to the place he suits into the world round him and the way he leaves an influence on these occasions.
Keeping Clive relatable
When initially sitting all the way down to create Final Fantasy 16, the workforce wished to verify to construct a hero that gamers might join with amid a larger-than-life story. The workforce would undertake a design philosophy early on the place they made positive Clive wouldn’t do or say something they believed the participant themselves wouldn’t do. From there, it was about discovering a multifaceted, grounded story arc inside a slightly sprawling epic.
Despite that includes monumental kaiju battles, Final Fantasy 16 begins off on a painfully intimate be aware. Its opening three hours play like a self-contained movie, introducing Clive as a bright-eyed teen tasked with defending his brother Joshua, the keeper of the Phoenix. It’s an intro that rapidly gained gamers over in a demo, however it doesn’t truly arrange the true scope of Clive’s arc. In reality, Kazutoyo Maehiro describes it as extra of a tutorial narrative.
“With Final Fantasy XVI being an action game for a group of fans that maybe are not used to action games, the beginning of the game is about learning to play it,” Maehiro tells Digital Trends. “So we wanted to focus on something simple for that intro and why we decided to focus on Clive’s revenge story. You learn about his past, but ultimately Final Fantasy XVI is about Clive learning who he is and learning to accept who he is.”
Square Enix
That journey is mirrored in a stunning three-act construction that goes in instructions that followers won’t expect. The revenge story is barely the main focus for the primary eight hours or so of the sport earlier than Clive makes a startling revelation about himself that leads into a wider story the place we flash ahead to Clive in his 30s.
“We start off with that revenge theme in the early part of the game,” Maehiro says. “You can split that into two parts. There’s act one where you’re learning why he wants revenge and then act two where he’s actually going out to get his revenge. In act two, he learns a little bit more about who he is thanks to the help of Cid and then that story transforms from that revenge to the true story about who he is in act three.”
At first, it feels a bit like a bait-and-switch. That revenge story provides gamers a really private perception into an advanced world run by mothercrystals and titanic Eikons. Act three, by comparability, feels a lot broader as gamers be taught the intricacies of Valisthea’s inside politics. For the workforce, that isn’t a diversion away from the story; slightly, it’s the second the place the true focus turns into clear.
“Clive is always going to be the centerpiece of the story,” Maehiro says. “When you see the rest of the world, we wanted to show how he was affecting the rest of it. We didn’t want this to be a story where all this other stuff was happening in the world and then Clive’s in that. We wanted it to be that Clive is in the world and through his actions, this is how the world is changing.”
It’s that tidbit that helped me perceive what Creative Business Unit III was going for in its advanced construction. This isn’t only a story of a personality making an attempt to outrun their previous, however slightly the story of somebody looking for their place within the current. Just as we see the tragic position Clive performs in his brother’s loss of life, we additionally get to see the optimistic change he’s in a position to deliver to Valisthea in aiding a combat towards tyranny. A revenge story turns into a redemption arc a few man determined to maneuver on from a blind bloodlust that originally outlined 20 years of his life.
Building Ifrit
To get throughout that character development, the workforce would want to do greater than merely inundate gamers with lengthy exposition dumps. The satan could be within the particulars, with every part all the way down to his animations enjoying a job. Ryota Suzuki explains how he designed the sport’s fight system with that arc in thoughts, subtly making Clive a extra expert fighter the extra comes into his personal.
“Clive is skilled with the blade but he’s also received the blessing of the Phoenix from his brother, so you have swordplay and the image of fire,” Suzuki tells Digital Trends. “Taking that and creating actions that represented both of those was the starting point. Clive’s supposed to be stylish when he’s fighting, but you need to have that representation of the Phoenix in there too. When he’s in his teens, he’s great with his sword but he’s still in his teens. He hasn’t mastered the sword yet. So we wanted to see that growth in his movement. So the animation we have for him doing one move in his teens is actually different than what we have in his 20s. It’s a little more fluid. You’re going to see the progress of Clive becoming a better swordsman in his animation.”
I had a number of affect from historical Greek mythology.
Getting Clive’s nuances proper could be essential, however it will solely be half of the workforce’s work. During Eikon fights, the hero takes on the type of one in all Final Fantasy’s most iconic characters: Ifrit. That resolution isn’t a random one; there’s a thematically related purpose that the workforce went with the hearth kaiju as an alternative of a personality like Bahamut.
“When deciding the original concept for the game, we decided that we wanted the hero to be represented by Ifrit,” Maehiro says. “In Final Fantasy 16, I had a lot of influence from ancient Greek mythology. In ancient Greek, you have philosophers who think that the source of all creation is fire, so there’s that connection. We also knew that this was a story about brothers. So with Ifrit, you also have Phoenix as a symbol of creation and fire. So that’s how we tied them together.”
Square Enix
Despite the truth that Ifrit is a towering monster, the workforce nonetheless wished to verify gamers might nonetheless really feel he was related to Clive. To accomplish that Suzuki made positive to reflect Clive’s primary moveset throughout Ifrit battles, protecting a little bit of the person contained in the monster.
“When creating Ifrit’s actions, we wanted them to mirror Clive’s actions so that all the player’s know-how playing as Clive would carry over into those battles,” Suzuki says. “When you look at Ifrit’s moves, he has that basic attack and that lunge. These things that Clive can do, Ifrit can do. But on top of that, we want to have something that feels original to Ifrit as well. So it’s a combination of these moves that feel very much like Clive mixed with these things he can’t do that feel very Ifrit.”
All of these nuances go a great distance towards making Clive a multidimensional hero who stands tall with a few of Final Fantasy’s greatest. We meet him at his lowest level, however we get to see him develop and transfer previous that trauma all through his lengthy journey and it’s one of many story’s biggest pleasures. He could also be a towering monster, however he’s one of many sequence’ most human characters but.
Final Fantasy XVI is out now on PS5.
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