Within the opening minutes of Final Fantasy 7 Revelation’s reveal trailer, developer Sq. Enix reintroduces us to the Highwind. Followers of the unique PlayStation recreation will bear in mind its multi-propeller majesty with fondness; this was the car that unlocked full go-anywhere freedom throughout Final Fantasy 7’s world map. Unrestricted by rivers, oceans, or mountain ranges, you can soar at excessive velocity across the globe. And, offered there was a secure house to land, you can discover any location that caught your eye.
That touchdown caveat doesn’t apply to Revelation’s Highwind. It doesn’t want to the touch the bottom, as a result of it’s you who shall be doing the descent this time. Nearly actually impressed by the unique’s late-game airborne insertion into Midgar, now you can dive proper off the Highwind’s decrease deck and parachute right down to the bottom. Akin to Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (and, if we’re trustworthy, Fortnite) Sq. guarantees that the dive is totally seamless, taking you from the clouds right down to the totally detailed terrain with out skipping a beat.
This has little doubt been a problem to design, not least as a result of it means the builders could have needed to fully re-think how we purchase Knights of Spherical (it may possibly’t be as simple as simply dropping onto Spherical Island, afterall – that is probably the most highly effective summon within the recreation!) However I’m happy director Naoki Hamaguchi and his group have made it work, as a result of a completely controllable airship that may navigate by means of a densely detailed, full-scale open world is one thing I’ve been ready for Final Fantasy to do since 2001.
As any long-term fan of the sequence will know, the construction of Final Fantasy has considerably modified over the previous quarter-century. The primary 9 video games, spanning from the pixel artwork of the NES by means of to the 3D landscapes of the PlayStation period, all featured an overworld; a giant map you discover to find new areas. These maps weren’t true-scale in measurement and had been considerably much less detailed than the cities and dungeons you accessed from them, however they nonetheless offered the stage for a sprawling, epic journey. In some ways, these overworlds had been one of many seeds from which at this time’s open world video games grew.
When the PlayStation 2 arrived on the daybreak of the millennium, it introduced with it an entire new era of graphical constancy. Not was Final Fantasy restricted to pre-rendered backgrounds – the complete recreation may very well be made up of deeply detailed 3D environments with beautiful textures. Progress comes at a value, although. Crafting an overworld that might match the visible developments of the principle areas would have been a growth nightmare; massively costly, technically demanding, and extremely punishing when it got here to disc house. And so when Final Fantasy 10 arrived in 2001, it did so with out the sequence’ conventional overworld. The whole recreation befell inside its stage environments – a linear chain of cities, seashores, temples, and the again of an enormous evil whale.
Nowhere is that this shift extra evident than on the helm of the Fahrenheit, Final Fantasy 10’s airship. In prior video games, unlocking the airship was a second of unparalleled pleasure. Every entry’s cloud-surfer grants you full freedom, allowing you to thunder throughout the overworld at a tempo you can solely dream of within the recreation’s opening act. However in Final Fantasy 10, the Fahrenheit is nothing greater than a flowery quick journey menu. A listing of locations dressed for the Met Gala. A diamond-encrusted spreadsheet of co-ordinates.
I can’t start to elucidate how deflated 12 year-old me was once I lastly took command of the Fahrenheit. I had fixated over the PS1 period’s airships, notably the militarised house Ferrari that was Final Fantasy 8’s Ragnarok. For me, getting the airship had grow to be the definitive Final Fantasy second, a gaming expertise not like some other. And in Final Fantasy 10 – the primary recreation I had obsessively adopted the event of throughout a number of problems with Official PlayStation Journal, dreaming of all of the issues a next-gen FF may very well be – this second had been diminished to a UI factor that might teleport me between save factors. It could be a looker, with its gilded halo and pearlescant hue, however the Fahrenheit has been a relentless reminder of how nice progress calls for nice sacrifice.
The mainline sequence has by no means revisited the concept of the overworld, and thus the airship dream light. Whereas areas turned extra expansive, akin to Final Fantasy 12’s sprawling deserts and 13’s late-game Gran Pulse area, these video games adopted FF10’s lead. Stage environments fed straight into one another, forgoing the necessity for a world map. The video games turned extra linear, a lot to Final Fantasy 13’s detriment specifically.
However as gaming expertise superior, the worlds of Final Fantasy did lastly start to resemble the overworlds of its previous. The ability of the PlayStation 4 unlocked Final Fantasy 15’s Eos, an open world of rolling verdant hills that seemingly stretched on with out finish. However protagonist Noctis navigated by means of it in a model new means: by way of automotive, alongside pre-determined roads. In case you needed to trek off the overwhelmed path, you’d have to hoof it on-foot or hop on a Chocobo (at the very least till a free replace added an off-road model of the Regalia automotive, six months later.) Noctics’ wheels may very well be upgraded to fly, however this was a post-game bonus, somewhat than a transformative second in the principle story.
However even the flying Regalia Sort-F was higher than Final Fantasy 16’s bait-and-switch. Constructed for the PS5, the world of Valisthea could have technically been a sequence of interconnected zones somewhat than FF15’s extra real try at an open world, however its scope was lastly approaching the dimensions depicted by these old style overworlds – a sequence of kingdoms with fields, forests, deserts, cities, and hideaways. And when engineer Mid Telamon duties you with aiding her rebuild an airship within the story’s remaining act, it actually does appear that Final Fantasy is about to revisit its glory days of airborne freedom. Alas, the search goes completely nowhere close to that route. If something, your choices in FF16 are extra restricted than these of its predecessor – all you’ve got listed here are your individual legs or these of a Chocobo.
That would by no means be the case for Final Fantasy 7’s remake trilogy, although. The overworld is just too vital part of the material of its marketing campaign. And so whereas the linear, Midgar-set first act granted Sq. Enix some further time to work it out, Hamaguchi and his group in the end needed to discover a resolution to the Highwind drawback within the trilogy’s remaining chapter.
The groundwork was laid within the second recreation, 2024’s Rebirth, which pushed Final Fantasy the furthest it is ever been into the trendy day understanding of an open world recreation. Whereas technically made up of hubs bridged by linear environments, every hub has the traditional hallmarks of a post-Murderer’s Creed open world; towers that reveal the various icons dotted throughout the map, a mess of various exercise sorts, and an extended checklist of facet quests and bounties to finish within the pursuit of 100%-ing every space.
Revelation appears to be like set to take the following step: turning that construction of hubs into a real open world. Fairly the way it will do that stays to be seen, as presumably it must unify the present areas we explored by means of Rebirth – the likes of Junon, Corel, and Cosmo Canyon – with the various new areas its story will take us to, akin to Wutai and the Mideel Archipelago. Any gaps between the present hubs will want patching up, after which there’s the query of Midgar itself. Sq. must discover a place for the Mako-powered metropolis in all of this. However there’s no query that, when all introduced collectively, it can create Final Fantasy’s “most expansive open world but,” because the trailer proclaims.
And excessive above that world would be the Highwind – little doubt crusing by means of the skies to an up to date model of Nobuo Uematsu’s immortal theme. And down under shall be not an overworld, however a real open world. And for the primary time in 1 / 4 century, we’ll lastly be capable to fly a Final Fantasy airship wherever we wish.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s Government Editor of Options.