Final Fantasy 16's DLC Director on The Rising Tide, 16's Success, and What Makes a Great Expansion | Push Square
Final Fantasy 16 was one of our favourite games of 2023, and so we wanted to find out more about The Rising Tide — the title's second and final expansion — ahead of its release on the 18th April. Fortunately, we were lucky enough to land an interview with Takeo Kujiraoka — the veteran Square Enix dev who's actually the director of Final Fantasy 16's DLC, having previously been a lead combat designer for the base game.
We asked Kujiraoka-san about Final Fantasy 16's success, his team's approach to crafting expansions, and what, in his opinion, makes a memorable DLC adventure.
Push Square: To start with, what are your general thoughts on Final Fantasy 16, now that the game is approaching its first anniversary?
Takeo Kujiraoka, DLC Director: Final Fantasy 16 is unusual among recent mainline Final Fantasy games in that it has a grittier story set in a world that draws inspiration from medieval Europe, not to mention the fact that it’s the first fully-fledged action-RPG of the series. Both aspects were challenges that we undertook with the game.
In recent years, players of the Final Fantasy series have tended to skew towards a higher age range. However, this time there are survey results showing that more people in their teens and 20s played Final Fantasy 16. I think this shows that, to a certain extent, we’ve achieved one of our initial goals – to have players of all ages play the latest Final Fantasy game.
This doesn’t mean that all future Final Fantasy games will take a similar direction to Final Fantasy 16, but I do think it means that we’ve been able to bring new players on board and open new possibilities for the development teams that will work on future instalments in the series.
How did the development team come up with ideas for Final Fantasy 16's DLC? The base game already tells a complete story, so was it difficult to conceptualise additional adventures?
Our producer, Naoki Yoshida, was clear from early on in development that we should make a title that
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