Final Fantasy 16 will have wearable ‘assists’ to help less experienced players

videogameschronicle.com:

Final Fantasy 16 will have a unique approach to game difficulty, according to its producer Naoki Yoshida.

In an interview with Famitsu, Yoshida explained that the game will have an action-based battle system, similar to something like Kingdom Hearts, rather than a traditional turn-based battle system as seen in most previous Final Fantasy games.

However, he also acknowledged that not every Final Fantasy fan can play action games well, so the game has two modes called Action Focus Mode and Story Focus Mode, with the latter designed to be a “guarantee that even those who are not good at action games will definitely be able to enjoy it”.

Rather than simply lowering the combat difficulty, however, Story Focus Mode instead gives players a range of items that can be equipped to toggle various accessibility features to make aspects of the combat easier.

“There is no change to the story content in either mode,” Yoshida explained (translated by VGC). “Also, Story Focus Mode is not a standard Easy difficulty level.

“Firstly, FF16 has the concept of accessories for equipment. In Story Focus Mode, AI-implemented accessories are provided from the start, and Clive’s basic controls can be changed by attaching and removing them.

“For example, if an enemy attack is about to hit, Clive will make a perfect move to avoid it in a super-cool way.”

Yoshida then explained that because this may be seen as too easy for some players, the accessories are designed to be removed piece by piece so players can customise which assists they want.

“I think there are some people who think that if [the game] moves on its own, it’s not an action game,” he said. “For those people, there are some items where you can really feel the sensation of controlling the game