Final Fantasy XVI – interview with producer Naoki Yoshida, director Hiroshi Takai, and combat lead Ryota Suzuki

gematsu.com:

Earlier this month, Gematsu sat down with Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida, director Hiroshi Takai, combat lead Ryota Suzuki, and localization director Michael-Christopher Koji Fox as part of a roundtable interview to discuss the next mainline Final Fantasy title during its global media tour.

Get the full interview below, with supporting questions by Scott Clay of RPG Fan and Matthew Byrd of Den of Geek.

RPG Fan (Scott Clay): The choice for Ifrit for Clive—was that chosen from the start? Did you build the game around that, or was it the story and world building that led you to choose Ifrit as Clive? Or Clive as Ifrit?

Naoki Yoshida, Producer: “We’re not going to say that Clive equals Ifrit yet, we’re going to keep that a little bit in a gray area, but when designing the game, that idea that Ifrit was going to be a main core component of the game was something that we decided on very, very early on.

“The reason we decided to go with Ifrit as the core component of our game, rather than any of the other summons that appeared in the Final Fantasy series, is because Ifrit is usually one of the first summons that you encounter. He appears first, you defeat him first, you get him first—and then he’s the first summon you stop using because he’s the weakest and you start using the more powerful ones.

“But from a design perspective, the design for Ifrit is really, really cool. Also the element is fire, which is very easy to understand. And if you’ve played Final Fantasy, even if you didn’t make it to the end of the game, most players are all going to know Ifrit. And so it’s one of the most recognizable summons in the series.”

Den of Geek (Matthew Byrd): Final Fantasy XVI is obviously different in a lot of ways from other