Yes, you read that correctly, Final Fantasy XVI will be using the PS5’s DualSense haptic features and adaptive triggers to immerse yourself fully into the game. That also means allowing you to feel things like ‘the movements of air’.
Final Fantasy XVI director Hiroshi Takai was interviewed on the PlayStation Blog where he confirmed that the upcoming RPG will take full advantage of the controller and PS5’s power.
Considering Final Fantasy XVI is ‘the first fully-fledged action RPG in the series’, it’s a pretty big deal to switch up the command system entirely.
When asked what was behind the reasoning for the change, Takai said that when it came time to design Final Fantasy XVI, they wanted to see what would happen if they took the game in a new direction and made it into a full-action RPG.
“We fine-tuned the gameplay so that when you take the DualSense controller in your hand, your every input produces a reaction that you can really feel,” Takai said. “One of the main features of the battle system is the wide range of Eikonic abilities that Clive can unleash, and this results in a great deal of freedom in how players can approach battle. There are also the Eikon-on-Eikon battles, where the player controls the series’ famous summons directly, to add to the action. It’s a non-stop, white-knuckle ride from start to finish.”
This now adds a lot of context to devs saying that only PS5 can handle the combat in Final Fantasy XVI.
To want to change things up entirely based on the DualSense controller and the PS5 indicates that both must be pretty powerful. When asked about his first impressions of the power and technology of the PS5, Takai said both the size of the memory and the speed of the SSD is what struck him the most.
“I’ve worked with a lot of different hardware over the years, and many have failed to strike the right balance between the capabilities of the hardware and the size of the memory. However, the PS5 is different—it comes with enough memory installed to take full advantage of the hardware. As for the SSD, as we were building the game, I was simply blown away by how fast it was.”
If that’s not the most glowing report for a video game console, I don’t know what is.
Now onto this feeling of the winds of Final Fantasy XVI thing. Takai was asked to explain further how Final Fantasy XVI harnesses the total capabilities of the PS5 DualSense controller’s adaptive triggers and haptic feedback, especially in battles and exploration. His response gave us so much and yet so little to work with.
“There are certain sections where the player will have to open heavy doors or lift up portcullises, and we use the adaptive triggers there to put across that feeling of effort and resistance,” Takai said.
I’ve always wanted to know what it would feel like to open a heavy door or lift up portcullises. Now, thanks to the DualSense controller, I can. That’s not all though because the adaptive triggers will also be used when riding Chocobos, which seems like a lot of fun.
“The haptic feedback can produce extremely subtle vibrations, which we use to create a heightened feeling of presence in cutscenes. We converted the sound effects used in each scene into haptic data, which let us portray details that we’ve never been able to before, like the movements of the air,” Takai explained.
I hope this means that while I’m riding a Chocobo, I can actually feel my hair blowing in the wind. I know a controller can’t do that but I can dream.
As a fun little question, Takai was asked what other PS5 games have impressed him from a developer’s point of view. Obviously, he said that he thought God of War: Ragnarok is ‘a fantastic game’. “It’s a seamless experience from beginning to end, and paints a perfect picture of the relationship between a father and his son,” Takai explained.
Will we feel the actual wind in Final Fantasy XVI? Will something be blowing on me? Who knows, I guess we will find out.
If you really want to feel the winds of a game, try playing The Sims on PC. Those computer fans will be working overtime so much that you’ll feel like you’re in an extreme wind event.
Final Fantasy XVI is set to be released for PlayStation 5 on June 22, 2023.
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