After saying only a month ago that Final Fantasy XVI wouldn’t require a Day One patch, producer Naoki Yoshida has announced that the game will have a Day One patch after all when it launches later this week.
The 300MB minor update was announced during the pre-release livestream, and will fix progression issues as well as optimise performance. The team has reiterated that Final Fantasy XVI will still be playable without the patch for those who are unable to download it, committing to their promise of not putting players without reliable internet access at a disadvantage (a win for us Aussies, given the often questionable speeds and connections in regions outside of metro areas).
The fixes coming in the patch are as follows:
- Fix a control flag issue which can make progress impossible under very specific circumstances
- Fix an issue where the game could close unexpectedly under very specific circumstances
- Optimise performance in several places
- Fix some minor text errors
The fixes likely come after player feedback following Final Fantasy XVI’s demo release last week — a promised future update will also address further issues players experienced during the demo, including the ability to turn off motion blur, camera movement speed, and key bindings.
The update, according to Yoshida, will be available for owners of the physical edition of the game, while digital owners will find the update included with pre-load files or ready before release.
Earlier this year, Game Informer reported that game director Hiroshi Takai was confident that Final Fantasy XVI would not need an update on release due to the team’s faith in the final build. Takai also said that developer Creative Business Unit III was testing for bugs and performance issues daily to identify anything that would require an update to be introduced to provide players with the most optimised experience on release though.
While the Final Fantasy XVI team have apologised for the introduction of a day-one update, it’s likely to come as no surprise to players given many modern games require a major patch at launch to even be playable.
Given that this update could be considered optional (although given the bugs it claims to fix, it’s probably a good idea to download it unless you want to chance game crashes or getting stuck), it’s only a minor blip in the road to release for a game that based on demo impressions, is already shaping up into an epic, Game of Thrones inspired tale.
Will you be copping Final Fantasy XVI on June 22?
Leave a Reply