Final Fantasy 16 is just long enough for the busy gamer, Yoshida says
Final Fantasy 16 is designed for the busy gamer, producer Naoki Yoshida said in a recent Famitsu interview (translated by Twitter user aitaikimochi). The interviewer asked how long it takes to beat Final Fantasy 16, and Yoshida said it’ll take roughly 35 hours to finish the main story.
While the team strayed from their original goal of making the RPG beatable within 24 hours, Yoshida said they still wanted to ensure everyone had time to experience the full story.
“When the game development was just starting out, I had the idea in mind that gamers these days are really busy with other things, so I wanted them to be able to at least aim to complete the story,” Yoshida said. “I thought making the game something you can complete in about 20 hours would make sense, but more and more just got packed in.”
That time estimate includes the 11 hours of cutscenes Yoshida previously said the game contains, and the team believes the game’s comparative brevity – comparative in a genre where completion times soar into the 70-hour range and beyond – suits the story they want to tell too.
“We want FF16 to feel like a roller coaster experience where just when you think you can see the road ahead of you, you’re pulled into another direction,” Yoshida said.
If you were hoping for a meatier game, you’re still in luck. Yoshida said if you take on all the side quests, some of which include their own special cinematics, and monster hunts, the completion time will double to around 70-80 hours. There’s also a leaderboard feature where players can compete to obtain high scores while replaying stages and dungeons in the game’s arcade mode.
Final Fantasy 16 releases for PS5 on June 22, 2023. A PC port may happen, but reportedly not for a while after the original release.
