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In an April 15th, 2024 interview with the director of the game's DLC "The Rising Tide" Takeo Kujiraoka published on Push Square's website, he revealed the development team believed that they achieved one of their initial goals to successfully attract players of all ages to play Final Fantasy XVI and become fans of the series. He claimed that Final Fantasy games in recent years had "tended to skew towards a higher age range", and they believed they were able to break that trend to a certain extent as evidenced by "survey results" showing that more people in their teens and twenties played the game. Kujiraoka clarified that this did not mean all future Final Fantasy titles would follow in the direction of this game, but that with a younger fanbase on-board it would allow future development teams to explore new possibilities when working on subsequent installments.
subdirectory_arrow_right Final Fantasy XIV Online (Game), Final Fantasy XIV Online (Game)
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According to Final Fantasy XVI's creative director/scenario writer Kazutoyo Maehiro and the game's producer Naoki Yoshida in a 2023 IGN article, in the Japanese version of the game, Chocobos are referred to as "uma" (馬), which is the Japanese word for "horse". Initially, neither Maehiro or director Hiroshi Takai considered using Chocobos in the game at all, because according to Maehiro, "when thinking about the story, the worldview, and a feeling of reality, a horse just looked better as a silhouette when straddled." Yoshida elaborated that horses fit better when building a world based on European medieval gothic fantasy:

"In reality, horses are animals that can build strong partnerships with humans. We share a long history with them. Weapons involving horses also appear more realistic. Especially with the improvement in graphics being so remarkable, there is a chance that it becomes difficult to lie or deceive viewers, in a good way, and as a result, may impair the sense of immersion. Chocobos are based on birds, which first of all means they don’t stand on four legs, and that makes them more difficult to mount. When compared with a horse it might not feel as stable to ride a Chocobo, and their wings aren’t big and strong enough to take you to the sky, either."

Despite this explanation, Yoshida still instructed the development team to include Chocobos in the game in an effort to stay faithful to the series' long-standing elements. The Japanese version also still refers to them as Chocobos and horses interchangeably. Maehiro stated that he tried to tie the Chocobos into the history of Valisthea through partnerships with its people, in an effort to create something culturally familiar. He justified this by stating that in Japanese, they "sometimes refer to a car as 'legs', or not having a car as 'having no legs'; and in the same way, the people of Valisthea refer to Chocobos as 'horses'." He subsequently implied that actual horses may exist in other regions in the game's world, but that in Valisthea, Chocobos function as their regional equivalent to actual horses. Localization director Michael-Christopher Koji Fox also stated that he decided not to refer to Chocobos as horses in the game's English translation:

"I remember seeing it in the script and remarking, 'You're saying 'horse' here. You're sure that's OK?' But Maehiro said, 'Yes, this is what we wanted to do.' In English, we never really wanted to use the word horse, because Chocobos and horses are entirely different. It just sounded weird to us in that sense. But we do use words like 'steed'; and I think 'courser' [a medieval word for a warhorse,] as well."

The terminology in the decision to refer to Chocobos as horses resulted in confused or joking reactions from Japanese players online, since this is not the first time Chocobos were referred to as horses in the series. In the original 2010 release of Final Fantasy XIV Online, the kanji characters for horse and bird (鳥 , "tori") were used together as "horsebird" (馬鳥) in the Japanese script in place of the standard katakana for Chocobo (チョコボ). At release, several other katakana terms were replaced with kanji symbols, with some terms existing in-game as written in Chinese rather than Japanese. Square Enix offered several conflicting explanations for the changes, including the need to "build atmosphere", and to consolidate terminology with the then-upcoming Chinese-language release, but these did not help as the change caused an uproar among Japanese players, resulting in Chocobo being reincorporated into the Japanese version's script in a future update. The controversy would later be referenced in the 2013 reboot of Final Fantasy XIV Online through a piece of dialogue spoken by Golden Uma Doshin, a Quest NPC found in Central Shroud as part of the limited time quest "Turn Around, Beautiful":

"Chocobo... chocobo... chocobo... Nothing but horsebirds in this stable. A sight to disturb Eastern eyes, to be sure."
person ProtoSnake calendar_month January 29, 2024
IGN: Chocobos are Called 'Horses' in the Japanese Version of Final Fantasy XVI:
https://www.ign.com/articles/chocobos-are-called-horses-in-final-fantasy-xvi-japanese-version

Censored Gaming: In The Japanese Version Of Final Fantasy XVI, Chocobos Are Called "Horses":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AT-QpAwkqQ

Destructoid: Final Fantasy XIV text issue turns Chocobos to Horsebirds:
https://www.destructoid.com/final-fantasy-xiv-text-issue-turns-chocobos-to-horsebirds/

Final Fantasy XIV Online wiki articles:
https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Golden_Uma_Doshin
https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/wiki/Turn_Around,_Beautiful
subdirectory_arrow_right Kingdom Hearts III (Game), Donald Duck (Franchise), Final Fantasy (Franchise)
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In the climax of Kingdom Hearts III, Spoiler:Donald Duck uses Zettaflare, a previously unseen spell within either Kingdom Hearts or Final Fantasy, powerful enough to destroy a solar system. This made Spoiler:the irritable cartoon waterfowl the most powerful mage in the Final Fantasy franchise at the time, to the humor and ire of various players.

In Final Fantasy XVI, Spoiler:Bahamut, who after Spoiler:Donald's use of Zettaflare became the former most powerful mage in the Final Fantasy series, would use Zettaflare during its battle in the game, regaining its former title.
person Rocko & Heffer calendar_month October 28, 2023
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In an interview with the game's main director Hiroshi Takai published on the PlayStation.Blog on March 30, 2023, he was asked what his first impressions of the power and technology of the PlayStation 5 were. He responded:

"The two main things that struck me were the size of the memory and the speed of the SSD. 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."

The interviewer commented that the Final Fantasy series is known for the quality of its graphics, and that since the game was made as a PS5 game first and foremost, Takai was asked how he took advantage of the power of the hardware when it came to the graphics and the gameplay. He responded:

"Naturally, we wanted the graphics to be the best that they could be, so we put a lot of focus on the fine details of the character and environmental models, as well as the quality of the lighting and the shadows, to really make them shine. It’s really resource-intensive just to render these models on screen, and the lighting and shadow effects are then layered on top of that. We’re only able to do this thanks to the size of the PS5’s memory. Clive, the protagonist of FFXVI, can unleash a wide range of attacks, and the animations and effects for them can all fit in the memory, too. And the way that the game seamlessly flows between resource-intensive gameplay to equally intensive cutscenes and back again wouldn’t be possible if it wasn’t for the speed of the SSD."

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