Final Fantasy 16's Clive will be joined by a second playable character
The last time we got to play as more than one character in a mainline FF was 2011's Final Fantasy XIII-2
Final Fantasy 16’s producers have shared some more snippets about what to expect from Square Enix’s umpteenth outing in the JRPG series in an interview with Japanese site GameWatch. Nestling in among all the talk of Mother Crystals and summons is a comment from writer Kazutoyo Maehiro that players will get to control another character than just our boy Clive. It sounds like you’ll only get a short while to step into this other, as yet unnamed character’s shoes, however, as they’re only playable in the early game.
When prodded over whether this other playable character would work in a similar way to Final Fantasy 12’s Reks, Maehiro said that was “a good understanding”. Reks was FF12 protagonist Vaan’s older brother, who you played as during the game’s prologue. Producer Naoki Yoshida also clarified in the interview that, despite what trailers have shown so far, Clive will have a posse of sorts. This party will fight alongside Clive, but they’ll be controlled by AI, much like Noctis' boy band pals were in Final Fantasy 15.
Square Enix haven’t had a great time promoting Final Fantasy 16 so far. They generated some controversy earlier this month when Yoshida essentially said it was okay for the game to be culturally homogeneous because it’s set somewhere geographically isolated “in an age without airplanes, television, or telephones”.
Final Fantasy 16 is set to arrive in Summer 2023, although it will likely hit PC a bit later than that. A recent PlayStation marketing video revealed the JRPG will be a PS5 exclusive for six months when it launches, so we're probably looking at a Winter 2023 release on PC at the earliest. Fingers crossed we're not left waiting until 2024. I’ll let you know when the clouds have lifted and a shiny PC release date appears.
