Square Enix’s PlayStation 5 epic, Final Fantasy 16, has a complex storyline that can be tricky to follow — even for the people that made it, producer Naoki Yoshida reveals
One of the neatest features of Final Fantasy 16 is something called Active Time Lore. You can pause the game at any moment — even and especially during cutscenes — to bring this screen up with a click of the touchpad, and it gives you helpful little capsule bios of all the characters in a scene, plus notes on the location, the factions involved, any concepts the characters are discussing, and any jargon they’re using. It’s like the X-Ray feature on Amazon Prime Video that can tell you the name of a character actor that looks familiar, but for arcane video game lore.
It’s useful. It’s also quite necessary, because Final Fantasy 16 has a byzantine setting that confused even its own developers to begin with.
Final Fantasy 16’s world features multiple nation states with names like Waloed, Sanbreque, and Dhalmekia warring and jockeying for power. Each of these cultures takes a different approach to things like magic use, the giant Mothercrystals that tower over the land, and Dominants — humans who can summon and control the godlike Eikons that protect each kingdom.
