吉田直树在近日接受了外媒采访，明确表示将在 2023 年夏季发售的《最终幻想16》不会是一款开放世界游戏。制作组做了用户研究，了解许多更年轻的玩家从来没玩过《最终幻想》，或者对系列没有兴趣。为了打造一款既吸引核心粉丝又面向新生代的作品，他们自己玩了很多游戏，也从 3A 开放世界 RPG 中汲取了灵感。但是为了展现一个关联整个世界甚至更多的故事，开发组决定不采用开放世界的设计，避免开发组被限制在单个开放世界的空间里。相反的他们会聚焦于独立的以地区为基础的游戏设计，来让玩家更有一整个“世界”的规模感。吉田在另一家采访中再次说明了这一点，虽然开发团队都希望《最终幻想》规模大一些，但他们也认为在开放世界中呈现这样一个故事是不可能的。如果有人告诉他们可以花15年的时间，那或许就可以做了，但这样子也意味着设计思路会变得陈旧
In a recent interview with foreign media, Naoki Yoshida made it clear that final fantasy 16, which will be released in the summer of 2023, will not be an open world game. The production team did user research to learn that many younger players have never played final fantasy or are not interested in the series. In order to create a work that not only attracts core fans but also faces the new generation, they played many games themselves and drew inspiration from the 3A Open World RPG. However, in order to show a story related to the whole world or even more, the development team decided not to adopt the open world design to avoid the development team being limited to a single open world space. Instead, they will focus on independent region based game design to give players a sense of scale of the whole "world". Yoshida explained this point again in another interview. Although the development team hopes that final fantasy will be larger, they also believe that it is impossible to present such a story in the open world. If someone tells them that it can take 15 years, they may be able to do it, but it also means that the design ideas will become obsolete
