Torgal is also popular because of the voice of the heart! Develop knowledge to help you enjoy the story to the end in “FFXVI”[CEDEC2024]|

The speakers are Momoka Ono and Shuji Yamaguchi from Square Enix. In this session, we introduced a system to deepen your understanding of the lore (world setting) of the game “Final Fantasy XVI” (hereinafter referred to as “FFXVI”) which was released in June 2023.

In FFXVI, we created and implemented three lore support functions: Active Time Lore, Vivian Report, and Harpocrates' Memorandum, to help players understand the story. In this session, the process of planning and implementing these functions was explained, as well as the challenges FFXVI faced and how to improve them.

The content of this article is relatively easy, so even “FFXVI” fans can enjoy it. The long-awaited PC version will be released in September 2024, and we hope that those looking forward to enjoying “FFXVI” will take a look at the improvements made in this work.

Rawa supports three functions.

Some people may not be familiar with the term “science” in the first place, but science is a term that refers to the world environment. It is often used to refer to the global environment or worldview in games and novels.

“FFXVI” has three support functions: Vivian's Report, which supports character relationship charts and world situation maps, Harpocrates' Memo, which supports in-game glossaries, and Active Time Roar, which supports keyword-related UI.

When FFXVI began development, there were few elements to explain the lore, but as development progressed, it became clear that the terminology was difficult, which could detract from the player's experience.

Then producer Naoki Yoshida asked for a user interface for the lower version, and scenario designer Kazutoyo Maehiro said he had a detailed outline, so they decided to create a lower support function.

The concept of the less support function is said to revolve around the players' desire to enjoy the main story until the end. To enjoy “FFXVI”, things like maps, character descriptions, and glossary are necessary, and AMeDAS (Regional Weather Observation System) was used as a reference to naturally convey these time series.

Additionally, as in the story, the link diagram is in the form of concentric circles centered around Clive, and the pieces and maps are turned into videos explaining the situation so you can refer to them.

For the Harpocrates Memo, we were originally thinking of making it a more standard dictionary, but Maehiro told us that if we wanted to implement it, we needed to make it visible to the players, so we ended up making a lot of mistakes with the memo. Different mechanics and appearance.

Active Time Roa can be activated with one touch so you can check Roa at any time. In this way, we follow the tradition with three functions to make it easier to understand the main story.

In the stage of completing the detailed specifications

Now that the content and content of the lower functions have been defined, and the size of the functions and the resources required have been clarified, we move to the stage where we discuss the function design with the programmers and the user interface design with the artists.

In particular, Active Time Roar is unique in that it can be opened at any time, and there was a desire to display the appropriate knowledge elements depending on different situations, so it was necessary to be able to define the division. However, despite having over 2000 divisions, they decided to abandon automation because they wanted to consider and define what should be updated and displayed for each scene.

Detailed data was needed to respond to each player's situation, and an in-house Excel tool called NEX emerged, which made database management easy. Even a huge amount of data could be read by simply looking at a single sheet, and adjustments were easy.

In addition, we implemented debugging functions, implemented the UI, modified the panel animation, and eliminated and built panel functions to improve the quality of Vivian's report, but because it became too complicated, we sometimes had to remove convenience. On the other hand, the concept of Active Time Roar was clear, which made it difficult to remake, and it seemed that there was less trial and error.

Originally, the game was supposed to be released after its release, but the update included the addition of a feature called Inner Voice, which allows people's inner voices to be displayed on the character relationship chart.

The hard work paid off, and Torgal became very popular after its release due to Torgal's voice. As a result, he said he was able to enjoy the story long after it reached its conclusion.

In addition to using the lore support function to help people enjoy the story to the end, they also came up with ways to communicate with people who are not interested in lore. He concluded the session by saying that knowledge is important for games, and adding support features can improve the gaming experience.

(c) Square Enix

*Published based on information announced by the manufacturer. Images posted may include items currently under development.