Is there an option to turn off the HUD to create a more immersive experience?
There is an option. Players probably want to take screenshots while playing the game, so this option has been enabled.
Will there be a camera mode, theater mode, or coliseum mode?
Camera mode: yes. Fans are probably aware that Prompto is always taking photos, but players can take manual photos as well. Prompto gradually gets better at taking photos, but if you don’t want to wait for that, you can just take your own.
Theater mode: no. There’s too much to tackle there, such as loading times.
The coliseum question is probably based on the Altissia video. There’s a mini-game at the coliseum in Altissia. It’s not a coliseum mode where you enter and fight against an enemy, but there is a battle coliseum there where monsters fight against each other, and you participate by betting on which monster you think is going to win. So having a coliseum mode in there allows us to, perhaps post-launch, do some extra stuff with it. Over the last three days, we’ve gotten a lot of questions about downloadable content and post-launch plans, so we’re thinking about that.
Will there be an option to adjust the camera distance?
Currently, there is no option. Right now the camera moves automatically depending on the situation (if you’re close to enemies or far from enemies). We’re using as much time as we can to fine tune the camera controls, but at some point we’ll need to decide whether we should let users manually control the camera.
Since Final Fantasy XV has an action-based battle system, how does strategy come into play, especially during boss battles? Will it be too easy if you level up too much?
If you do level up enough, there will be situations where you can one-hit enemies. Personally, that’s not a negative aspect of leveling up. One aspect of RPGs that I think people enjoy is that when you’re faced off against a tough boss or tough enemy, you work your way towards leveling up so that you can beat him, and when you finally do beat him and beat him easily, I think people enjoy that. I personally enjoy that. But in this game, one way you can enjoy it, is that when you’re fighting a boss that is stronger or a higher level, you can counter it with your player techniques or actual skill. For those that don’t want to level up too high or want to set a cap for themselves, there is actually an item that will help with that. This item is specifically designed and implemented for players that want to do low level clears.
Regarding the recent UI, I preferred the UI from Episode Duscae. It felt more intuitive to defend using LB/L1, as well as using RB/R1 to manually lock-on to enemies. Will there be different control layouts that we can choose from?
The UI design will be renewed once more. We’re currently working on both the functionality and aesthetics of the UI. In terms of the development state right now, the progress of the UI and NPC elements are not as far along as some of the other stuff, so right now we’re still using some placeholder stuff that aren’t what we envision for the final game. In terms of control layouts, we have the normal layout and the one from Episode Duscae, and we may also have a third layout planned. But people can choose between those two at any time. A lot of players have gotten used to Episode Duscae controls, so we want to give options to the players.
When does the final scene in the E3 trailer take place? It looks like they were weawring what the glaives are wearing in Kingsglaive.
The last scene in the trailer is towards the very end of your journey after you make your return to Insomnia. And you’re right on the money in terms of the costumes for the glaives. The four characters are wearing what the glaives are wearing in Kingsglaive, but we won’t explain why because that would obviously be a spoiler.
Is the Shinjuku area an explorable town in the game?
Insomnia is not in the game as an explorable town. But it is a field for battle. It’s not just the area in front of city hall that we’ve been showing—it’s actually a wider, wider area. It’s not an explorable, full-fledged town like Altissia is, per say, but it is a location where you’ll carry out battle. It will make sense and everyone will understand as they watch Kingsglaive and get a sense of what that environment is.
How many hours of gameplay will there be? Aside from the main story, are there a lot of side quests?
In terms of clearing the main story, we’re anticipating about 40 to 50 hours of gameplay, so there will be that at the very least. But there are a lot of side quests and extra stuff. With that alone, we’re looking at about 100 hours of gameplay. So if you count all of that, we’re looking at about 200 hours total if you clear everything. Fans have been waiting for quite a while, so we want to make sure there is a lot to enjoy when it’s out.
Will we see a stable frame rate and anti-aliasing improvement in the final game? What kind of optimization is being carried out to maximize visual quality while preventing frame rate dips?
It’s hard to give a definitive answer about the final version now since we are constantly optimizing, but we can tell you the specs of the E3 demo. There’s a slight different with Xbox One and PS4.
For the Xbox One E3 demo, dynamic resolution ranges between 800p to 900p, usually closer to the 900p range, and at a constant 30 frames per second. So it is performing at a more stable and higher level than Episode Duscae and the Platinum Demo. There are times when it still dips, and that’s usually when you call on your ally commands, like when you call on Ignis to mark an enemy it dips to 26 to 27 frames, but it won’t deter from the experience. But since we’re able to achieve this for the E3 demo, we have a positive outlook on the final version of the game.
For the PlayStation 4 E3 demo, it’s a dynamic range between 900p and 1080p. Most of the time, it’s about 1080p at a constant 30 frames per second. Sometimes, it will, just like Xbox One, dip a little bit when the GPU can’t process what’s happening on the screen so quickly, but it’s mostly 30 frames. But we will continue to fine tune and optimize the game for as much time as we can.
Don’t worry about the frame rate for the final version, we’re working on it. As far as anti-aliasing goes, there’s a lot of processing for constant anti-aliasing, so we implement it every few frames as not to overload the processing.