A new Final Fantasy 16 trailer just dropped, and it’s loaded with new lore on the game’s world of Valisthea, its kingdoms, and the powerful eikons at the epicenter.
Final Fantasy 16 is still slated for ‘Summer 2023’ (likely between June and September), but the PS5 exclusive looks to be shaping up into something very special. The latest trailer gives us updates on the game’s multitude of warring kingdoms.
We see a bunch of new characters, as well as more scenes with ones we’ve been introduced to in prior trailers. A particular focus is on the Dominants, people who can transform into giant, devastating eikons. These eikons will be familiar to longtime Final Fantasy fans as they take the form of summons like Ifrit, Phoenix, Odin, Garuda, and Bahamut to name but a few.
The trailer also reminds us of just how much of a departure Final Fantasy 16 is from the majority of the series’ past two decades. Developer Creative Business Unit 3 (who also helm Final Fantasy 14 and its expansions) looks to be building a medieval world closer in tone to the series’ earliest games, rather than the heavy science-fiction leanings of more contemporary entries.
An eikonic entry?
We might still be in the dark as to when, exactly, we’ll have Final Fantasy 16 in our hands, but this latest trailer makes it look like it’ll be well worth the wait.
As an avid Final Fantasy 14 enjoyer, I see it as a mark of quality that so many of its key staff members are working on FF16, including composer Masayoshi Soken, art director Hiroshi Minagawa and localization lead Michael-Christopher Koji Fox. Oh, and it’s great to see Devil May Cry 5‘s combat director, Ryota Suzuki, lend his decades of talent to the game, too.
And speaking of combat, while I’ve loved every single Final Fantasy 16 trailer so far, I really hope we get something of a gameplay deep dive soon. We’ve now seen a pretty healthy amount of Valisthea, at least at surface level. By comparison, we’ve only seen brief snippets of combat. A trailer showing off what protagonist Clive (and any potential party members that might join him) is really made of would be great to see.