Square Enix has established a pretty long commitment to Final Fantasy XV, and with that came tons of DLC and bonus content.
In a recent interview with Polygon, game director Hajime Tabata revealed that the next set of DLC coming to the game should be referred to as a “brand new story.” This is the same four DLC episodes that we detailed previously, coming in 2019 to tell four new stories.
These four planned episodes are as follows:
- Conflict of the Sage – Follow Ardyn’s story prior to the main game
- Unnamed Side Story – Follow Aranea Highwind’s story from the perspective of Niflheim
- Choice of Freedom – Play as Lunafreya and decide her fate
- The Final Strike – Rejoin Noctis as he prepares for the climactic final battle
The interview itself is a great insight into the decade-long development of the game, and the mindset behind how the DLC has worked for the game so far. One reveal that illustrates that things change over time, with Episode Ignis originally planned to be the finale, but that the developers made the decision to commit to a longer series of content for the game. Tons of other narrative or gameplay choices were either pulled from the game or never made it in. The full interview with Polygon tells gamers and fans that the team behind the game want to deliver on a much more compact and focused story as a result, something the original 2016 version of the game failed to do.
Final Fantasy XV’s decade-long development cycle inflicted a notoriously heavy toll on the game’s narrative. When Tabata took control of the project, he had to wrangle the existing concepts, game assets and story components into a unified work. Plot points shifted. Characters mutated or disappeared.
Because of all of these changes and moving parts, the shipped in a state that felt strange and incomplete. Other design decisions that were put into the game to aid immersion made what story there was hard to follow as well. Things like hearing the news of the invasion via radio, or learning of other big events through the newspaper led to some players feeling disconnected from the story as a whole.
Last year’s DLC was already initially planned from the main game. [Episodes] Ignis, Gladiolus, and all that — that was Season One. This will kind of be like moving into a Season Two. Square wants to make it very clear that the future of their big releases will be service-based in terms of post-launch support. So expect more long-term content plans for other games as well.
And it’s not just new stories and expanded content for the RPG that has fans constantly coming back to the game. There’s been lots of crossover content with various games like Monster Hunter World which keeps Final Fantasy XV in the minds of gamers.
Final Fantasy 15 is currently available for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
