The
official Final Fantasy XV website held a small Q&A in its forum section today; three fan questions were selected and answered by the design team.
Two of the three answered were about towns (because we all remember how we got stiffed on those with #13). "
How much of the big cities like Altissia/Insomnia will we be able to explore?" asked one fan, and Final Fantasy XV planner Ishikawa Tomonori assured him/her, much more than last time. "I can tell everyone a little about Altissia at this time. Altissia has many and varied locations, such as multiple cafes, ship-bourne market places and parks etc. The city is of a considerable scale, to the extent that even the developers sometimes get lost there! The player is free to take a leisurely walk around the complex maze of streets, or ride the gondola to see the sights and there is also added enjoyment to be had looking for restaurants to visit! You are bound to encounter some unique characters when exploring the city streets.So we have created lots of different things to enjoy in Altissia and hope everyone is looking forward to visiting!"
That's well and good, but with large areas comes the problem of exploring them easily. "
Will large buildings have multiple warp points to allow Noctis to scale and explore rooftops?" asked someone else. Lead level designer Terada Takefumi said yes. "The warp ability that lets you teleport instantly to high up locations is a vital part of FFXV’s battle system. The ability to use multiple warp points in a strategic manner is especially prevalent in the game’s large scale battles over urban terrain. It is not just the buildings though, and we have also created exciting aerial battles with flying foes and gigantic boss enemies, so watch out for those."
Finally, the question was asked of how the choice of difficulty modes affects leveling up. Lead game designer Takizawa Masahi said, "The equivalent to difficulty level settings in FFXV is a system where you can switch between different battle modes. By having this ability to switch modes, we want to make it so that both players who like action oriented, technical gameplay and also those who want to fight at a slower, more relaxed pace can all enjoy the combat in their own style. This switching system is a key part of the gameplay that we decided to introduce based on the feedback we received from the Episode Duscae demo. We will go into more detail about the system closer to the game's launch so stay tuned for more information."
