Final Fantasy 15 shows off lush new area and giant Malboro

After a live Active Time Report steam, Square Enix has revealed a huge new area for Final Fantasy 15. Set past the halfway mark in the game it’s filled with giant trees with rusted metal structure stuck in them, and a dangerous boggy valley that’s home to the familiar FF monster Malboro. Although this times it’s absolutely massive and can wipe out the party with one hit of its bad breath move if you’re not too careful.

It reminds me a lot of the Behemoth fight in the Duscae demo released earlier this year, where you stalk the beast until you set up the right conditions to take it down. Game director Hajime Tabata warned that you’ll have to be cautious if you want to take it down, and that you can’t just rely on physical attacks.

The story origins were also teased in a trailer set 15 years before the start of the game. And while it doesn’t include any of that typical Final Fantasy showiness, it hints at a much darker, and deeper story than anything we’ve seen so far. Also there’s a cute dog with a snazzy bracelet, so it’s worth watching just for that.

During a Q&A session we also heard a few snippets of information. While they’re not ready to show us FF15’s villain quite yet, they did promise that he’d top the likes of famous Final Fantasy bad guys Sephiropth and Kuja.

Square Enix will be showing another snippet of gameplay at the end of August during PAX Prime, and then more again at the Tokyo Game Show in September.

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