Final Fantasy 16 trailer was made in-game so players wouldn't worry about the release date

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Producer didn't like comments about a 2035 release

(Image credit: Square Enix)

The producer of Final Fantasy 16 says that he wanted to make an in-engine trailer to assuage fears around the game's release date. Speaking at a panel during Tokyo Games Show (via Impress), Naoki Yoshida said that he didn't want to follow the precedent set by the series' previous games by releasing a pre-rendered trailer.

Yoshida said that releasing a pre-rendered 'movie' "was something we didn't want to do this time around," and that the team wanted to focus on having as many in-game clips as possible. In part, that's because he'd seen comments online suggesting that a pre-rendered trailer would mean that the game was still a long way from completion, joking that "people would say something like 'well, guess I'll see you in 2035'."

Yoshida's approach to the game's first trailer, however, took a lot of time, and as such, the team "barely did any perfecting or tuning" for the scenes included in it to make them look better. As a result, the acclaimed producer seems to suggest that FF16 might look quite as good as other next-gen titles right now, but he says that "we'll reveal more again when it's done properly."

Later on in the panel, Yoshida said that he hoped to concentrate on development until 2021, but that he was hoping to launch a teaser site next month to offer a little more information about the world and the characters of the new game.

Despite players' apparent concerns that FF16 is still a long way away, we might be getting our hands on it sooner than many think. Last week, Bloomberg reporter Jason Schreier stated that the game had been in development "for at least four years in some capacity," and was coming "sooner than people think." Despite the game's reveal at the PS5 showcase earlier this month, however, Square Enix hasn't revealed a release date.

Check out everything we know about Final Fantasy 16.

Ali Jones
Ali Jones
Managing Editor, News

I'm GamesRadar's Managing Editor for news, shaping the news strategy across the team. I started my journalistic career while getting my degree in English Literature at the University of Warwick, where I also worked as Games Editor on the student newspaper, The Boar. Since then, I've run the news sections at PCGamesN and Kotaku UK, and also regularly contributed to PC Gamer. As you might be able to tell, PC is my platform of choice, so you can regularly find me playing League of Legends or Steam's latest indie hit.