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Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles is building on the base of one of the most beloved JRPGs - tactical or otherwise - ever released. While Final Fantasy 16 hasn't yet proved its ability to stand the test of time, its fantastic Active Time Lore is providing inspiration for a similar feature that promises to make FF Tactics even better.
In The Ivalice Chronicles, you'll be able to access the State of the Realm, which a new post on the PlayStation Blog describes as "a high-level summary of information and incidental lore that plays between battles, similar to how the feature was used in Final Fantasy XVI."
"We wanted to give a way for players to appreciate the story further," Ivalice Chronicles director Kazutoyo Maehiro explains, "however we made it so this information can be viewed chronologically according to the protagonist’s actions. So if you want to check the broader flow of the story, you can through the State of the Realm, whereas if you want to learn even more details, you can through rumors in the taverns or from the other features."
The devs haven't revealed many details about how State of the Realm works, but the comparison to Active Time Lore is exciting, since the latter is one of the best things about FF16. In that game, you can pause at any time to bring up a list of relevant lore explainers, helping you either dig deeper into the world or get a reminder about a plot point you might've forgotten.
Maehiro was an event planner on the original Final Fantasy Tactics, and worked as creative director on FF16, which makes this something of a full circle moment - bringing smartest ideas from his new work into a beloved classic that he also worked on. Here's hoping The Ivalice Chronicles makes good on that legacy when it launches this September.
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