Can We 'Fix' Final Fantasy XVI?

Is Final Fantasy XVI a perfect game? Well, not really, but that’s okay. No game is really perfect, and no game needs to be perfect in order to be great. In fact, sometimes a game’s flaws are what give the game its character and charm, like an ugly baby, so maybe we should just be happy with what we got.

With that in mind, it can also be fun to imagine what could have been if things were different, even if it is at the risk of people thinking that we don’t really like Final Fantasy XVI as a whole

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The Birds of Play are:

#finalfantasy #birdsofplay

[mikeg]

1. Toggle sprint in towns and on fields instead of waiting for clive to decide when to run.
2. Faster scene transitions for side quests. I dont need to wait 10 seconds after every damn quest accept.
3. What do all the random materials i gather do?
4. Make accessories worth equipping. -2 seconds on cooldown is useless.
5. Add reasons to explore the large areas, finding glowy random items (see above) isnt a reward

[lucasrodriguez]

1. Explorable big cities.

2. More interaction via gameplay with the party and more input from the party members when doing side quest.

3. Less focus main story moment, to give it a sense of a journey.

4. Activities to do in the world to break the gameplay loop beside hunts.

5. Less exposition in the dialogue to make it feel more natural and better cinematography, specially when doing side quest.

[EndThusIAm]

How to Fix: Turn it into a movie.
Honestly that is my gripe with it. It starts off so interesting and appears to be FF meets GoT, but then it gets so boring and just constant cutscenes with walking around and maybe some combat.

[ivanchagasp]

Well, I have my thoughts on things to fix:

1) Sidequests: I think has been said multiple times how sidequests are more often than not so dull. You go somewhere, talk to some folks, go somewhere else (if you are lucky, there's a monster to be slain), then go back to the quest-giver. Boring. I know that there are some very interesting sidequests with a lot of good actor performance and cutscenes - but there was a point I didn't feel like doing them anymore because the reward was almost never worth the hassle.

2) Blacksmith: the forge system is so oversimplistic. With a few exceptions, you just drop by the blacksmith, hope you have gathered the resources and voilà. You forge/reinfoirce to the next available item. There was only one instance I couldn't forge the next item because I lacked some meteorite, but then I just bought it. I know there are items in the NewGame+ that are more difficult to get and even in the main game, but I didn't even bother. I finished the game just forging the next available item by the time I had to go back to the Hideaway,

3) Magic system: I'm not gonna harp on the same string about the Eikons' skill tree, but rather to say how the range magic was useless. I wished they were incorporated into the upgrade, like you could have Fira, Firaga, Thundaga, etc. There little element ball thing was so useless. I don't know if I was using it wrong, but I only thought of using it during boss fights when I couldn't reach the monster and had to kill time until it came closer again. I knew it was going to do nothing, but there I was: throwing harmless minuscule fireballs at them hahah Plus, as an additional note, I really hated the fact you could only equipe 6 skills/magics. Not that I believe they should add a fourth or fifth Eikon slot, but at least a selectable magic menu might have helped. By the time you have all the Eikons, you really want to play more with the other ones.

4) No reason to explore: Maybe I didn't find the secret passages or anything, but I felt there was no reason to explore the maps. I was riding my chocobo to my quest destination while rotating the map to spot the items - which was another thing I didn't really like - that they shined so bright you could spot at a distance. Maybe my eyesight is too good? I don't know, anyways haha There was no hidden dungeon, passage, quest (apart from the monsters to be hunted), anything. It felt way too linear.

I think I just miss the replayability. Since I don't really want to get the Ultimat weapon nor finish the hunting board, I don't really see a reason to play the game again.

[loto]

Your initial point about the hatred for bearers is explained via sidecontent during the endgame. It fully explains how their treatment came to be.
As for your second point, the blight is a continuous problem that the common people cannot stop or avoid, tally that with the fact that the world is at war and theres not much point in common NPC's fretting about it, even though there is plenty of mention of it already from them. In terms of mainline cast and blight being a relevant issue during main quest - its the whole reason the empire invades the dominion, its the whole reason the mother crystals are destroyed, it seems like it receives plenty of exposition imo.
The complaint about more accessible lore seemed a bit of a reach, especially given the fact that it takes hardly any time to pay harpocrates a visit with these load times.
You were correct with your following point about the map - petty indeed.
Crystalline dominion point is a similarly pointless complaint.

[Eincrou]

The "How to fix FF15" was one of the first vids I watched from Birds of Play last year when I was trying to wrap my head around that abomination of a game. Nice to see they've already made one for FF16. While playing it this past month, I also had many ideas that could fix or improve it.

The story of FF16 gets praise from many players, but I thought it was weak in a lot of areas. The first "fix" in this video is a good example. Despite the repetitive and relentless portrayal of how Bearer's are mistreated and we need to save them, there's almost no effort put into explaining or justifying why this brutality is even in the game's world. I do not believe in the, "For no reason at all..." non-explanation for prejudices, discrimination, or hatreds.

As noted in another comment thread, the only explanation is in text from a sidequest to get a forbidden book for Vivian. Even then, the only new & useful information in this text is the acknowledgement of the obvious fact that bearers would be respected and desired for their enhanced capabilities, and initially they were.

But it doesn't explain why this changed, other than vaguely saying some people feared the bearers ruling normal people. There's a massive gap between a few fearful people and all of society having a mindless hatred many years after that potential threat was eliminated. As the video mentions, bearers are never shown doing anything harmful to normal people. Any hatred would naturally fade over time in these circumstances.

I think I know why the portrayal of bearers is like this, but it gets into real-world issues. That conversation is inappropriate for the comments section of a fun video like this. The point is, I cheered when I saw Fix #1 refers to one of my biggest problems with the game's setting. Thanks for sharing your list of fixes.

[thaddeusfavour]

FFXVI had good bones: the story base was solid, the world had the potential to be interesting, and the characters could have been developed well enough for a solid emotional connection. Sadly, I feel that all the potential was mostly wasted by poor dialogue, which tended to be trite and melodramatic. There were some moments, some characters, and some interactions that rose above, but not enough to pull the overall story up in my opinion. Having finally made it to the last 7% of the game, I now feel as if they've crammed the whole games' worth of world lore and character development into about 3% of the end game! Backstories and lore that should have been hinted at and doled out over the entirety of the game was just exposition dumped on the player! That's not a good pacing for either a story or a game.

[Chokken]

Didn't watch point 5 yet because I'm not done with the story yet, but wanted to get my 2 cents in.

I felt the same way about the blight and, after you bringing it up, the bearers too. I found myself disconnected from the motivations of characters and reasons for events a lot, and honestly forgot the blight existed for a good half of the game. When it was brought up again I though, "if only they incorporated and conveyed this more compellingly it would have added so much to what I feel is missing"

FFXVI has many great story points but I feel it lacks in intuitively helping you understand the significance of them in the larger scope of things.

And reading an encyclopedia to find out isn't very compelling..

[deedoubs]

With regard to the blight, it does seem like it's less threatening than they act. The big thing is that magic doesn't work there and stuff has trouble surviving there because the same ethereal substance that powers magic is essential to life. Water without ether isn't drinkable (until they make it that way) and crystals have no mana to draw on. There are a few quests in the game where they focus on the things that the people living in Cid's Hideaway have to do to survive the blight. The hideaway also still isn't self sufficient and relies on outside sources of lumber and food (though they do slowly make inroads to feeding themselves over the course of some sidequests). Feeding a group of people as large as the citizens of the empire or the republic would probably be borderline impossible.

Something in the water also corrodes most building materials in the blight. There is a quest where you have to go get pitch for the ferryman's boats. I think it affects their deckwork too.

[off-meta-michael]

Great points. I would further enhance those with more gameplay mechanics. The blighted areas for instance are said to have no magic in them. I think special blighted enemies where all you can do is use non magic abilities would be great, but youd have to have more combos available that dont involve eikons. Furthermore id add in an ability from the pheonix that revolves around its flames of rebirth that restores blighted areas for a time, which could be unlocked furhter in the story, so that you can access new areas and use your abilities in those blighted areas. I would just add meteoidvania abilities across the board actually.

Finally id want the world map to just be like an overworld at the least, with vehicles, which could be unlocked via Mid. Helping her get materials to build things felt very unrewarding since all you can do is watch what happens after. Id further increase her ability for engineering to create weapons and artillery that Clive could use in place of his eikons when the blight is too engrossing and the flames of rebirth are unavailable.

[andysauruss]

I love how these are the things you want to fix. 😂 I’d fix the last story arc, more exploration like puzzles, actually going inside buildings, more gameplay variety with quests, and saving load outs.

There’s actually a late game side quest that goes into some details about why but basically those without magic out number the bearers and they felt threatened and needed to suppress them. It should have been part of the main story.

I did like the loresman aspect though and getting this information from an NPC rather than a datalog from the start menu. It’s more integrated into the game and a much better approach than say FFXIII.

[MazePLn]

My biggest Issue is Purple sky to soon, I stoped playing game after beating it. Wanted to 100%

[eduardmasterlima]

They also dont really explain why joshua remained so many years apart from Clive. Its felt like joshua knew where clive was all along but never bothered to talk to him. And when they finaly meet joshua must protect clive from ultimas, but he doesnt know anything about ultima, besides the fact that his name is ultima.

[Capothekid]

Why was there minimap and I missed it?…cause I wish there was a minimap

[Rhomagus]

They do eventually explain the hatred of bearers but it needs to be front loaded.

[Sephiebird]

Point #1: There's an entire quest about it.
Point #2: It's exactly the same as climate change, it's a slow change so people live their life as if it didn't exist. There's no monster in the Blight, there's nothing, it's toxic, that's why they have to purify the water in that big lake.
Point #3: Agreed!
Point #4: It has been an annoying thing throughout my playthrough, yeah!
Point #5: Agreed, I would have liked to see more of it!

[kovapls]

It'd be nice to have build presets for skills. We can already refund everything and re-distribute points anytime, why not just let us set 2-3 sets of skills we can easily swap to?

[HoodeloodumGAME]

they can absolutely massively improve this game, both with patches and huge DLCs. There's no doubt we're getting those besides. I'm holding onto hope CBU3 pull out their live-service game roots and dish out updates based on criticisms and fan demand.

[etismyname]

There are two major complaints that i have: the side quests are terrible, i am trying to complete all of them before finishing the last chapter but they are just so very boring. Another problem i have is with Jill, shes just lacking a lot of screen time. Even her big moment feels stolen by Cid and then she sort of fades behind until romance is needed

[diegeticfridge]

Say what you will about the game itself. As someone who fell in love with FF when I played 4 for the first time I absolutely loved the story. Felt like ff finally went back to what made it so good in the early days. A good, long, fun, complex story, with character who purely love each other…..

Easily my new favorite ff story, and imo the best written one yet.