This week at Gamescom Square-Enix showed us another new and frankly strange trailer for their upcoming title Final Fantasy XV (15), which you can view below. Entitled ‘Dawn’ it’s more like a hugathon for nearly half of its duration than anything worthwhile:
The idea here is to give a little back story to the game, 15 years before we’re introduced to it, but little was given away in terms of… Anything really. There’s nothing in the way of general story progression and most importantly a release date, which at this stage wasn’t expected but most definitely hoped for. Instead we got main character Noctis hugging it out with his old man King Regis for nearly two minutes of a 3:14 video and little else that could be considered relevant.
Square also put together a presentation teasing a few story details and showing a little more gameplay footage, but there wasn’t even a hint of a release date for Final Fantasy XV – only that they were still ‘on schedule’ to finish the game by a set date. That date could be damn near anything they please as now the game had been in development for more than a decade, anything from three months to another three years probably wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows. The original plan was for Square to kickstart a marketing campaign starting with Gamescom and presumably building from there, fans were hoping they would at least start with a release window and gradually share more information throughout the PAX Event in three weeks time and then end with a solid release date with a ton of new info/gameplay at the Tokyo Game Show in September, aiming for a release sometime between winter this year and summer 2016. As it stands it looks like Square-Enix has the intention of doing nothing more than showing that trailer again at PAX. Then again at TGS. And that’ll most likely be it for this year, so it looks certain we won’t be playing the game this year, and even next year is looking doubtful if the rate of new information that has been made available this year is anything to go by.
So for now we have the Episode Duscae demo, the above trailer and the following 90 second footage of our hero Noctis jogging through various landscapes and promptly getting ruined by a Marlboro. Until next year Square-Enix…
*UPDATE*
After the disappointment of the Final Fantasy XV livestream yesterday, game director Hajime Tabata has spoken to Gamespot and has stated the next entry in the Final Fantasy series will be released before 2017.
When asked about Square Enix’s plans regarding a release date for FFXV, Tabata said;
“At the very least, I can tell you that it isn’t going to be released this year. I think we’ll be able to tell you when we’re making the announcement around PAX Prime, at the end of this month.”
Before defiantly stating:
“We can certainly say to people: it’s not going to be 2017. It’s going to be before that.”
So with that said 2016 looks the likely release period, with hopefully a more refined date to be announced at PAX in a few weeks. This is definitely a step in the right direction and finally something for fans to get excited about. As mentioned the company are apparently right on schedule and have “the complete road map lined up, right up to launch, and we’re proceeding along that as planned.”
Good stuff.
Pete is part of the imaginatively titled Alan & Pete Play, and can be found on Twitter and YouTube. He hopes Final Fantasy XV will be released before he is.
Alan and Pete Play 
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