Speaking during an interview with IGN, the Final Fantasy XVI development team revealed that while the game will feature large-scale maps to explore, the latest entry in the RPG series will ditch the series’ trademark optional dungeons.
The game’s producer Naoki Yoshida, revealed that the map will allow for seamless travel to areas you have access too, while director Hiroshi Takai touched base on the Hideaway location. This is an area from where players can start main missions and side quests, the latter featuring monster hunting and other activities.
On the world map you have the areas that you can travel to and you select that area and then you jump to that area seamlessly. And then you follow the main quest there. And then once you finish that, you’ll go back to this hub area […] called the Hideaway.”
We didn’t create any [hidden dungeons or maps] because we wanted players to focus more on the main scenario and not have this feeling that you have to go to this area and clear this area. We wanted them to focus on this and we wanted to focus our development more on the main areas. So we didn’t go out of our way to create maps that didn’t need to be visited.
Final Fantasy XVI is scheduled for release on June 22, 2023 for PS5.
[Source – IGN]