Final Fantasy's Naoki Yoshida keen to direct another major title

Naoki Yoshida is keen to direct another major title for Square Enix.

Yoshida led development on Final Fantasy 16 on top of his work as producer and director for MMORPG Final Fantasy 14, which will receive its next expansion Dawntrail later this year.

Yet despite all that work, he told Famitsu (translation via Aitai Kimochi) he would like to direct a “next major title”.

“It's completely undecided as of now, but if the opportunity arises to work on the next major title, I would like to direct it myself!” he said.

Yoshida considered adding one more title to his name, but then decided against setting a ceiling for himself.

“If I were to fall into the trap of thinking 'I can only do one more title', then it might be marked as something odd, like 'Yoshida's masterpiece', which isn't a good look,” he said.

“For example, I'm in my 50s right now and still snowboarding, and the more I snowboard, the better I become. I honestly think I'm at my peak at the moment, no joke! I feel like I can still push even further, so in lieu of that, I haven't set a cap for myself.”

He added: “We don't know what the future holds, so why not challenge ourselves each time? I think that's definitely a better way to look at it. I hope that I can take even greater leaps to the likes I have not ever imagined.”

Previously, in an interview with Sony's Shuhei Yoshida, he said Final Fantasy 17 should be directed by someone new “instead of having the same old guys handle the next one.” It seems, though, he's still interested in taking on the challenge himself.

Further, Yoshida has spoken to Game Informer about the upcoming DLC ​​for Final Fantasy 16 named The Rising Tide.

It's unlikely there will be more DLC for Final Fantasy 16 after this as Yoshida is keen to move on to the next project, but the door remains open.

“My honest answer is, 'I don't know at the moment,' but at the same time, the possibility isn't entirely zero,” Yoshida said when asked about more DLC. “I don't want to bar out any real possibilities at this time. The reason being is that we did spend a lot of effort […] and time creating this game […] and we put a lot of cutting edge technology into this game.

“And because of that, we were able to gain a lot of experience, a lot of learnings, that we can possibly apply to our next project or title. So my honest feeling is that the team does want to take on a new challenge and move on to a different project – maybe it's a completely new game, perhaps in a completely new form of entertainment. I feel like ultimately, that might be the best route for not just the players, but for us as well, too. But again “To reiterate, the possibility of more DLC content for Final Fantasy 16 is not zero.”

While the ending of the game will remain unchanged, Yoshida said players will “get a deeper understanding of how the world of Valisthea is and how the characters are in Final Fantasy 16.”

And what about the expected Eikon battle against Leviathan? “One thing I can say is that there's going to be a lot of water involved – visually, graphically, there's going to be a lot of attacks made from Leviathan and that comes with a lot of water,” said DLC director Takeo Kujiraoka. “It's going to look really different from past Eikon battles, and that's one thing that players can look forward to.”

The Rising Tide is set for release this spring, and will follow Echoes of the Fallen that was released in December.

A PC port of Final Fantasy 16 is also on the way, but currently without a release date.