One of the games that Square Enix fans eagerly awaited next year was Final Fantasy 16. This game is the latest numbered game in the popular JRPG series, and a lot of news about the game dropped last month. Fans took a comprehensive look at the game at Sony’s June 2022 State of Play Presentation. The calls for Final Fantasy 16 are complete with a trailer highlighting the fight and even some story beats.
Final Fantasy 16 will only feature characters with British accents
Shortly after this trailer was shown, Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida did many interviews explaining some details that fans should expect. This, along with other issues such as the unique party system and the decision to abandon the open world format , indicated how the Eikon Summon game would work. One aspect he emphasized was the emphasis on the medieval environment, which revealed that the play would have only a British accent.
In an interview with Japanese publication Dengeki Online, Yoshida revealed that he and his development team are focused on bringing the European landscape to life and combining it with the series’ familiar fantasy elements. He notes that all lines were recorded in British English to preserve the medieval setting of Final Fantasy 16. Yoshida also went to great lengths to avoid including American accents in the game, as she felt that her American fans would be angry because of the inconsistency. He even said that a typical fan would start to get excited about a European setting, but would be infuriated when he heard the characters speak with an American accent.
Considering that Final Fantasy 14, another game produced by Yoshida, includes a roster of British players only, this did not come as a surprise to some players. Yoshida revealed that she and her team originally wrote the story of the game in Japanese and then translated it into English. Then, Final Fantasy 16’s sound and motion capture was done in English by European players.
Yoshida says many players of this generation expect medieval fantasy to be European, encoded by other literary works such as The Lord of the Rings. There is still a long way to go before Final Fantasy 16 is released, but if there’s one thing to be taken away from this interview, it’s that for Yoshida and the rest of the development team, the Final Fantasy 16 British accent and the preservation of the European fantasy environment is important.
