Making Final Fantasy 15 for PC is '100 times' easier than console version, says game director

The PC version of Final Fantasy 15 is set to become the definitive edition of the game. It will boast improved graphics, a new first-person mode and support for 8K resolutions. You'd think those add-ons would make development difficult—not so, according to game director Hajime Tabata. In fact, he says it was "more than 100 times" easier crafting the PC edition than the console version before it.

The team only started working on the PC edition this year but it's due to come out in early 2018, and Tabata told MCV: “The console version, which required reconstruction from the very start for both the game itself and the engine, was more than 100 times more difficult."

Tabata also revealed that the team is working hard to make the game run better on low-end PCs. “In entering the global PC market, it’s a requirement that games can be played on a wide range of specs,” he said. “At this stage, FFXV is at the high end of these settings, and we are in the process of seeing how well we can push things out on a lower spec."

He expanded on the reasons for the addition of a first-person mode, too. It's to help attract players that usually only play first-person games on PC. Plus, it will bring a "freshness" to the action. There's lots of work still left to do though: the mode is only half-complete, Tabata revealed.

"We have only reached about 50 per cent [completion] on this mode, but we feel the gameplay has a certain freshness to it and it’s been well-received among those in the development team. In providing this mode, we needed to make some large adjustments, like the player character’s VFX, displayed animations and camera movement. Even now, we’re still making small, daily adjustments.”

Overall, Tabata seems dead set on making the PC version, which will ship with all DLC and Steam Workshop support, the best version of the JRPG. "Players will expect the game to have evolved because we are providing a higher quality depiction than the current consoles out there. If we are able to meet such demands, then it gives meaning to doing this in the first place.”

Read about Joe's hands-on with the game here, and Fraser's own interview with Tabata from earlier this year here.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.