Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been one of many breakout hits of 2025. It is also a classically styled turn-based role-playing sport, taking cues from many widespread collection, together with Ultimate Fantasy. These two elements have each led to many questions on whether or not Ultimate Fantasy may return to its personal roots, and now the query’s been posed to certainly one of Ultimate Fantasy’s front-facing leads.
Naoki Yoshida, the director/producer of Ultimate Fantasy 14 and producer of Ultimate Fantasy 16, was requested in an interview with AnimeNewsNetwork whether or not mainline Ultimate Fantasy video games may return to being turn-based, within the wake of Clair Obscur’s success.
“With this query of turn-based versus motion, it tends to isolate the gameplay to only the battle system,” mentioned Yoshida. “That does not take note of what sort of sport the creators wish to ship to gamers. For instance, primarily based on a sure graphical high quality we wish to current to our gamers, or the narrative we wish to ship to our gamers, it pertains to how we arrange the sport’s methods round it. This consists of the battle system, sport design, and gameplay really feel. It isn’t a clear-cut reply, whether or not it would change into all turn-based, or if it should change into extra action-based.
“[I’m] not essentially going to be on Ultimate Fantasy 17, so we additionally do not wish to hinder or restrict our future director or whomever can be producing the video games like 17 and even 18,” Yoshida continued. “We do not wish to put them on a rail.”
The reply, basically, continues to be up within the air. Ultimate Fantasy adjustments with every entry, in any case; apart from creating new tales and casts for every mainline numbered entry, every sport can vary from extremely iterative to full-on evolutions or change-ups. Wanting on the gameplay shifts from, say, Ultimate Fantasy 9 on by 12 and 13 emphasizes how the collection usually shakes issues up for every successive installment.
Finest Mainline Ultimate Fantasy Video games
Finest Mainline Ultimate Fantasy Video games
Yoshida has talked about this prior to now, inside the context of Ultimate Fantasy 16 choosing a really action-oriented system. That entry tried to attraction to a special crowd, due to the “anticipated” gross sales and influence of a mainline Ultimate Fantasy.
We have had these conversations earlier than, round the way forward for Ultimate Fantasy, and can in all probability have them once more. In any case, merely judging by the event timelines of the previous few mainline video games, it could be a bit till we begin listening to about Ultimate Fantasy 17, a lot much less 18 or past.
In the meantime, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and its growth crew at Sandfall Interactive have definitely struck success by honing in on their targets and passions, so possibly that’s the true goal to attempt in the direction of.
Eric is a contract author for IGN.