Program flow (from top to bottom)

Introduction

• Ochiai's introduction
• YoshiP's entrance, introduction (as usual, YoshiP's designation is very long: One of the Board Directors of Square Enix, Chief of Creative Business Division 3, Final Fantasy XIV Producer, Director, and Final Fantasy XVI's Producer)
• YoshiP accepts the invitation because he gets a chance to speak to Ochiai (his first time talking to Ochiai). So much that he wanted to have a meal with him, so he attended the interview without eating. Ochiai is very honored.
• Introduction on what FFXVI is.
• Introduction video of FFXVI. This footage is chosen

Final Fantasy XVI Part I

• Story introduction
• YoshiP wants people to have fun with the story. To laugh, to cry and to enjoy. The length of the story is equivalent to a 4 seasons of overseas TV series ※ The word "overseas" instead of "western" is because of playing it safe. "海外" is mostly defined as foreign or overseas countries outside Japan (a general definition). If it's specifically western, the word "西洋 "would be used.
• As known before, they are doing their best to ensure there's no loading required in this game.
• Sure, people can enjoy the story, but please take ample of sleep and rest as well.

Final Fantasy XIV

• Recounting the experience in how YoshiP got into Final Fantasy XIV. This is already recounted numerous times so I'm not going to repeat it anymore.
• Prior to joining/transferred to work on XIV, he was still in the Dragon Quest side.
• When FFXIV was in the progress of rebuilding, Ochiai was still in university.
• Rebuilding the game from scratch is touted by FFXIV as "the first in the game industry". Plenty of media people wonder why YoshiP just didn't scrap XIV and make it XV instead, which YoshiP says that doing so wouldn't restore people's faith in Final Fantasy series, thus revamping the entire game was necessary to do so.

Final Fantasy XV

• YoshiP heard that there are a lot of people who enjoyed FFXV, however the most glaring problem in the feedback he received was how "abrupt" the story ended, as well as the DLC and its issues. This was already touched on other interviews. So as YoshiP go to various places and talked to the players about XV, most of the criticisms he got focused on that. While each FF is created based on what the director wishes the game to be, since XVI is a title followed by XV, and story being one of the important elements of an RPG, YoshiP wants to ensure that they can tell the story in a coherent manner to address the cons. of XV and also prove to players and fans that Final Fantasy is still going strong, so story is where the development team is pouring their absolute effort in.

On how the story is evaluated※ by YoshiP when creating a masterpiece game

• YoshiP shares his thoughts by citing the difference between how a Hollywood movie is made (its system and how a script decides who to fund them), and how the game is created in Japan. As games are created by corporations there's no funding involved, therefore it's very systematic, and thus there's no evaluation/review involved in it. Since all of the ones developing the games are gamers too, they just read through and give feedback to the scriptwriter. Just that the requirement is to create a unified "story + game experience".

Final Fantasy XVI Part II

• When was YoshiP approached to make the game? 2015
• Ochiai points out that world changes a lot in between 2015 to 2023, citing the war between Russia and Ukraine, COVID, and even in game industry itself, Fortnite gaining prominence plus Unreal Engine's evolution, how different development 3D games have become, indie games and how game development environment has also changed and move forward since, so he asked YoshiP on how all of this affected the story and the development throughout. YoshiP then shares on how the game started its development: The game started with only 3 members, as at that time FFXIV was gaining prominence and is growing rapidly, and YoshiP directly told the higherups that immediately working on XVI was not possible because of this. And since YoshiP was, and still is, working as a director and producer of FFXIV, he cannot work as the director for FFXVI, which is why he chose Hiroshi Takai to take the position, out of time reasons as well as consideration to the fanbase (which he doesn't feel it's appropriate). The game started with only 3 members: Producer, Director, and Script Writer. As XVI being slowly worked on for one year, the transition from other staff members working on XIV to XVI began. The story was decided at that time to be static, universal and easily understood. The base of the story at that time was based on energy wars - There's crystals, crystals benefit civilization, flourished, and so on. Then the Blight happens, which he won't detail. Thus, it's a story containing military history, with medieval gothic Europe-style as a base, Magic, and each countries on war with each other fighting for resource. However YoshiP didn't expect that war between Russia and Ukraine actually broke out (he didn't mention this directly but you know what he meant) and he actually discussed with Sony before once to cancel the schedule he had with them during the second trailer release. He is worried that in this timing, releasing a game that contain a realistic depiction of war (followed by people dying in war and living desperately in face of death) may not be appropriate because of the events that are happening, even though it's just entertainment.
• Ochiai also cited a point where VI and VII (where he's from that generation) was also enjoyable due to how "movie-like" it is. And he also thought of how forward thinking VII was. YoshiP agrees because at that time, the Gaia Hypothesis was also gaining prominence during the 90s in Japan, which give birth to the concept of Lifestream, and that impacts him a lot. Ochiai also discussed on how FFVII Remake has a universal story theme that deals with energy as a theme.
• The other point of XVI is the Eikons and the Dominants, and how their existence affects the story as well as the "energy/resources theme" .
• Ochiai also brought up FFX, which he enjoyed when he was in middle school days. YoshiP also commented that Ochiai's generation is where they praised FFX highly as one of the greatest masterpiece (FFX is very popular in Japan)
• Ochiai followed by asking what would be the greatest FF for people before his generation. YoshiP answers that since he's 50, his generation would pick FFI as their favorite because coming into FFI after Dragon Quest is very different because of how FF is so much more dramatic, then followed by III due to how polished the game is due to the job system, as well as the occurrence of Crystal Tower. VII would be another shocking moment for YoshiP as the game transitions into 3D, as well as it's volume (3 discs worth of content), but ultimately the definition of what Final Fantasy is can be different from generation to generation, individual to individual.
• Switching topics, from 3 starting members, it then expands to about 30, and work further for 1 1/2 years for the alpha version. Ultimately due to the nature of the venue, YoshiP isn't willing to disclose the exact amount of people working on it, but it's on "several hundreds". This game is also not developed in Japan only, it's an international effort (production outsourcing, facial captures done in studio outside Japan, etc). YoshiP has given a very small info. You can press Triangle button to speed up the staff credits roll.
• YoshiP has cited the reason behind why it's full facial capture because of how the graphics have evolved up to this point that not using full-facial capture is going to end up looking fake, thus breaking immersion.
• Ochiai followed with another question on how much the graphics have changed between each titles he have worked on, from his days in Hudson Soft, to DQX, to FFXIV , then to FFXVI. YoshiP answered by stating that in XIV, there's a lot of considerations to make when it comes to graphic because of rendering several hundreds of people in one screen, and how the memory has to accommodate for home consoles, so it's a lot different than developing for standalone games. When it comes to standalone FF game, since they are developing the game from scratch, they can reconsider the technology (and did), and find out the trend, which development pipeline to use, and discard things that are unnecessary.
• And since the game is rendered on real time, Ochiai asks if there's anything YoshiP is particular about when developing the game through the use of game engine. YoshiP's answer: They wanted to stop using anything that is related to pre-render, but there is one particular scene that involves the sea (which he won't detail because spoilers) and he felt that going real time render is impossible for that particular moment, so he'd say 95% of the game is real time, and the sea/ocean is pre-render, and characters that are rendered in real time will be pre-rendered just for that particular part and created a movie cutscene of it without any need of loading (since they are going with an FF with no "Now Loading" on screen). Another thing that the development team is particular about would be the use of Cutscene Editor (things they use to create cutscenes): with many people using the editor, addressing feedback and having programmers working to perfect the tools and create amazing cutscene through the tools as well.
• YoshiP has emphasized on one thing: He has no idea who or which department will be creating FFXVII (FF17). Of course the above mentioned experiences would be useful for any new work developed by CBU3 in the future, but he has no idea if the experiences working in FFXVI will help FFXVII for now.

On Worldwide Game Market

• According to this, as of 2023, the worldwide game industry market share (if the term is wrong please correct me) has reached 172.6 billion (Roughly 24 trillion yen), and in 2023, 88% of that number is occupied by the digital market, which includes console games (download), PC games (download), mobile games and so on.
• YoshiP has one again reiterate that this will be PS5 exclusive (for now). Ochiai asks if there's online or multiplayer content, YoshiP then answered that there's a high difficulty mode after clearing the game once, and a score attack mode will be available, which people can compete with others in scores. While it's not player vs player, the score will be uploaded to the leaderboard, and people can compete with each other. Basically, this is a single player RPG game. Ochiai comments that it's rare to see a game like this today.
• Ochiai then followed with his next question: In Square Enix, which age range/generation occupies the most for the current development team composition for FFXVI. YoshiP answered that the development members are mostly in their latter 30s (by average), which Ochiai commented that their exposure on their first FF lies on around VI or VII, and entered Square Enix after the merger (Square Enix was previously known as Squaresoft), and also got used to games emulating the movie watching experience, and pursue high fidelity graphics, thus they know what to achieve in terms of their ideal FF. YoshiP agrees, saying that FF has been aiming for high quality graphics since the near end of SNES days (VI), therefore expecting high quality graphics have been the baseline compared to other games. The other would be the game volume, story and music. Those components are what have been expected by the fans, so it's an absolute requirement when working in FF. As someone working in the management side, he is highly aware that those are necessary.
• Even the modelers of FFXVI are from Square Enix (meaning it's done internally, not outsourced). There's even staff members working specifically at sculpting (especially a master), working on the physical outlook of the Eikons. YoshiP specifically went to Fine Arts university to find talented sculptors to work for him. At first these people doesn't look like they're interested in digital work but demonstrating how important having a sculptor can contribute a lot to expressing their artistry in game industry, it changed their minds and thus willing to offer themselves to work on FFXVI. This shows that the development team can be very particular at their work, so even for sculptors, they can spend one full day only sculpting on the models.
• Ochiai then followed by asking about how AIs are utilized in FFXVI (as party members acting on their own, the game system operated by AI, etc). YoshiP finds it difficult to answer because it depends on which segment to utilize AI, but to him, there is a worth in creating a stage through human hands because a sense of entertainment can be felt from there, but for things that are extremely tough to be done manually, then a level of automation using AI would be better, although from academic point of view, the level is really low. However since the technology is rapidly advancing and it comes to the point where doing it manually can end up being unmanageable, therefore having AI managing some of the task proved to be helpful and positive in this case.