'Final Fantasy XV' Story Run Ten Years, According to Director

Departing from the previous entries' norm, Director Hajime Tabata reveals that Final Fantasy XV's overall story will span 10 years of Noctis and his friends' adventures.

According to an interview with IGN at this week's PAX West event, Tabata shared that the bearded version of Noctis we saw in the gameplay footage shown at Gamescom, is in fact ten years older than the one we saw at the start of the game.

Tabata mused, "In the opening sequence, you see Regis and Noctis talking to one another and Regis tells him to stand tall. His appearance later on in the game communicates that he has [taken] that to heart and lived with those final words."

He also commented that Noctis' change of appearance is made intently in order for the player to feel the passing of time, as well as to breathe life and realism into the characters.

"The whole change in Noctis' appearance from when the game starts compared to when years have passed [is so] that people would feel the passing of time, and that they were actual living, breathing characters rather than just symbolic characters."

Interestingly, Tabata noted just how similar Noctis' middle-aged version is in comparison to his father, King Regis.

"The one important part for us was to see a little bit of Regis in his appearance 10 years later."

"It's not typical to see a lot of Japanese RPGs with a mid-aged man as the main character," he continued. "A lot of people who like Japanese RPGs would be surprised by the fact that they'll see this character age in the way that he does, so it took a lot of courage for us as developers to do that. But we felt that it was important in communicating [the party's] development and wanting to express it in a way that we only can with the current generation of consoles."

In addition, other fragments of the Final Fantasy XV can be seen in "Final Fantasy XV: Brotherhood," an Original Net Animation (ONA) streaming monthly on YouTube. The said ONA details the origin of Noctis and his friends, with their current journey to Altissia serving as a backdrop. Furthermore, the events of the trailers are being fleshed out in "Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV," which saw the debut of Nyx and the Kingsglaive Order.

"Final Fantasy XV" is set to be released this November, 2016.