We have known for a long time that Final Fantasy XVI will be the first main part of the franchise with the Mature rating). The first hint of this was made by the European organization PEGI, which set the debut trailer, published in September 2020, a preliminary rating of 18.

Later, closer to launch, the rating was confirmed by various rating commissions in Brazil, the USA and most other countries. Gamers have always assumed that this is due to the explicit goal of developers to tell a more mature story inspired "The game of thrones".

However, in an interview with Game Informer, the producer Naoki Yoshida said that the creation of a more cruel game was not at all, and the rating increased mainly because the rules became stricter than in the past.

We often get this question – people ask us whether the rating has increased, because we wanted to make a more cruel game, and the answer to it is not. From the outside it seems that the rating system has not changed. You still have E, you still have TEEN, and you still have MATURE. The problem is that over the years, as more and more games came out, and as we moved forward, the rules in them have changed a lot. We find that we cannot do so much to get the same rating as before.

The director of the game Hiroshi Takai added that this is mainly due to much greater visual realism, which provides modern iron.

With the advent of new generations of hardware and more and more realistic visual effects, if you want to tell a story that seems real, it should also look real. Showing realistic images, it is difficult to keep them within the framework of a lower rating, because they become so visceral, and I think that this trend can be seen after the release of the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3, when the graphics became a little more realistic.

The transition to a higher rating allows us to tell the story that we want to tell, without the need to pretend. If you are trying to tell the story about the war, but you cannot show blood, it will not be realistic.

Final Fantasy XVI will be exclusively on June 22 on PS5. The version for the PC will be "thoroughly" It is developed after launch on this console and probably appear at some point in 2024.