Final Fantasy 15 is 55% Complete, But That Doesn't Mean It'll Take Another 8 Years

Final Fantasy XV has been in development for a long time. Revealed back at E3 2006, the game has gone through several big changes over the years, but the most interesting has been the change of directors. Formerly helmed by Tetsuya Nomura, he has since shifted over to directing Kingdom Hearts III. Meanwhile FF15's director has passed to Final Fantasy Type-0 director Hajime Tabata.

In an interview with Tabata at Tokyo Game Show this year, Tabata talked about where FFXV currently sits in terms of completion. "It's about 55 percent complete, but the quality of the demo itself, compared to the final product, is about 80 percent." So doing the math, you might assume that that means we have another eight years of waiting for the game to get into a final state, but Tabata clarified, "When asked if it's going to take another eight years: definitely not. I'm afraid we can't say how long it's going to take from here. But, since the transition to XV, we've gotten this far in two years."

Tabata also revealed that he actually took on the role of director during the shift of FFXV from PS3 to PS4 two years ago. "The game was first established as Final Fantasy Versus XIII for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 platforms, and we transitioned to Final Fantasy XV for next-gen consoles. That transition was made about two years ago, and I was put in charge of that project. Since then, we've re-evaluated the development team, the development structure, and the process."

With all the shifting, Tabata said that the reason they're putting out a demo next year is "because there are fans that have been waiting for eight years, and because it's in a playable state, we want to bring it to the fans as quickly as possible."

But how long will that demo experience last? Tabata clarified his earlier statements about the demo's projected length. "If you play through the story campaign, it should be about an hour of gameplay," Tabata said. "But, that being said, there's also the world map and there are different monsters that appear, as well as dungeons. So it should allow for 3-4 hours of gameplay."

While Square Enix has not clarified exactly when the demo for FF15 will be released, they have said that access will be given to people who purchase Final Fantasy Type-0 next year.