A glimpse from the past: Ignis won’t be steering the car from the left side anymore

Active Time Report PAX Prime Edition Reveals New Details & Footage

By playing Final Fantasy XV Episode Duscae earlier this year, the fans got an opportunity to experience a big majority of main mechanics from the game such as the battle system basis and exploration. To keep up with the deadline, the team couldn’t include one key feature in the demo – the famous car. Today, we are going to take a closer look at its newly announced mechanics and features.

Cars Are Designed Based on the Lore

In the world of Final Fantasy XV, cars were first produced in the empire of Niflheim and their technology and culture were imported to other countries, including Lucis. This was before Nilfheim launched an attack on the capital of Lucis, Imsomnia – ahead of the peace treaty ceremony where both nations were meant to sign an armistice, ending a long and bitter conflict.

In Nilfheimian culture, it isn’t really that unusual for people to posses firearms and carry them around all the time. As a big majority of them are right-handed, the cars are engineered and designed to be steered from the left side, which allows drivers to better protect themselves against the upcoming threats – when technology was imported to the other nations this designing choice was assimilated in their cultures as well.

In the previous screenshots, you could see Ignis steering the car from the right side because the nation of Lucis is based on the modern Japan, where people do really drive their cars that way. As the development progressed, the team had many discussions about the car designs and mechanics behind it and after considering the cultural influence in the lore, they decided to change the steering to the left side and standardize the driving features to avoid further problems. If this decision wasn’t made,  they should have planned two separate ways of moving the wheel, driving lanes, traffic signs and much more when the player exits the Lucis area. This could have been quite confusing, but it’s not an issue anymore.

Driving in Final Fantasy XV – Gameplay Mechanics

Gasoline was one of the new key features revealed at PAX Prime. Like in the real world, the player has to pay attention to the amount of gas and how the car is consuming it at the given time. If the car runs out of fuel, it will simply stop and become inoperative. This won’t be a game over but Noctis and his bros have to push the car to the nearest gas station. The developers didn’t yet reveal how long one full tank will last, but we will get more details about that on a later date.

There are two driving modes: automatic and manual. As revealed previously, the player can take the wheel by himself / herself and control the car during the manual mode. The automatic mode allows Noctis to relax and let his all-knowing and talented servant Ignis to drive him wherever he wishes. By choosing the destination from the car menu, Ignis will automatically take the group to the objective and park their car to the nearest parking lot. At any time, you can take over the car, stop it and run off to explore the fields. Perhaps you should kill a few behemoths to get ingredients for that all famous Duscaen Behemoth Steak?

There are four view modes available during the automatic drive:

• Scenic: Let’s you to see the surroundings around you
• Joyride: Views the group closely and let’s you the listen to their discussions or music playing from the radio
• Tail: See the view behind the car and where you are heading
• Driver: Experience the road from the 1st person view like when you are driving the car in the real world

There will be customization available for drive modes as well, but we will learn more about them next time. When you leave the car, it will stay there until you return to the same location. By consuming gils, it’s possible for Cindy to move it to another location. You can see all new car gameplay, starting at 41:00 in the video below.

That’s all about the car and lore this time! Final Fantasy XV will be hitting the stores somewhere in 2016 and the release date will be revealed in March! You can expect more new details from Tokyo Game Show 2015 where Square Portal will be as well – we’re so excited! Get ready!