The time period seen in Final Fantasy XV’s latest trailer will only be shown in flashbacks in the final game.

Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata explained that the time period shown in the latest trailer, which takes place fifteen years before the main game, will not be featured in any playable sequences but will instead be shown before players take control in order to provide context.

“[Those are] only flashbacks in the main game, the events you see when he's a young boy, fifteen years before the start of the main game itself. But it really is important, because it shows the events which were really vital and pivotal in what happens in the story you'll be actually playing through,” Tabata. “So, it's really important to have a way to [see] both of those periods in his life.”



Tabata explained that these sequences are representative of his own personal experiences in some ways.

“I remember some really fond memories of my own father and how I related to him. I remember being driven around by him in his car,” he explained. “And when he started talking to me about cars, I started getting interested in the car he drives and talked about that kind of stuff.”

“And so, because of that, we have the same car that Noctus was driven around in as a kid,” he continued, referring to the car the main characters drive in Final Fantasy XV’s playable demo, Episode Duscae. “It's his father's car, the royal transport, the one his dad drove. And in the journey that the characters go on fifteen years later, they're all driven around in that. And that's very much representative of his relationship with his father, because he’s inherited this car. There's a lot of attachment to that.”

Tabata says Square Enix is “not going to make you wait until 2017” to play Final Fantasy XV. For more from our interview, read about the game's simultaneous worldwide release plus how the team may collaborate with the developers of Just Cause 3.