FFXV to receive new modes and huge free story update next year

It’s already sold five million units across the world, but Square Enix has announced that Final Fantasy XV will be getting a huge, free update to its story sometime next year.

It’s not yet clear how much the update will affect the game’s overall narrative, but game director Hajime Tabata said the team’s initial plans will aim to enrich certain aspects of the game” starting from Chapter 13 by adding gameplay enhancements and buffing the game’s ring magic.

We want you to enjoy Final Fantasy XV for a long time to come,” Tabata said in a blog post on Square Enix’s website.

We have been listening to your ideas on how to make the game experience even better, and so in addition to the previously announced content, we’ll be providing free updates to the game throughout the coming year."

Beyond those initial story tweaks, the studio will then turn its attention to working on adding new cutscenes to give players more information about each character’s motivations and overall backstory. These will then be voiced and localised in a variety of different languages, so it may take some time before they appear in the game itself.

Square Enix attempted to flesh out FFXV’s backstory with its ‘Final Fantasy XV Universe’ project, a multimedia series that included both the CGI film Kingsglaive: Final Fantasy XV and online animated series Brotherhood: Final Fantasy XV. Both were heavily promoted during the company’s Uncovered: Final Fantasy XV event back in March, but since then have rather fallen under the radar, leaving certain scenes and characters a bit of a mystery to players who haven’t seen either piece of media prior to playing the game.

Tabata also said his team was working on making certain key characters playable, and even considering the possibility of customizable avatars.”

New bosses with exclusive rewards and achievements might make an appearance as well, on top of time-limited hunts. This is in addition to the already planned season pass content that includes three chapters dedicated to lead characters Gladiolus, Ignis and Prompto, a FFXV Booster Pack, FFXV Holiday Pack and FFXV Comrades Expansion Pack.

Other features earmarked for future updates include allowing players to carry over stats from previous playthroughs and introducing new items to encourage different styles of play, such as low-level runs and god mode. Tabata said his team was also looking at increasing font sizes for certain languages to make menus and text easier to read.

Tabata originally stated that Final Fantasy XV would need to sell 10 million copies worldwide in order to be a success, but with such strong launch sales and buckets of extra content on the way, it looks like it may well achieve that figure and more.