Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been one of the breakout hits of 2025. It's also a classically styled turn-based role-playing game, taking cues from many popular series, including Final Fantasy. These two factors have both led to many questions about whether Final Fantasy might return to its own roots, and now the question's been posed to one of Final Fantasy's front-facing leads.
Naoki Yoshida, the director/producer of Final Fantasy 14 and producer of Final Fantasy 16, was asked in an interview with AnimeNewsNetwork whether mainline Final Fantasy games could go back to being turn-based, in the wake of Clair Obscur's success.
"With this question of turn-based versus action, it tends to isolate the gameplay to just the battle system," said Yoshida. "That doesn't take into account what kind of game the creators want to deliver to players. For example, based on a certain graphical quality we want to present to our players, or the narrative we want to deliver to our players, it relates to how we set up the game's systems around it. This includes the battle system, game design, and gameplay feel. It's not a clear-cut answer, whether it will become all turn-based, or if it's going to become more action-based.
"[I'm] not necessarily going to be on Final Fantasy 17, so we also don't want to obstruct or limit our future director or whomever will be producing the games like 17 or even 18," Yoshida continued. "We don't want to put them on a rail."
The answer, essentially, is still up in the air. Final Fantasy changes with each entry, after all; aside from creating new stories and casts for each mainline numbered entry, each game can range from highly iterative to full-on evolutions or change-ups. Looking at the gameplay shifts from, say, Final Fantasy 9 on through 12 and 13 emphasizes how the series often shakes things up for each successive installment.
Yoshida has talked about this in the past, within the context of Final Fantasy 16 opting for a very action-oriented system. That entry tried to appeal to a different crowd, because of the "expected" sales and impact of a mainline Final Fantasy.
We've had these conversations before, around the future of Final Fantasy, and will probably have them again. After all, simply judging by the development timelines of the past few mainline games, it might be a bit until we start hearing about Final Fantasy 17, much less 18 or beyond.
Meanwhile, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and its development team at Sandfall Interactive have certainly struck success by honing in on their goals and passions, so maybe that is the true objective to strive towards.
Eric is a freelance writer for IGN.