Final Fantasy 16's director, Hiroshi Takai, has confirmed that the game won't feature an airship, boat, or car of any kind and that traversal will mainly be done by foot or by chocobo.

From what we've seen of Final Fantasy 16 so far, it seems to be taking the series in a very different direction compared to other numbered games. This has been made clear from the game's more serious tone, but it's also been made clear by how much more linear Final Fantasy 16 is going to be, with the game's producer previously confirming that it wasn't going to be open-world and would instead have "independent area-based" design.

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This linear focus means that Final Fantasy 16 will join the small number of mainline games in the series that don't feature a controllable airship of some kind. As reported by Game Informer, Final Fantasy 16 won't let Clive drive any vehicles to explore and will instead be focused entirely on chocobo riding or walking around.

a chocobo in final fantasy 16
via Square Enix

Takai said, "To tell you the truth, it’s pretty much just chocobos. In past Final Fantasy games, you’d have canoes or boats or cars to travel in. But in Final Fantasy XVI, because our game is based on that main world map and travelling from that world map and doing fast travel from that, we found that there wasn’t really a need for any kind of expanded type of traversal systems. So yeah, currently, we only have walking and the chocobos.”

That being said, Takai does note that there will be other types of transport available in the main story, but that these will only be used as part of the story and won't be used anywhere else. It seems likely that we'll still see an airship of some kind appear in a cutscene or story sequence of some kind, but that we just won't be able to control it whenever we like.

Reactions to this news have been a little mixed over on ResetEra, with some Final Fantasy fans expressing disappointment that they won't be able to use an airship to get around. However, most note that this is what they've been expecting because of how much the developers have talked about the game being more linear.

Some fans also pointed out that fast travel is still the primary way of getting around in other Final Fantasy games that feature flying mounts, like Final Fantasy 14. Others pointed out that one of the best games in the series, Final Fantasy 10, doesn't really let you control an airship until right at the end of the game, so it not being a focus for Final Fantasy 16 shouldn't be a big deal.

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