Final Fantasy 16 has almost reached the finish line of its development cycle, as main director Hiroshi Takai and other members of the development team revealed new details on the game in a series of interviews. Speaking to Famitsu, Takai was quizzed about the current development status of the game and gave a quick answer on the topic.

“About 95%,” Takai said. In a more thorough follow-up to the question, Takai added that the development team was playing through the game and addressing any issues along the way. “The current situation is that we play through the game day by day, tweak the rough parts, and brush up the parts that have flaws in performance or drawing,” he said. “The rest is bugfixing.”

Producer Naoki Yoshida also explained that due to the scale of the game, debugging the game takes a lot of time and “almost all” programmers have been neck-deep in the game’s code as they fix any bugs encountered, but the studio expects to reveal the Final Fantasy XVI release date soon. “I think we can announce the release date by the end of the year,” Yoshida said.

While Final Fantasy XVI contains many of the hallmarks of the long-running franchise, from powerful Eikon summons to massive crystals that are a coveted source of power, this installment’s main story won’t feature any branching paths. Instead, side stories will give players the opportunity to explore outside of the main path, leading them to new areas that contain more challenging enemies to test your skills against.

“There are lots of side stories interspersed around the main story. These side stories give a lot of insight into the lore and show different sides to the characters,” Takai said to IGN. “The areas themselves are of varying sizes, some smaller and some larger, but there are multiple so-called “field” areas of around [two square kilometers], containing settlements and other features within them. As you progress through the story, you’ll also encounter quite a good number of areas called stages.”

Stages and field areas don’t have to be explored as areas where players can grind XP to make the endgame easier, but they will contain resources and strong enemies called Elite Marks. These zones will also restrict which Eikon powers protagonist Clive can wield, resulting in more interesting challenges for players to try out.

Final Fantasy XVI is aiming for a Summer 2023 launch on PS5 and will be followed by Final Fantasy VII Rebirth in Winter 2023. In case you missed it, the most recent Final Fantasy XVI trailer for the game took a deep dive into the lands of Final Fantasy XVI, the warring nations that inhabit it, and the massive Eikon battles that will be waged between the Dominants.