E3 2016: Final Fantasy XV’s Fights Contain A Breather Option
Square-Enix broadcast a livestream of Final Fantasy XV today, and director Hajime Tabata was present. About fifty minutes into the playthrough, he mentioned that some features in the game were a result of player feedback, and that they were watching one such feature at the moment: battles in the game can be paused.
Tabata says the feature was added due to the common comment that many players were frustrated with the ATB battle system and that it did not provide them enough time to think. The FFXV dev team’s solution was Wait Mode, which can be turned on in the options menu. When Wait Mode is activated, the characters will stop fighting (and so will the enemies) when the game senses no button has been pressed.
Wait Mode won’t last forever — it comes with a meter that trickles down. But it does give the FFXV grind time to breathe. You can switch between Active Mode and Wait Mode at any time during gameplay.
See Wait Mode in the video below at 54:00. Final Fantasy XV comes out for Playstation 4 and XBox One on September 30.