As Final Fantasy XVI inches ever closer to its June 22nd launch date, the development team shares more details on their inspirations.

　　Speaking to Push Square in a recent interview, Square Enix producer Naoki Yoshida revealed that the Eikon battles where two summoned monsters face each other in a fighting game-like style had been inspired by the original God of War games.

　　I love the two games, especially God of War. The craziness of the boss battles in God of War, when it was a more traditional action game, is just... The game design is so different for each stage, and the boss is so unique, everything is made with power, and you can feel the power. So, while I personally also really like the most recent God of War games, I look back further to the original God of Wars, and especially the boss battles in those, how the boss battles are all crazy, they're all different designs for each, they're all unique, they're all over the top, and in getting inspiration from that and creating our Eikon versus Eikon battles to kind of have that same feel.

　　Final Fantasy XVI Art Director Hiroshi Minagawa added:

　　We really looked deeply at the God of War games, looking at all the leaves on the trees and comparing them to what we have to make sure what we have is hopefully better than what they have.

　　It's an interesting analogy. Earlier this year, Final Fantasy XVI Game Director Hiroshi Takai compared the game to the rebooted God of War titles, though he was mainly referring to the split between action and roleplaying game elements. It seems like the new Final Fantasy may borrow elements from both the original and the new God of War series.

　　Yesterday, Wccftech published a final preview where Kai Powell went hands-on with the game's first few hours. Here's an excerpt:

　　Being able to finally see the townscapes and dabble around in side quests, as mundane as delivery fetch quests can be before an introduction, does give me some hope for Final Fantasy XVI being able to bring the RPG part of the equation to the forefront without making sacrifices to accommodate for the action gameplay.

　　Final Fantasy XVI is out on June 22nd as a PlayStation 5 exclusive. The game is likely to be eventually released for PC, too, though it will be a while before that happens.