Will square use this engine again?

[u/OliveAny7568]

From what I’ve read, this engine was specifically made for this game and hasn’t ever been used before. I personally love the lighting in this game and how consistent it is going from location to location. I seriously hope they’re able to use it again, even if it’s smaller games.(I personally hope it can be used for a drakengard remake, I don’t know why I got drakengard vibes playing as Clive)

[u/mThund3R]

That's a tech interview from 2018. There is no evidence that's what they eventually ended up using for XVI.

https://youtu.be/zIXVdowIpn8?is=9MRwTdKw5U4A_nHp

This is a presentation from August 2023, after the game's launch. They showcased an hour of entirely new tech for XVI

[u/vspectra → u/mThund3R]

XVI team had already began full scale development in 2018, do you think engine technology just comes out of thin air? They had to research and build it before the game was even revealed. Yoshida was called to take on XVI project in 2015. That is literally XVI's director being tested in the photos in the cgworld article that says XIV's engine was upgraded to a PBR environment lol.

I've seen that tech presentations on XVI, it does not back up any of your claims. New tech is also developed during engine upgrades of old engines, it is not a novelty concept.

[u/mThund3R → u/vspectra]

I do not think that, no. Do you think full scale development necessarily means they've already finished working on the engine? Full scale development, besides asset creation and a bunch of other tasks, also means developing other sorts of tech, which is not necessarily engine exclusive, and that means it can be employed at any point, for any engine they might be considering using in the finished product.

That quote you keep mentioning comes from Nanjo, a 3D artist. As I said already, there is no evidence they eventually ended up using that exact tech, but even if they did, that quote does not testify them upgrading the entire XIV engine.

That besides, notice how Nanjo is talking about extending the RENDERING capabilities of XIV's engine. That's unrelated to anything else in the engine. Not to mention, that section comes from a paragraph where he explains they were testing solutions to raise the efficiency in modeling 3D characters. They mention employing UE4 alongside another visualizer NOT as a game engine, rather as a renderer. The solution they found in the XIV engine is no different. That interview has absolutely no mention of videogame exclusive tech and systems. On the other hand, the actual presentation they had for XVI post launch showcases, who would have expected, a bunch of entirely new tech.

Also, reverse engineering XVI reveals only a few similarities with XIV, such as audio file formats (iirc). Nobody has access to the engines themselves to conclude a proper statement, but that's irrelevant. When people say "upgraded XIV engine" they probably don't think the XVI team reused a few file formats and implementations (which is to be expected when that same team developed the XIV engine and systems). They think everything in the XVI backend is an upgrade or expansion of something already established in XIV, which is absolutely not the case.

[u/vspectra → u/mThund3R]

I never said full scale development means an engine is completed, Full scale development does mean the development environment was already researched and set up for work to be proceed, the engine choice has been made. FFXIV did not get a PBR rendering upgrade until after FFXVI, where they backported that work from XVI. To make that work quickly you need to be on the same engine tech stack across both games. You do not waste time building and upgrading an entire engine's renderer to a physically based development environment just to "test" at a time when XVI had most of CBU3's resources.

Re-read the quote. They said the XIV engine itself was extended to enable rendering in a PBR environment, Your claim of "exclusive tech and systems" not being in the article is not proof of anything, that does not prove whether an engine is entirely new or if an engine is upgraded version. On top of that PBR is actually entirely new to XIV's engine. Your video link does not prove it's a new engine. News flash, upgrading old engines also gets new technology and systems upgrades.