The Japanese voice actor for Clive, the main character in Final Fantasy 16, recently revealed the absolutely massive size of the game's script. The game is setting records for video game cutscene lengths, with a longer collective runtime than the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy.Final Fantasy 16 is going all in on the story. It's been known for a while now that the cutscenes in the game were going to be incredibly long. All of that story, naturally, requires a lot from the voice actors for the game's main characters. To help visualize just how much voice acting there truly is in Final Fantasy 16, Clive's Japanese voice actor Yuuya Uchida recently posted a picture showing off a script that is jaw-dropping in size. The picture comes via the official Twitter account of Yuuya Uchida. The caption, translated from Japanese, reads, "Finally the day has come. Several years have passed since the day when I jumped for joy. Here's my full script for Clive." As Uchida sits, the script reaches from the floor up to nearly his chin. It looks like an incredibly intimidating amount of content to read, much less to carry any significant distance. It would be tough to keep up with that amount of dialogue, and it doesn't help that the story of Final Fantasy 16 is also apparently very confusing.
Final Fantasy 16 is the first game in the franchise to record in English before doing voice recording in Japanese. It's unknown right now exactly how long the English version of the script is, but English is known to be denser when written than Japanese, an issue that frequently affects manga translations, so it's likely even bigger than the already massive script posted by Yuuya Uchida. It would be interesting to see Ben Starr, the English voice actor for Clive, post a comparison picture for curious fans.
The game is finally out for the world to experience, and early reviews for Final Fantasy 16 are already very positive. The majority of that positivity is geared toward the action-packed gameplay, while comments about the story vary from positive to some considering it a little run-of-the-mill. An average story for a video game isn't necessarily such a bad thing, but when there is so much story packed into a single game like Final Fantasy 16, it could become a much more noticeable flaw if the script is lacking what it needs to keep players engaged. It's still very new, though, and franchise diehards will be weighing in with their opinions on whether the game's giant script was worth it or not in the coming days.
Final Fantasy 16 is out on PS5 now.