Thanks to nunoxbrown for the inspiration!

Ever since the turn of the millennium, video games have increasingly become “open world”.

Open world, free roam, or (more loosely) sandbox are terms for video games where a player can move freely through a virtual world and is given considerable freedom in regard to how and when to approach particular objectives, as opposed to other video games that have a more linear structure to their gameplay.

Fans mistakenly apply the first open world Final Fantasy game to Final Fantasy XV. But the open world aspect was apart of the original game.

Now, of course, Final Fantasy is linear in the fact that you have progressed through the story. But once you get the airship, you can go to many different places. Sure you need to trigger certain requirements before you can enter certain dungeons. But isn’t this common in many different games of the era? You can go to most places once you get the airship, even if there’s nothing to do there.

Every game of these types lets you return to most past places. This is true for Final Fantasy especially once you get an airship. This is what fans mean by the world “opening up”. Final Fantasy had already incorporated the idea of an “open world” in their games since 1987.

So for all those people who believe Final Fantasy shouldn’t take on the open world tradition, Final Fantasy already has…