Final Fantasy XV’s multiplayer beta went live today, and in it, you can hack-and-slash through a few short quests. You can also spend hours creating your very own avatar, adjusting everything from facial tattoos to, uh, lower jaw width.
There’s a lot of detail in this thing, to the point where you can actually choose two parents for your character, who will look like a hybrid of their faces.
You can adjust various parts of your character’s face and body, and you can of course give them the tackiest tattoo of all time:
Here’s my character, who owns:
Many of the options are locked out, however. One might wonder why Final Fantasy XV, a single-player role-playing game that came out nine months ago, is getting multiplayer DLC. A safe bet is that publisher Square Enix will include some sort of cosmetic microtransactions when this multiplayer mode does ship, and that you’ll be able to deck out your character in even more creative ways.
As for the main contents of the beta, well, if you’ve played Final Fantasy XV’s combat, you know what you’re getting. You work with a team of three other people (either AIs or other players) and select from a handful of quests like “defeat the Naga” or “escort this train without letting it get killed.” You and your party are all members of the Kingsglaive, Final Fantasy XV’s elite fighting force, which means you all have access to Noctis’s warp strike and magical spells. You can also summon many of his weapons, like katanas, glaives, and shurikens.
You can no doubt picture the loop here: every time you finish a quest, you’ll get some experience and items. The beta doesn’t keep track of your progress very well, but presumably the main game will let you keep unlocking cooler quests the more you play. Hopefully some of those quests ask you and your party to do more than just fight monsters. (Maybe some cooperative puzzles?)
The beta has some connection issues—it’s a beta!—and if you do give it a spin, you might have to try a few times before you actually get into a game. But it’s fun. Final Fantasy XV’s combat is still good. And, most importantly, you can adjust your character’s lower jaw width.