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Final Fantasy 16 Commits One of Gaming’s Biggest Sins

Gordon Bicker

Published: Jun 23, 2023 08:55 am

Final Fantasy XVI has an array of informative and valuable menus to go through. Still, if you happen to have a larger screen or any visual impairments, some of those menus will be fairly illegible — if legible at all. This is down to a certain presumed oversight on the development where the text is extremely small: let’s hope you have a magnifying glass nearby to view anything you need to read on the menus.

Final Fantasy 16 Text Size Is a Hit or Miss

Ah text size, the age-old problem that developers have been battling for years has once again been realized in all of its misreadable glory once again. Redditors swiftly took to forums when they were having their own issues reading text even in the demo release of the game. It is clear that a lot of people are enjoying the game — ourselves included — but the text size is most definitely taking a spotlight for something that could be fixed.

Text Size Too Small
byu/respect_pizza inFFXVI

Any time that you are looking through menus and trying to read most things, you will have to take an extra cautious eye over the text extracting the letters as you go. Anyone who needs accessibility for general text reading will find these screens to be a pain in the side and genuinely unfair to navigate through.

Of course, Final Fantasy XVI’s text size is still much more readable than some other titles such as Elden Ring for example. Nonetheless, it still highlights a very present solution to the problem which is that all games should have a text scalability slider in some form or another. It is an important accessibility (and general quality-of-life) feature that should not be overlooked.

Is There Any Way to Increase the General Text Size in Final Fantasy 16?

No, you can only adjust the subtitle size via the “Language Settings” in the system menu. There is currently no way to increase the overall text size which means that for item descriptions or any other general menu text, you will have to find the most ideal physical position to read through everything. It shouldn’t be too much of an issue for those closer to their TV/monitor but still will require some work to read.

It is unknown if Square Enix plans on adding a general text scale setting in the future of the game but for the moment, the answer to that question we can not reliably estimate. For now, you will need to pretend you are reading medieval journal text while glancing through the menus in Final Fantasy XVI.

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Author

Gordon Bicker

Gordon is a contributing writer for Attack of the Fanboy, a Games Design (BA) Honours student, and a Video Game Ambassador. He has been writing at AOTF for over a year and a half, with four years of games writing experience for outlets like Green Man Gaming. When he's not busy, he'll no doubt be experiencing games, writing poetry, playing guitar, adventuring, or happily starting a new Skyrim playthrough! As an avid Final Fantasy XIV player, he also hopes that you'll gain a warm feeling from his community stories. Gordon has reported on Fallout 4 and Destiny 2, whose favorite genres include action RPGs, MMORPG's and First Person Shooters but is always experimenting with many other types of games.