History VideoGame / FinalFantasyXVI

* LuddWasRight: Cid believes that the Mothercrystals themselves are the true cause of the blight, and wants to destroy them both for this reason, and to break the cycle of war and bloodshed that plagues Valisthea. It doesn't take much for Clive and Jill to join the cause as well. [[spoiler:It's later revealed that Ultima, humanity's precursors, destroyed their own homeworld thanks to their overuse of magic, and Ultima originally wanted humanity to be his own disposable vessels with which he could repopulate Valisthea after escaping to it. After vanquishing Ultima, Clive destroys the last Mothercrystal, Origin, so that nobody can ever lay claim to it and to force the surviving humanity to adapt to a world without magic.]]

* LoveRuinsTheRealm: Most of Sanbreque's problems can be traced back to Emperor Sylvestre marrying a woman who is petty, selfish, conniving, treacherous, cruel, and nowhere near as competent at actual governance as she thinks she is. [[spoiler:Barnabas also manipulates Hugo Kupka into becoming Waloed's pawn through this trope, first by having Benedikta seduce him, then after her death, framing Cid for the same, causing Hugo to attack the original Hideaway, and after the timeskip, outright sell out his own country to Sanbreque to get a clear shot at Cid's successor, Clive.]]

* LoveRuinsTheRealm: Most of Sanbreque's problems can be traced back to Emperor Sylvestre marrying a woman who is petty, selfish, conniving, treacherous, cruel, and nowhere near as competent at actual governance as she thinks she is.

** In [[https://www.eurogamer.net/final-fantasy-16-has-me-questioning-the-essence-of-the-series an Eurogamer interview]], Yoshida also noted for the general ambience of the game "We had our core team of about 30 members very early on buy the Blu-ray boxset of ''Series/GameOfThrones'' and required everyone to watch it, because we wanted this type of feel." It likely isn't a coincidence then that a lot of aspects of the setting are very similar: Valisthea consists of two continents just like Westeros and Essos; Rosaria combines the Northlands and the Riverlands, TheGoodKingdom whose ruler gets his head lopped off at the start of the game; Sanbreque is King's Landing, the seat of the Empire where the rich and powerful live; the Iron Kingdom is the Iron Islands, a nation situated on islands off the western coast who raid the mainland; the Dhalmekian Republic is Dorne with a dash of the Westerlands, an arid region known for its wealth derived from their mining enterprises; and Waloed is Essos, a mysterious and isolated part of the world home to ancient magic and forbidden knowledge.

** If you get a GameOver fighting certain bosses or story fights, restarting will not only bring you back to the last checkpoint within the fight itself, but automatically restock all your healing items. You're also given the opportunity to open the menu and adjust your gear and abilities before continuing. The "Final Fantasy" mode changes things so that you only restock two regular potions and any healing items you hadn't used before the checkpoint.

** The game contains various "Timely Accessories" to simplify gameplay for those who aren't so skilled at Action [=RPGs=]. These rings include the ability to slow time just before getting hit to make dodging easier, a ring to make dodging automatic (if possible), one to use healing items automatically when low on HP, one to make combos easier to perform by mashing the same button over and over, and one to make Torgal controlled by an AI instead of having to input commands for him. The game tells you about the rings after the combat tutorial but before life-or-death combat begins against the goblin horde in the playable demo.

** If you get a GameOver fighting certain bosses or story fights, restarting will not only bring you back to the last checkpoint within the fight itself, but automatically restock all your healing items. You're also given the opportunity to open the menu and adjust your gear and abilities before continuing.

** A lot of focus is given to how Annabella and her Black Shields are purging Rosaria of its Bearer population and slaughtering any village that gives them shelter. No one in-story is sure of the motivation for the purges since, while Annabella is bigoted towards Bearers, even she would understand the practical reasons to keep them around, especially as crystals start becoming rarer and weaker, with speculations ranging from Annabella simply being StupidEvil, or having been corrupted in some way. None of this gets addressed when Clive finally faces off against Annabella, and after her death, the Black Shields end up working for another equally cruel and shortsighted benefactor as shown in the late-game Lostwing sidequests.

** During the first half of the story, a lot of focus is given to how Annabella and her Black Shields are purging Rosaria of its Bearer population and slaughtering any village that gives them shelter. No one in-story knows the motivation for the purges since, while Annabella is bigoted towards Bearers, even she would understand the practical reasons to keep them around, especially as crystals start becoming rarer and weaker. It's hinted that this was part of some greater plot but when Clive and his mother reunite, neither of them bring up the purges and they're never given any type of proper explanation.

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* AbsurdlyLowLevelCap: On Story and Action-Focused difficulty, the Level Cap is 50, though you can reasonably finish the game in the ballpark of around Level 40 or so. On Final Fantasy difficulty, the level cap is instead raised to 100 (and was raised to 105 with the addition of the ''Echoes of the Fallen'' DLC), but you can beat the game between Levels 80 and 90.

** Downplayed but still applicable; by the time you get the third set of Eikon abilities, you may notice the ability window spaces the Eikons in a manner to have room for seven sets of skills. Since the game mentions there are supposed to be eight Eikons, one for each element, this is a big clue that you're going to be missing one of them, and sure enough an eighth Eikon named Leviathan '''the Lost''' is briefly mentioned. Subverted for [[spoiler:Ifrit's abilities, which appears in the center of the screen between Clive's base abilities.]]

* AndIMustScream: In ''The Rising Tide'' DLC, it's revealed that this is the fate of [[spoiler:Leviathan's Dominant, an infant named Waljas]]. He was frozen in time for nearly a century, completely unable to move or interact with the world. But it's implied htat he was conscious the entire time, angry and terrified at being imprisoned [[spoiler:by his own family, so that his aether may be used to create a new Mothercrystal.]]