Selvom at Final Fantasy XVI kommer til at byde på store åbne vidder, og missioner der ikke nødvendigvis er direkte forbundet til hovedhistorien, så lader det umiddelbart til at det bliver en lineær affære.
Alligevel er det overraskende at høre instruktør Hiroshi Takai forklare IGN, at der altså ikke er en eneste valgfri Dungeon i spillet:
"We have - I think - four zones that are about two kilometers by two kilometers. On the world map you have the areas that you can travel to and you select that area and then you jump to that area seamlessly. And then you follow the main quest there. And then once you finish that, you'll go back to this hub area [...] called the Hideaway. We didn't create any [hidden dungeons or maps] because we wanted players to focus more on the main scenario and not have this feeling that you have to go to this area and clear this area. We wanted them to focus on this and we wanted to focus our development more on the main areas. So we didn't go out of our way to create maps that didn't need to be visited."
Du kan se gameplay fra spillet herunder.