Don’t you love surprises, especially if it’s the sixteenth iteration of a beloved JRPG franchise?

There’s a rumour floating around that Final Fantasy XVI (or Final Fantasy 16) may be announced by Square Enix for the upcoming PlayStation 5 showcase in the middle of this week (via Twisted Voxel). FFXVI was supposed to be announced back in the first PS5 showcase, but it was pulled back for a future showcase. Instead, Square Enix announced action RPG Project Athia. It’s more of a CGI(?) trailer that may be gameplay, but that’s good enough for a teaser for things to come since Square Enix will start making more announcements at this year’s Tokyo Game Show.

This rumour is also tied to a recent recruitment drive for various positions in Square Enix. The post stated the following:

“This project has already completed the initial development, the development environment has been prepared, and we are now in the full-scale large-scale development phase. We are looking for developers who will give the world ‘fun’, ‘fun’ and ‘surprise’.”

It could honestly be anything, but given Square Enix’s track record of relying on the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts name a lot these past few years, it shouldn’t be a surprise.

The fact that Square Enix created an FFXVI Twitter account also adds credibility to the rumour. Also, Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts brand manager Shinji Hashimoto retweeted the PS5 announcement, meaning he might be making a Final Fantasy announcement. Or a new Kingdom Hearts game, which may be underwhelming if that happened.

The upcoming PS5 showcase will be 40 minutes long and will update viewers on current projects and announce new ones. So expect some new video game hype later this week. We reported on FF16 and Project Athia (the Luminious engine game) a while back.