How to sprint in Final Fantasy 16

Final Fantasy 16 (FF16) is a game mostly made up of cutscenes and fights. But sometimes, you have to move between one cutscene or fight and the next one. Cutscenes and fights are often urgent, so you want to be able to get to the next one as fast as possible. So, how do you sprint in this game?

Final Fantasy 16 actually teaches you how to sprint in the third tutorial pop-up at the very start of the game—after how to open the menu and how to move Clive and the camera. But you might have forgotten how it works, especially if you did that bit while playing the demo a few weeks before the game’s full release.

What is the sprint button in Final Fantasy 16?

In most games, the sprint button is L3, meaning you click the left stick in (as opposed to left, right, forward, or backward) to toggle sprinting on and off. But in some games, you tap a different button, or else hold it down while moving, to sprint. Final Fantasy 16 is not like other games. Final Fantasy 16 stays true to the original spirit of the humble analog stick.

OK, I’m going to take you back to the very beginning of the game, unless you count that bit where you kinda half-control the Phoenix when it’s fighting Ifrit. When you first take control of Clive, you get a pop-up telling you that the left stick makes him move. But at this point, no matter how far you push the stick, Clive will only walk.

But then Tiamat tells you to hurry up, and a new tutorial message pops up. This one says, “Tilt L gently to walk, fully to run.” Now when you push the left stick, Clive bursts into a big, blurry sprint. That’s it. That’s how to sprint in Final Fantasy 16. You push the left stick forward as far as it’ll go.

Related: All Final Fantasy 16 trophies

Can you sprint in Final Fantasy 16?

You can sprint in Final Fantasy 16, but not at any given time. The speed you move when you push the left stick all the way forward is entirely context-sensitive. Sometimes you’ll only walk, sometimes you’ll run. Mostly you’ll run, but sometimes the game forces you to walk. This happens for two reasons:

• Because there’s a lot of expositional dialogue that somehow couldn’t be squeezed into the series of five cutscenes you just sat through, and the game doesn’t want you to reach the end of the path before everyone’s finished talking.
• Because the next environment is exceptionally complicated and the game needs to stall you a bit while it loads it.

It’s often both. Most of the time you can run, though. And I recommend you do. This is a long game, so there’s no time for dawdling.