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FF14 Evercold promises to be a massive shift; Square Enix’s Creative Studio 3 is grabbing the MMORPG by the hand and boldly striding forward into a new era with comprehensive changes across nearly every aspect of the game. Making so many alterations comes with plenty of chances for things to go wrong, however. At Fanfest Berlin, I joined an after-hours Q&A with Game Director Naoki Yoshida, where he acknowledged that there are always risks of failure, but remarked that his team is focused on ensuring as many people can enjoy FF14 as possible – whether that means helping new players approach its mammoth offering, relaxing lore restrictions for roleplaying freedom, or finding ways to match pace with the WoW housing system.
Yoshida’s Fanfest Berlin keynote ran for well over two hours, packing in announcements ranging from a more non-linear approach to quest zones, to an FF7 crossover raid series. Add that to everything revealed in Anaheim earlier this year, and Final Fantasy 14 is set to look very different when 8.0 arrives – and that’s only the beginning. “I already announced some big things coming in 8.1 and 8.2, but we want to further evolve the game moving forward, continually providing big updates,” Yoshida tells us [via a Square Enix translator]. “This would happen in the run-up to 9.0, although we wouldn’t just stop there. We would still want to continue evolving the game further.”
Yoshida explains that he first sat down by himself around the time of patch 7.2 and wrote a list of “what I felt we absolutely need to change.” Then he extended this process via a lengthy discussion with a team including Assistant Director Tsuyoshi Yokozawa, Battle Director Kei Sato, and Lead Battle Content Designer Masaki ‘Mr Ozma’ Nakagawa. Finally, he called upon a much wider sample including previous and current members of the FF14 development team, the operations team, marketing, and promotions. “I asked them, ‘What would you change about Final Fantasy 14,’ and they gave me a huge list.”
When Yoshida announces his plans on stage, he looks effortless, despite standing in the heavy armor of his Bastion cosplay for the full show (he mentions that in rehearsals, he actually had to wear the new job’s armor for five hours). “I may look really confident saying, ‘We’re going to release this thing, we’re going to change this thing, we’re going to create this thing,'” he remarks, “but it’s inevitable that taking on challenges, there’s always the possibility of failure. At the end of the day, we are only human as well.”
Yoshida admits that he will “feel pressure” to deliver when he returns to Japan to continue his work on Evercold, “but I think the only way we can alleviate whatever sense of unease we have, the only way of pushing through that, is to just continue pushing forward.” His motivation, and that of the team, is simple: “More than anything, what we want is for all of our players to enjoy the game more, and the only way we can do that is if we do take on these challenges so we can provide you with many more amazing experiences.”
Yoshida says the team is most outside of its comfort zone with the Evangelion alliance raid Ghosts of Desire, and the FF7 eight-player raid series Beyond the Lifestream, but that the team is working very hard on making both the stories and battles engaging. Eva in particular is tough: “How do we fuse these two completely different worlds together and form a cohesive story?” He adds that it was actually him that made the first move on suggesting the Final Fantasy 7 collaboration, but waited until now because he knew fans, like him, would want the remake trilogy finished as fast as possible, and so “didn’t want to distract” the dev team from its hard work.
Outside of crossovers, Yoshida is excited about the new public field system the team is tentatively dubbing ‘World Raids.’ He reveals that it’s the next brainchild of Mr Ozma, who most recently created the Beastmaster and its Crucible of the Unbroken activity for patch 7.56, and has earned a reputation for his love of challenging fights. Yoshi-P highlights his work on Eureka in particular, and adds, “I think he is really drawing from his rich experience and making the most of it to develop this.” While it won’t be here for 8.0, he believes it should arrive pretty soon afterwards.
One of FF14’s strongest aspects is also among its most intimidating – the massive main story, which will rack you up hundreds of hours of playtime just to get current. Yoshida has traditionally been adamant about the importance of this slow build, but like in many areas, he’s softening his approach slightly, and is now “thinking very positively” about accommodating requests to help mitigate the sheer size. “We are considering two things to address this,” he confirms. He’s unable to give specific details, but says the first “is something we will carry out at Evercold’s release or before,” while the second is still in the consideration process of whether it’s actually feasible to implement. “One of them you might be able to learn more about at the Japan Fanfest.”
Another big talking point is housing. When the subject is broached, Yoshi-P breaks the ice: “I get the feeling that what you really want to ask is, “Well, WoW has come up with this amazing housing system. How about 14?” He reiterates that throughout the many years of working on FF14, “We have had an immense respect for the World of Warcraft team.” In particular, he notes that hearing Blizzard cite Final Fantasy as an inspiration for its player housing “is very much a sense of great honor for us.”
“I got hands-on with the WoW housing system myself, and I really do appreciate it. It’s amazing.” FF14 won’t rest easy, he promises. “For the patch 8.x series [Evercold’s full life cycle], we are planning two very big overhauls for housing.” The first of these is a major UI overhaul to make creating elaborate homesteads easier for everyone, especially newcomers to the system. The second is a secret, but he thinks it will make players even happier: “It’s probably the number one thing on the list that a lot of people are requesting.” He adds that it’s possible this might even arrive before the UI redesign.
The full list of changes we’ve been told about is long enough, but CS3’s internal plan is even longer. Yoshida explains that, during its post-Dawntrail development discussions, the team figured out which ones to prioritize and when. The Companion Chocobo update, for example, is one it decided to put higher up the list. “You might be thinking that we’re just focusing on the 8.x series, but what we really want to do is look at FF14 as a whole and see what kind of evolution we can incorporate.”
One thing that’s clear is that, much like with his teases of possible ways to speed through the story, Yoshida is relaxing rules he used to be firm on. Another example is the loosening of lore limitations in character creation, which will see Miqo’te able to hide their warpaint, or Lalafell and Viera removing their nose tints. In the past, Yoshi-P refused requests for these sorts of features. “I said, ‘These are the rules of the world that we’ve provided, and this is the lore behind the race.'” He particularly enjoys this aspect of worldbuilding, he explains, and the roleplaying aspects it provides.
So what changed? “When it comes to being very particular about the lore, I thought to myself that this is also considered an aspect of roleplay, and in that regard, I kind of ‘upgraded’ my own mindset and my approach to it as well.” He no longer thinks of it as “good or bad,” but rather “how particular you are about that aspect,” and so he’s now comfortable putting that choice in players’ hands. He’ll be keeping his own thematic cosmetics on, however. “I love the lore behind Final Fantasy 14 and the unique characteristics of each race.”
We couldn’t leave our chat with Yoshida without touching on Dawntrail’s most unexpected star: Chort. The off-hand dungeon midboss earned himself a huge fan following with his beefy body, bouncy moveset, and the fact his name is very fun to say. Yoshida appreciates the enthusiasm, but he doesn’t get it. “Honestly I just couldn’t really understand what the appeal of Chort is.” Perhaps it’s a language barrier issue, because I think the name alone is probably the biggest factor in Chort’s huge success.
Yoshida tries to figure it out. “I can understand maybe a little bit – I mean, this is some huge bulky guy, and suddenly, he’s standing there, and he rolls.” Despite his confusion, he mentions that he and his coworkers really enjoys seeing all the memes, even when they come from an unexpected direction. “The development team is looking at all the responses on social media, and we do have big smirks on our faces when things like this happen.”
During the press conference, Yoshida mentioned that he’s now 53. Despite this, and the age of retirement in Japan being 60, he has still “not thought once about retiring.” He reiterates that he considers Final Fantasy 14 his “life work,” and that as long as the players (and Square Enix) still want him there, he will continue to find motivation to stay. Even were he to leave, he would want to keep making games. “I might work with a close-knit team of my own friends, and we would gather the funds together and develop titles together.”
FF14 Evercold is set to arrive in January, but perhaps one of the most important takeaways from this weekend’s Fanfest in Berlin is that it will be just the beginning of many more major changes to come. Yoshida and Creative Studio 3 are clearly thinking about every possible element of the MMO that could redesigned or improved, alongside plenty more new ideas – and that’s very exciting news as a player, even if not all of their big swings score immediate home runs.
