Naoki Yoshida is known as the man who saved Final Fantasy 14. As producer and director of Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn, Yoshida oversaw the complete transformation of a game that seemed dead on arrival into one of the most critically acclaimed MMORPGs of all time.
While this redemption story will always factor into the telling of Final Fantasy 14’s legend, it’s no longer what most fans of the game think about. Instead, all eyes are towards Endwalker, the newest expansion arriving in November this year, which is set to wrap up a nearly decade-long story arc.
IGN spoke with Yoshida after the annual Final Fantasy Fan Fest – and in a nearly hour-long conversation, we learned why it’s easier than ever to get started with Final Fantasy 14, as well as what enhancement players who start the game on the PlayStation 5 will see over past console versions.
Have you played the Free Trial of Final Fantasy 14?
With every expansion, the chorus around Square Enix’s MMORPG grows stronger, and with such a seismic expansion on the horizon, there’s never been a better time to jump in. There’s a popular meme about how Final Fantasy 14 acolytes will convince friends to pick up the game because the free trial now includes all the content up to the critically-acclaimed expansion Heavensward.
But as anyone who’s seen the NoClip documentary on Final Fantasy 14 knows, the MMO was designed for both players who enjoy MMORPGs as well as fans who might enjoy single-player Final Fantasy games.
“I mention this with every expansion, but we would love to have everybody play [Final Fantasy 14] from the beginning, from a Realm Reborn,” Yoshida says. “As long as you are focusing on going through the main scenario quests, you should be able to relatively smoothly level your character and obtain the necessary gear that you need to progress through the story.”
Yoshida compares playing through A Realm Reborn and its subsequent expansions — which currently includes Heavensward, Stormblood, and Shadowbringers — to “binge-watching a TV drama.”
“We do our best to make it as stress-free as possible for players to get through from the beginning to the latest content,” Yoshida explains, adding that he thinks catching up on Final Fantasy 14 is “easier than trying to watch all eight seasons of Game of Thrones in one sitting.”
Developing Endwalkers’ Two New Classes
Endwalker will introduce two new playable classes, as is now customary for every new expansion. For the next chapter, the two new classes are the Damage-dealing Reaper and the Healer class Sage.
The Reaper class is a melee DPS class that wields a large scythe and can summon a dark Avatar or spirit to help them deal damage, while the Sage class uses flying machines to heal allies and attack enemies.
According to Yoshida, discussions about new classes typically start with the weapons each class will use, as that equipment directly ties into the gameplay experience. A scythe was something players have been requesting for some time and, from that request, the developers came up with the Reaper class fairly easily.
“There was a lot of fan feedback about a character that can wield a scythe, a very large scythe, in the North America and Europe regions. And they were excited for something like that for a number of years, actually,” Yoshida reveals. "So, the idea for the reaper developed pretty smoothly, I think."
But one of the class suggestions from the community for a new healer was Alchemist, which proved to be harder to conceptualize.
“We were really having to rack our brains on the Sage idea,” Yoshida explains. “Of course there were ideas about, like, ‘Oh, bring over Alchemist,’ and things like that and when we thought about, ‘Okay, so what if we used Alchemist? What kind of weapon would they wield?’”
Initial ideas involved some kind of medical kit, but Yoshida says having such a science-based weapon for a magic-wielder “would be weird.” The developers also thought having a class that throws potions at people was “very difficult” to fit into the battle systems.
Instead, the developers started with a blank slate for the healer role, ideating different weapons. Someone on the team suggested floating orbs players can wield which then shifted into projectiles or “healing missiles.” This eventually led to the Sage’s flying weapons, which opened up new gameplay mechanics and visual experiences. When these floating weapons sheathe, they also sheathe into the players’ back which “looks very sci-fi, but still, it looks very magical,” perfect for Final Fantasy 14’s aesthetic.
All in all, Yoshida says development for the Reaper class took about three months from conception to fleshing out, while development on Sage took half a year.
Final Fantasy 14 Receives a Huge Boost from PS5
Final Fantasy 14 is set to be released on PlayStation 5 later this month, and PS5 players will find the experience will be far improved on Sony’s newest console.
“With the PS5, one of the key features of it, and especially since Final Fantasy 14 is an MMO, the rendering of the multiple characters on-screen — literally hundreds of characters being on screen — being able to render [all] that quickly is definitely a plus.”
The memory required to process that many characters, each with their own unique outfits and gear, is immense but the PlayStation 5 can render everything quickly, all “without dropping frame rate or resolution.”
“The PS5 hardware does have a very high capability in terms of machine power, plus their input/output is very special as well. A lot of loading is very quick… So, I think one of the biggest features of the PS5 version is that you can play very comfortably.”
Final Fantasy 14 enables cross-play between PlayStation and PC. But PC players have commented that PS4 players would take a longer time to load into an instance, like a dungeon or duty. This problem will be resolved with the PS5 version, or at the very least “improved significantly,” Yoshida says.
“You wouldn’t have an instance where you go into a dungeon and wait for some additional characters to pop up because they’re waiting for their load screen to resolve,” Yoshida explains. “Plus, again, the frame rate has become very stable. You wouldn’t have cases where you're going on a mob hunt and PS4 players are missing out on the action because their rendering hasn’t caught up or their monsters haven’t shown up.”
Final Fantasy 14 actually started life on the PlayStation 3, but players shouldn’t be worried about any legacy systems potentially holding the game back for players on PS5 or high-end PCs.
As Yoshida explains, Final Fantasy 14 was designed to be future-proof thanks to its scalability. If for example the PlayStation 3 was limited so that 30 characters would render at one time, then the PS4 expands that limit to 50 or 70 characters, and so on and so on as hardware performance improves.
This extends to character models as well. “Say the physics that are applied to hair,” Yoshida posits. “PS3 would only allow for two bones to be moved at one time, and those would take priority, whereas PS4 would scale a little bigger, so you can now control six bones in the hair.”
The base systems controlling both models are the same, but with each boost in performance, certain limits on weaker hardware are removed to accommodate more powerful machines.
It’s getting to a point where Yoshida says the developers may re-consider the amount of memory allocated per character. “With the more advanced hardware, I feel that we can start considering expanding the base system, the base limit, so that we can have a more robust way of depicting these character models, from the amount of memory it can carry to the textures, to the boning as well.”
Furthermore, Yoshida says it’s gotten to a point where even the newest smartphone or mobile devices “might be able to have the processing power of running [FFXIV] at a relatively high quality.”
The Long Wait
The Endwalker expansion will be released on November 23, 2021. Typically, Final Fantasy 14 expansions are released mid-to-late summer, making the wait for Endwalker one of the longest in between major content drops for Final Fantasy 14.
Final Fantasy 14, as with many games in development, was hit hard by the global COVID-19 pandemic which forced the Square Enix team to switch to work from home and in the process lose three months of development time.
“Before we even started work on the expansion pack, while we were developing the 5.X patch series is when we hit the pandemic,” Yoshida recalls. “And as the pandemic hit, Square Enix and the FF14 development team had to switch over to remote work. Everybody had to switch to a work-from-home environment, and there was some confusion that happened with the transition.”
As a result, the developers delayed one of the patches by three months, creating a chain reaction that pushed back the entire release schedule. “Considering that the previous expansion released in the July timing, and we had that three months of lost time that we account for, then just with the math there, we’re already shifted by three months. So August, September, October. October would’ve been the earliest we could’ve [released Endwalker] with the three-month gap that we can’t really get back.”
“The developers, since switching to work from home, unfortunately, there is a little bit of a loss in productivity per month.”
Furthermore, Endwalker is the end to the Hydaelyn-Zodiark saga, a nearly decade-long storyline set to conclude in the next expansion. Because of this Yoshida says that there’s more the developers want to deliver “in terms of story content,” and he says “the amount of cutscenes is about 1.3 times more than normal.”
The three-month pushback, productivity loss from work-from-home, the expanded volume of overall content versus a typical expansion, as well as the need for an additional four to six weeks of leeway required for bug fixes and quality improvements all added up to Endwalker being scheduled for late November.
Better Late Than Never
For anyone curious about trying out Final Fantasy 14, there’s honestly never been a better time. As Yoshida says, the main story quests do a great job of pushing players through the game relatively stress-free and Yoshida also gave a shout out to the community for helping new players.
“The community is really great, and they’re really supportive of new players as well, so they do take care of you,” Yoshida beams.
As for what’s after Endwalker, Yoshida told IGN earlier this year that he hasn’t decided whether future storylines will be shorter or as long as the Endwalker saga. Yoshida is also serving as producer on the upcoming Final Fantasy 16 as head of Creative Business Unit 3, a development team of Final Fantasy 11 and 14 veterans.
But for curious fans who want to know more about Yoshida’s Final Fantasy work, there’s no better showcase than Final Fantasy 14.
Matt T.M. Kim is IGN's News Editor and a Dancer main. You can reach him on Twitter @lawoftd.
