10 December 2023 , 07:00
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The Final Fantasy 14 director and producer, and Final Fantasy 16 producer speaks to the latter’s success this year, and why he changed his mind on supplementing the game with DLC.
Final Fantasy as a concept has been around for so long at this point, it’s a wonder there’s a subject, themes, and ideas that are still left unexplored. When a series as longstanding as this is based on reinvention, however, it turns out you get used to the act of throwing everything out and starting over from scratch every time pretty quickly. This is something series producer and director Naoki Yoshida – often referred to colloquially in the industry as Yoshi-P – knows all too well, having started with the series back in 2010 with the original version of Final Fantasy 14, building it once, only to rip it down and start again with A Realm Reborn in one of gaming’s most notable rebirth stories.
“I had, of course, promised the players that I was going to get the game back on track, so I really gave it everything I had as a game developer,” says Yoshida, of his mission to turn the Final Fantasy 14 ship around. “As part of that goal, I did have the desire to bring [the game] back as an MMORPG that would continue on for a decade. But considering the poor state of the original Final Fantasy 14, I think that if I’d told anyone about that aim, I would have sounded completely out of touch with reality. I understood that to reach that point, we’d have to move forward one step at a time: and I was prepared to go down that path”.
Yoshida’s patience and guidance indeed paid off, as since the series’ landmark MMO relaunched as Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn in 2013 (three years after it originally released) it’s seen no less than four major expansions added, is the subject to a fan-driven festival, and enjoyed its 10th anniversary earlier in 2023. “I didn’t expect this,” Yoshida explains, “but I’ve always tried to walk this path with a strong belief in where we were going."
With Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn being so successful, it’s led many to question whether or not Square Enix’s prestige franchise could one day receive the MMO treatment once again. “As things stand, I’d have to say ‘no’. Since it’s an MMORPG, I pour every last ounce of my labour and time as a director into creating Final Fantasy 14,” Yoshida laughs. “There are two big curses in the world of MMORPGs: ‘an MMO that fails at launch can never be revived’, and ‘a sequel to a hugely successful MMORPG will never go well’.
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"FFXIV has already defied the first of these, so I do feel like I want to try and smash the second – but unless I can fit 48 hours into a day, it doesn’t seem possible for now.”
Come to me, Ifrit
Yoshida and his team did such a good job of rebuilding Final Fantasy 14, they were then charged with creating the next numbered instalment in the mainline series. Final Fantasy 15’s Creative Business Division 2 had its hands full with the game that turned out to be Forspoken, so it was Final Fantasy 16 that would be the target of Yoshida-san’s single-player hopes and ambitions. He recognised that it had been a while since the series had paid tribute to its original medieval fantasy roots and so wanted to do this justice.
“Our team loves those kinds of medieval fantasy worlds, and has a lot of skill and experience in creating them,” Yoshida makes clear. “That was the most significant reason. We’re from an older generation of gamers, and we love the worlds of the original Final Fantasy to Final Fantasy 6."
Speaking of older series entries, the developers knew early on that they’d forgo the typical turn-based combat veteran fans would expect, in favour of something more cinematic and real-time. Final Fantasy 16 would even stick to this idea closer than even Final Fantasy 7 Remake, which at least lets players temporarily pause to time to select attacks.
Battling as lead hero Clive Rosfield in Final Fantasy 16 plays a lot closer to modern protagonists like Kratos from the 2018 God of War reboot or Capcom’s most recent Devil May Cry game. The latter isn’t a surprise considering that both games share the same combat director. The tactics in Final Fantasy 16 more so come from knowing when to use magic attacks instead of sword combos or Eikon abilities and vice versa, all in the attempt to further modernise the series beyond what the return to medieval might initially suggest.
As well as reworking the core of how a 21st-century Final Fantasy should play, Yoshida was excited about taking advantage of what a powerful console such as PS5 could accomplish. “Making that kind of world in high fidelity with modern graphics was a new challenge for us – and so, we decided to undertake that challenge,” he reveals. “It was partly for the sake of the future of the series: to ensure that the worlds, settings and overall direction of Final Fantasy games don’t end up feeling pigeonholed.” Much like Final Fantasy 14 before it, the goal was to overhaul the idea of what a mainline series entry could be for a whole new generation.
For your trouble
At the time of writing, despite initially revealing that Final Fantasy 16 had no DLC planned, following its reveal at this year’s The Game Awards the game’s debut expansion, Echoes of the Fallen, is out now. Considering just how quickly characters like Clive, Cid and Jill came to be beloved by the players who jumped in this year it makes sense that there are more excuses to return to Valisthea. However, it’s more indicative of how Yoshida and the rest of Creative Business Unit 3 are listening to and primed with changing tact, providing it makes sense.
“If you’re thinking too much about DLC from the start, you can end up being tempted to put things off when the development schedule gets tight, saying, ‘Oh, this can go in the DLC we already have planned’”, Yoshida posits. It’s clear that Final Fantasy 15’s post-launch release plan, where multiple new chapters were added across a large period also proved a point of contention. “There was a lot of feedback from players saying that the latter half of the story felt lacking.”
That’s why it was important for Yoshida that Final Fantasy 16 tell a complete story from start to finish, one that felt satisfying when standing on its own. Even he, however, couldn’t deny the calls for more from fans. “I’ve always said that whether or not we had any DLC depended on the reaction of the players. Having said that, we did have some potential places and certain points in mind for DLC, right from the early stages of planning out the plot.
"This would help us to get to work on development quickly if we did decide to move forward with DLC, and also allowed us to make sure that any DLC we did release wouldn’t negatively affect the cohesiveness of the story.”
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In a way, this willingness to adapt and change strategy, reinventing what’s expected is similar to what the franchise itself is known for doing. This, coupled with Yoshida’s experience continuing on the Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn story with the likes of Heavensward, Shadowbringers and its other expansions, made the prospect of slotting in new narrative gems into the pre-existing Final Fantasy 16 timeline even more enticing.
Such an irony, over a decade on from when he first laid hands on the legendary series and rebuilt Final Fantasy 14 from the ashes, isn’t lost on Yoshida himself. “Since making the decision to release DLC, we’ve been able to move forward with development at an extremely fast pace, without any hesitation,” he says. “This may be something that comes from our experience on Final Fantasy 14.”
It would appear the evolution of Creative Business Unit 3 is finally complete.