Final Fantasy 14: Yoshida Hints At Future Possibilities Of The Warrior Of Light Becoming A Hingashi Shogun, A Multiverse, And Visiting The Future

By 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Meg Pelliccio

Published Aug 24, 2024

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Summary

Yoshida believes we will face the same dilemma of Living Memory in the real world in the next 100 years.
The possibilities for FF14's future are endless, such as multiverses, time travel, and Warriors of Light becoming a Shogun.
The Great Serpent of Ronka is not as popular in Japan as it is in the West.

Dawntrail spoilers follow.

This week at Gamescom in Cologne, I was fortunate enough to sit down with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Final Fantasy 14 producer and director Naoki Yoshida to chat about the recently released Dawntrail expansion. One of my favourite Dawntrail areas was Living Memory, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:which I’ve written about before, theorising about the hidden meaning behind our Warriors of Light going around and powering down this stunning environment into nothing but an empty shell🃏. Naturally, I couldn’t r🤪esist the opportunity to ask the boss man himself.

“We want the players not just to read the story as it were, but to experience the story as a game,” Yoshida says. “When we thought about the concept of searching for the City of Gold, we thought about how we could express that within the story. We thought of having this place where the souls and memories are stored and they need to be there in order to last for eternity. This was the ideal place to live, as it were, but when we view it from reality, it seems quite scary in that senꦏse. We felt that we needed to make it authentically and we needed to do a proper job, otherwise the thoughts of those people who live in the ninth reflection wouldn't be properly conveyed.”

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Yoshida explains the team deli𝔉berately chose to incorporate characters related to the storyline in this area so that players had that emotional connection. “We see Erenville's mother, and then Krile meets her parents for the first time. Then we provide that experience to the players, where they themselves have to shut down those memories. It was the sense of shutting down this place that looks so gorgeous and extravagant, and afterwards, you just see the emptiness there. That was really theꦑ connotation that we wanted to incorporate into Living Memory.”

Even though 🤡Living Memory has a programmed appearance and the people living there are not “really there” as they are digital memories of those who have died, Yoshida wanted to emphasise the important memories of people and the special moment🌸s in their lives and hearts to add greater meaning to shutting down this area.

“By having this place, which is so incredibly beautiful and shutting it down, you achieve a sense of catharsis, as it were. You also feel a sense of sadness. We really put in a lot of hard work into achieving this kind of theatrical effect that we wanted in the environment. When this ide𝕴a was proposed to the artists, they were like, ‘Huh? This is an area we put so much effort in, and ♏we're going to go and shut it down?’”

Yoshida goes on꧋ to say that Living Memory involved the same amount of work as creating two different zones since it has two appearances, so it was a lot of work for the team to create, “The team did tell me that they wen💮t through a really, really tough experience with that.”

We’re about to get into deeper spoiler territory h🎐ere. You’ve been warned.

In Dawntrail, we have to go around shutting off areas in Living𝔉 Memory to delete the digital manifestations of the citizens because its existence requires aether from living people to maintain. As the expansion comes to a close, Sphene is preparing to attack other worlds in order to reap this living aether from others to ensure her citizens, digital though they may be, survive. As the Warrior of Light, it’s our job to stop her.

I asked whether it would have been possible toꦯ find an aether alternative to keep Living Memory alive had we not had the time restriction due to Sphene’s impending attack. Yoshida tells me he believes this issue is something we will face in the real world and that rather than question whether we could find another source of power, we should consider how humanity will react when faced with this dilemma.

“When we talk about ourselves as humans, we have gone through a lot of technological adv𝄹ancements and as we continue to make breakthroughs in the field of science. I do really believe that what we wou🍒ld call mecha is a possibility and we will eventually get to a point where we can recreate memories and recreate the brain in a digital form. That then makes us face the question, would we call that human? If someone is living in this digital world, are they really living? I think this is an issue that humanity will face in the next 100 years.”

We continued to delve into the intricacies of the concepts of the Endless and digital recreations of once-living people. For example, fans have been busy theorising about which Dawntrail characters are shards of the sundered ancients, summarising that Otis and Hildibra☂nd are both shards of the same person. In the closing scene of Dawntrail, we see Sphene’s crown against a black backdrop and it’s all too easy to see the compa🔥risons between this and the Ascian glyphs. Could she too be a shard of an ancient?

When I ask Yoshida this, he reminds me that thꩵe Sphene we know from Dawntrail is just a reproduction of the original Sphene from the ninth reflection who died during the Calamity of Lightning. He urges me to imagine various possibilities and look forward to what may come while teasingly saying, “Becaus𒅌e, after all, there is a meaning behind the crown. Think about who is the Sphene that appears to us in 7.0 and what discussions have taken place with her.” Let the fan theories and deep dives into all Sphene conversations commence.

Dawntrail saw our Warriors of Light experiencing a lot of parallels from past expansions, exper🏅iencing similar circumstances but with a new twist, which made me wonder what the future holds for us. In both the 6.X series and 7.0 we visited another reflection and there are still more reflections left unvisited, but Yoshida reminds me that there are even more options open to the team.

“There is also the possibility that we could travel to the past, or there's also the possibility of the future. There are not just possibilities in 🎐the reflections, but even back in the Source, in 4.0 the players went to Kugane. In reality, Kugane is merely a part of Hingashi, and beyond that gate is the rest of Hingashi. Right now in the game, in Hingashi, there is a war taking place between different Shoguns and the Shogunate of Hingashi. There is also the possibility that the Warrior of Light will travel to Hingashi and participate in the war. They will take on the role of Shogun and try to win command of the country. In addition to that, there's also the possibility of incorpor💃ating a multi-universe.”

The idea of a possible multiverse makes me wonder whether fan favourites like Emet-Selch could make a c💫omeback, but Yoshida reminds me of how we’d face a similar dilemma as we do when discussing digital memories and the Endless. “The Emet-Selch that we meet in that other universe, would they be the same person that we talked to and that we fought with? I think there would be a huge amount of discussion about that. Because, after all, the Emet-Selch in the multi-universe could have taken Elidibus's place as being the core of Zodiark.”

The idea could mean any character that has died in the past could return, even if they are vastly different from tไhe version of them we know an♒d love. But, Yoshida tells me, he doesn’t like the idea of cheapening sacrifices. “When we think about the theme of the fate of the characters, about the characters who made really tough decisions to sacrifice their lives to help the Warrior of Light, I don't like these kinds of plot developments where they could just make a comeback. I think that's an easy plot choice, and I would not want to go down that route of making such an easy decision for that kind of plot development.”

Yoshida empꦇhasises that there really are unlimited possibilities for where FF14 can go next and that his top priority is to provide enjoyment and surprise for players, so we don’t need to worry about what he’s up to next. “When it comes to the story in FF14 moving forward, in December this year, I have to write out the requirements for the trailer for the new expansion, so more or less I already have an image of what the adventure will entail.”

Dawntrail is the start of a new arc after Endwalker bro꧋ught a close to the Hydaelyn and Zodiark saga that spanned ten years. However, Yoshida tells me that the storyline wasn’t fully planned out ahead of time, “It was only at the time of the development of 5.0 that we were able to get a sense of that thou⛦ght this could become a saga. I already have a vague idea of how the story is going to progress, but when it comes to the question about what specifically are going to be the processes involved in making the story go forward, to a degree that depends on the player's reactions, and that also depends on what we want to do next. If the question is whether the story is already decided for the next ten years, the answer would be no.”

I ask Yoshida for a clue to the next 🐓big patch in one word. “Encounter,” he says before elaborating, “There are various meanings to encounter, so it might be correct to say meeting point. It entailsඣ coming into contact with various things, characters and content.”

The greatest serpent of tural, final boss of tender valley in Final Fantasy 14.

The team wanted to bring out a “different style of character” in the raid series, but surprisingly a fan favourite in the community is not as loved by Yoshida himself. “Characters like Honey B. Lovely, I would say I'm not so fond of them. I really don't like this so much,” he says, making heart gestures with his hands, “But I've seen that everyone seems to really like her, and ﷽that's good to 🀅hear.”

Being the minion enthusiast that I am, I couldn’t resist asking♓ a final question as to whether we’d get a minion of the Greatest Serpent of Tural, the final boss from the Dawntrail Tender Valley dungeon that looks suspiciously like the Great Serpent of Ronka.

“The Serpent of Ronka, funnily enough, it's not popular so much in Japan,” Yoshida laughs. “It's more🐟 popula𓄧r outside of Japan. Within the development team, there are a lot of our members who really love the Serpent of Ronka, even when it's their own creation. With that in mind, I think they might try to subtly incorporate it again. It might make an appearance, and there is also the possibility that it will be a minion.”

I’ve left Gamescom wit𝐆h༒ more questions than answers when it comes to Final Fantasy 14, but in a deliciously exciting way. I’m now obsessively recalling what we spoke to Sphene about, contemplating what a multiverse might entail, and have already set my heart on an expansion that sees our Warrior of Light stepping into the role of a Shogun.