I’ve been playing Heavensward for the last three days, but my mind is firmly rooted in Thursday, June 18th.
That’s because the final day of E3 2015 brought a tremendous personal moment–I was fortunate enough to spend nearly one hour with Naoki Yoshida, creative director on Final Fantasy XIV and the man almost single-handedly responsible for reversing Square Enix’s fortunes.
We’ve written about Yoshida (Yoshi-P, to fans) before; notably, when he told players during A Realm Reborn’s one-year anniversary that, “Without your staunch support these past four years, we wouldn’t be here to celebrate the first anniversary of A Realm Reborn. Our journey in Eorzea is just beginning, and I look forward to creating a beautiful world we can be proud to explore together for years to come.”
Truer words have scarcely been spoken; Final Fantasy XIV wouldn’t be here without the players, and in a true symbiotic relationship, the passion and dedication of Final Fantasy fans fueled Yoshi-P to raise the sinking ship of Final Fantasy XIV Version 1.0 and elevate it to the fantastic MMO that was Version 2.0: A Realm Reborn. Picked out of obscurity within the Square Enix legion, Yoshi-P was selected (primarily for his experience as a hardcore MMO player) to take creative directing duties away from Nobuaki Komoto in the wake of 1.0’s critical lambasting. What’s happened since is nothing short of the greatest underdog story in gaming; in the midst of dismal company fortunes and fan approval at an all-time low, Yoshi-P fixed much of what was wrong with 1.0, shut the game down entirely, and arose like a phoenix months later with Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.
via PCGamerN
By most accounts, A Realm Reborn is the best MMO since World of Warcraft, and it’s got the player count to prove it. Over 4 million people now subscribe to the game, which rivals Vanilla WoW’s early numbers. Yoshi-P is regularly trotted out at Square Enix events and has a prominent online persona, frequently hosts Letter from the Producer livestreams, posts to the game’s official forums, and more. He’s become an idolic figure to the players who call Eorzea home, and especially so to those who’ve stuck with Final Fantasy XIV since its dark beginnings as a PC exclusive. Now, you can play Final Fantasy XIV on both PS3 and PS4, and both versions are spectacular, rivaling their PC counterpart in comfort and control.
I started playing Final Fantasy XIV on PC shortly after A Realm Reborn launched, and I fell in love even before switching to PS4 in 2014. As a former WoW player, I felt empowered by the way A Realm Reborn picked the very best, tightest aspects of that juggernaut while building upon its systems in modern ways, all while wrapping itself in true Final Fantasy aesthetics. From Hi-Potions to Chimeras, from Cid and his airship to a tightly woven, genuinely good RPG plot, Final Fantasy XIV had it all–until we realized how much more could be added. Since release in September 2013, A Realm Reborn has seen major content updates released for free every couple months. Adding everything from new raids, dungeons, and story quests to Final Fantasy III’s Crystal Tower and Final Fantasy VII’s Gold Saucer, these totally free updates often rivaled the breadth and depth of entire paid expansions to other games.
So when a real expansion gets announced, releasing tomorrow as “Heavensward,” you know it’s going to be good.
For this reason, I wasn’t interested in asking Yoshi-P too many game-centric questions during my roundtable interview. Nor did I want to waste what could be my only chance with this enigmatic figure and not inquire about his game design philosophy and why he makes the specific creative decisions that he does. It was a tough balance, to be sure. More than anything, I wanted to know how Yoshi-P feels about the game, from his creative decisions to his legacy therein.
The creative decisions, first. Despite my fervid passion for the game, there’s a skill/time/gear ceiling I was never quite able to surpass. At the game’s highest echelon, top-tier Free Companies (guilds) enter the Coil of Bahamut, an 8-player raid that, in each of its three sequential forms, has been a significant, hardcore challenge upon release. With a full load of university coursework before shifting to full-time work (alongside other responsibilities), I was never able to commit the time and learning needed to compete at that level, and I ended up clearing some of the Coil’s bosses months later, after the fights had been nerfed a bit.
But for Final Fantasy XIV diehards, the Coils held a compelling story with several impressive cutscenes that truly tied a bow on A Realm Reborn’s storyline. Without the skill or dedicated group to complete Coil, players like myself were left with YouTube to soak up this lore. So when it was first announced that Alexander, the endgame raid in Heavensward, would feature a “Normal” mode to accompany the “Hard” mode that would challenge Eorzea’s greatest, I was duly enthused. Why did Yoshi-P introduce Normal mode, and where would it fall in the grand scheme of content difficulty?
“The biggest thing is that these high-end raids that we’ve created, they’re not just battles,” said Yoshi-P. “We have story within them; they have their own cutscenes. And we understand that, up until now, players have heard about, ‘Oh, there’s this great story in the Coil.’ But then, when they get in there, they don’t have the means to see that story. We knew that players wanted to access the content, but didn’t have the opportunity to access the content, so we wanted to give those players the opportunity to access that story. We just wanted a lot more players to be able to create these 8-player parties, get in there, challenge these challenging contents, but be able to clear them and see the stories and experience the same excitement that all those high-end players are able to experience.”
Yoshi-P described wanting to hit a balance between the game’s current Extreme Primal fights–steadfast, formidable challenges in their own right–and the Coils upon their release. The aim is for Alexander’s normal mode to fall right in-between. “We have designed the levels (of Alexander) to have one type of special battle mechanic, or gimmick, within each of the areas,” he explained. “As long as your party understands what this is, they’ll have a good chance to be able to overcome that. We want it to be easier for players to challenge this content and not have to fear it.”
As questions went around the table, Yoshi-P described at length accommodations being made to the game for casual players and Heavensward’s much touted flying mounts. The game’s zones are two or three times bigger than any region in A Realm Reborn, allowing for faster movement via flight and questing hotspots that are more spread out. 24-player raid content, the increased player count of which makes for less responsibility on each player, will continue in Heavensward starting with its first major content update (look for October). As my fellow interviewees took their turns, I looked frantically at the list of questions I’d prepared. There were far too many to squeeze into our time slot, and each had merit. I wanted to know why combat-oriented players can’t make Gil as quickly as crafters and gatherers. Whether Yoshi-P thinks the game’s engine will eventually catch up with his ambitions is an important point, and would be a great way to get at the heart of what it’s like developing an MMO in 2015.
I resolved to ask Yoshi-P about his legacy before the interview was over; more on that in a bit. First, I went for a question that my fiancée, a fellow player and White Mage main, had prepared about the design of job-specific armor in the game. Specifically, as a female playing a male character, Meagan feels that White Mage armor often errs on the feminine side of design and aesthetic, with an overwhelming number of frilly robes and off-white or pink-purple colors dominating the spectrum. Is this an intentional callback to the White Mage being a traditionally feminine job in Final Fantasy history, and would Yoshi-P consider more gender-neutrality in future gear designs?
“It’s a legacy type of design. The design that we’ve taken for the White Mage gear in Final Fantasy XIV is based directly off of the original White Mage gear in Final Fantasy 1.” Yoshi-P explained. “When deciding this, it wasn’t deciding, ‘OK, it’s a White Mage, we need something that’s feminine.’ We want something that any Final Fantasy fan, from any part of the series, can look at and say, ‘Oh, this is White Mage gear.’”
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Yoshida further reflected on the series’ historical origins. “When you look back, in Japan, back when they were creating the designs for the original Final Fantasy… ‘Ok, we need to create a healing class,’” he said. “The healing classes at that time, OK, they’re like clerics. Clerics, they wear robes. We wanted it to be a White Mage, so let’s make the robe white. And you’ve got something right there that seems very feminine. It’s that combination of the white robe, the red accents, it kind of all fits together so it appears like it’s feminine.” Ultimately, “we hope to make something that will fit whatever type of player that you are playing as. We’re going to make sure that we’re going to be designing stuff that will fit [Meagan’s] Elezen Male character.”
Good enough, I told myself, though something of a non-answer that promises continued improvement. Before it could come around to me again, Yoshi-P described all the ways first-time players will find the journey up to Heavensward, through A Realm Reborn, enjoyable. For starters, every main story quest will give double EXP, essentially giving players a clear route to Level 50 by merely following the narrative. Additionally, the story episodes released throughout Patches 2.1 to 2.55 (Heavensward is the next jump, at 3.0) will reward gear of item level 110, giving players an easy route to viability against the monsters of Heavensward without the trouble of farming items or winning gear from outdated dungeons and raids. He also joked about the team’s constant monitoring of World of Warcraft, because without staying abreast of Blizzard’s development choices, he can’t adequately answer questions from the press about his feelings toward the latest WoW developments.
Yoshi-P also gave me an interesting response to how it felt to watch the development and deepening of characters and their personalities throughout the 2.0 narrative. He felt he had inherited the characters from their 1.0 incarnations, over which he had no control and had not created. In some ways, this was a burden, as it meant trying to please fans who liked their personalities and stories in 1.0 and reconciling those expectations with a need to push the 2.0 story forward in interesting ways. Ultimately, Yoshi-P found the characters he himself introduced–like mysterious ninja Yugiri and brutish scholar Moenbryda–easier and more fun to work with than characters who’ve been around for awhile. Moving into Heavensward, he hopes to explore the moral side of main characters, specifically highlighting how they individually feel about the ongoing Dragonsong War that forms the basis of Heavensward’s plot.
Throughout the interview, Yoshi-P had been equal parts humble and charismatic, demonstrating in full force why fans have found him so appealing since he first took the reins of a failed project. He’s earnest, descriptive, and unflinchingly honest, never afraid of an answer that any other developer would avoid because it suggests a game or team that’s less than perfection. He’s down to earth in a disarming way, poking fun at his lack of sleep or the fact that he can’t please everyone, freely admitting and owning up to the fact that players might not like the team’s decisions–and if they don’t, that’s on Yoshi-P. He has an aura of one who claims perhaps too much responsibility and, by extension, is willing to put a whole lot of blame onto his plate, fair or not.
It’s impossible for Yoshi-P to deny that he’s achieved a level of stardom that’s rare for MMO designers and even game developers at large. For better or worse, Final Fantasy XIV sails at his command. For better or worse, his openness and development pipeline have changed the way that some of Square Enix’s internal studios make their games. For better or worse, every month of Final Fantasy XIV’s life adds to his legacy–and Heavensward is the next big chapter in that legacy. Knowing that I would be going home from E3 2015 the very next day and starting up Heavensward with early access, knowing the next day marked the start of an epic, personal gaming journey, and knowing that I would look back on my interview with Yoshi-P as the moment that truly ushered in Heavensward, I had to plumb the depths of this legacy. How did he feel about the stardom he’d garnered over the last couple years? Knowing that, hypothetically, he may not be directing Heavensward in five or ten years, what did he want his legacy to be?
To my dismay, my audio recording of the interview failed to capture the latter half, including this question. But I will never forget how he answered. For a moment, even after the translator finished putting my words into Yoshida’s native language, he was silent. When he finally spoke, it was first to say that my question was a complex one that would require some backstory.
And so he reflected, upon being plucked from relative obscurity to lead the game, on having never led a game project to being placed at the helm of what was already a colossal failure when he first touched it. He told me about the way he feels when fans thank him for A Realm Reborn–he’s beyond grateful that they’re even playing the game and feels he should be thanking them. As his own way of doing so, he goes to event after event, packs his schedule with livestreams and unveilings, responds to critical issues in the forums, and generally plays along with every meme and Reddit joke tossed his way. He wasn’t comfortable with fame at first, and to some extent, he still doesn’t like the way it attaches your name and your personal credibility to the things you work on. If A Realm Reborn is a success, Yoshida is a success. If it fails, he is a failure.
But there’s an upside to the fame effect, and what Yoshida said next was perhaps the most honest, heartfelt thing I had heard from a developer all week. I’ve learned not to fear the fame, he said. In the future, I won’t shy away from having my name attached to things just because they could fail. I’ve learned that it’s OK to have my name attached to things that fail.
So with a spirit of adventure, Yoshida and Square Enix release a full-fledged MMO expansion in a time when few besides World of Warcraft would dare such a thing–and even that title is hemorrhaging subscribers. With a spirit of adventure, Yoshida marches forward, leading the greatest underdog story in gaming to astonishing success.
With a spirit of adventure, we go Heavensward.