The Final Fantasy XIV Panel was one of the things I was looking forward to seeing at PAX East this year the most, and it didn’t disappoint at all. I knew going in, there likely wouldn’t be any real announcements; after all, it was billed as a retrospective. An hour before the panel and the queue to get in was already full, and amazingly everyone seemed content to be packed in and waiting.
That said, this panel was held in one of the largest panel rooms, so the only way they could have gotten more people in would have been to have it in the Main Theater. It’s no wonder we were excited; according to Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P), this was the first time they had made it back to North America to talk with fans directly since Fan Fest in 2018. If you missed the panel in person or streamed, you can still watch it on the Final Fantasy XIV Twitch Page.
One of the first questions asked Yoshi-P to choose which of the expansions was his favorite. Unsurprisingly, he picked Heavensward, and it’s pretty fitting. While launching A Realm Reborn was a monumental undertaking in and of itself, Heavensward was their first swing at showing they could really build on the foundation they laid. Many of the story threads which had huge payoffs in later expansions started in that expansion, so I wasn’t surprised that was the first one he thought of. He also made sure to mention the whole tossing of Nighogg’s eye as being something he thought they didn’t execute quite as well as he would have liked. Sadly, he didn’t go into more detail about why they chose to do it in that way or how he thought they might have handled it better if they were to write that scene now.
I was also happy to hear him mention the scene at the end of Shadowbringers, where we return to the tower and meet up with Ardbert and his friends as being one of the scenes which had the most emotional impact on him. It resonated with me quite a lot as well, that scene and the scene with him during the fight with Emet-Selch are probably to two most rewatched scenes for me. It’s notable also because, going into that expansion, I didn’t care about Ardbert at all. I was honestly annoyed at first when he started showing up everywhere. The way they crafted his story, and that of his friends really drew me in and is honestly a big part of why I enjoyed that expansion so much. It's nice to know that the emotional payoff was there for Yoshi-P as well.
He also mentioned the scene when during Endwalker, we return from Elpis and get that epic view of Venat’s path through time and everything she went through. Obviously, that scene was incredible and extremely touching. What I didn’t expect was that Yoshi-P said that her journey in that scene is, in some ways, representative of the developers’ who had been working on FFXIV from 1.0 to now. Her struggles mirrored a lot of the emotional struggles and hard times they had gone through, and it resonated in a very real way.
One of the most interesting things Yoshi-P revealed during this panel is that recently he hasn’t had much time, so he doesn’t have a static he plays with regularly on his private character (which is a character he plays, and no one knows it is him). It isn’t surprising that he doesn’t have much free time; he is working on two major games currently. Particularly considering, one is a constant live service game, and the other is getting ready to launch in just a little bit. What was interesting was the fact that he’s been using party finder to find groups and clear content. When it comes to group content in FFXIV, party finder is where it’s at for many players, and it can be such an incredibly mixed bag at times. I hope more of the devs on the FFXIV team do this as well because it is a good way to keep grounded in what the entire experience is for a large portion of the players.
There were some other tidbits here and there, but those were the things that really stood out to me. As always, he was sure to mention a lot that they expect FFXIV to be around for another ten years and was reassuring that there will be a 7.0. Probably still because of all the talk around Endwalker, where people kept postulating that it was the end for the MMO. Regardless of where they take Final Fantasy XIV next, I can’t wait to see what’s in store for us.
