Have you ever wanted a Final Fantasy game in your Final Fantasy game? It’s not impossible—but it’s going to be a technical feat.
During a press Q&A at FFXIV's Fan Festival in Las Vegas with the MMO's director and lead producer, Naoki Yoshida, the renowned developer asked if it would be possible to play any of the other Final Fantasy titles within the MMORPG itself. (Even if it’s “cash shop only,” the press member asked—remember that for later.)
While it seemed a bit of a tall ask, Yoshida actually did have an answer: The FFXIV dev team has actually been researching the possibility for about a year and a half now.
“With the Final Fantasy pixel remaster coming out, we also thought, wouldn’t it be cool if we can play that in the Gold Saucer, or have it in your estate to play?” explained Yoshida (via a translator). “Final Fantasy 14 is definitely like a theme park of Final Fantasy. So we would love to incorporate elements that kind of bring that sort of togetherness.”
However, the team tested this concept, and there was just one issue: the Final Fantasy remasters run on a middleware.
“Because it’s running on a middleware, if you want to implement that into 14, you’d have to build another system that could play back the middleware inside the game,” he detailed further. “So it’s like you’re building a system of a game to play a system of a game; that’s just this weird configuration.
“And our Final Fantasy 14 team is—I love them in that, they’re crazy. I don’t think they’re that crazy. If I could only have a genius… I’m not even gonna ask for a genius. Like, someone who is a super level programmer, maybe two more of them, we might be able to start seeing some kind of path.”
So he told us to ask: If you are this fabled “super level programmer” willing to code a program to translate a program to use inside another program, go ahead and apply at the Square Enix Japan site…
“Half-joking, half-serious, of course.” Well, guess we’ll wait to see if that spot opens up on the career site.
And then, he rounded back to address one more thing: He jumped up, remembering another part of the question, and pointed to the “cash shop only” portion on the screen outlining the question.
“I need to point out that [the question] does mention, ‘even if it was in the cash shop only.’ So I don’t want people to come out, come back to me and say—’Yoshida, you lied! Why is this paid content on the Mogstation!?’
“We can probably consider Final Fantasy one through three, they might be free, but you can’t give them all away. You have to think of how it would become business.”
We’ll see what sort of programmer and business model they can whip up for this possibility. But provided Yoshida gets his star programmer, what Final Fantasy game would you want to see playable in FFXIV?
Final Fantasy XIV's Fan Festival 2023 just kicked off day 2 of the event, with the first day seeing some huge announcements. We now know the name and some of what we'll be doing post-Endwalker in Dawntrail, the next expansion for Final Fantasy 14, and Xbox players can finally rejoice as the MMO is coming to Xbox Series S|X.
Yoshida’s answers in English were provided through a translator, and have been edited for clarity and flow. Featured image via Square Enix.
