Final Fantasy XIV

In April of 2017 we traveled to Japan to tell the incredible story of the death & rebirth of Final Fantasy XIV. This three-part series details the development of the original 1.0 version of the game, its horrible reception, and the drastic steps the company took to turn the game around.

For this project, we spent a week in Tokyo interviewing a wide selection of employees involved in the development of both versions of the game. These included Square Enix CEO Yosuke Matsuda, Game Director Naoki Yoshida and several members of the development staff. The project also involved footage provided to us by many members of the FINAL FANTASY XIV community.

Time: May, 2017

Location: Tokyo, Japan

Series Videos:
PART 1: ONE POINT O [50:42]
PART 2: REWRITING HISTORY [36:42]
PART 3: THE NEW WORLD [26:06]

Patron Exclusive Videos:
Making of / Travelogue [58:18]

Production Credits: Jeremy Jayne

PART 1: ONE POINT O

In the first video in our three-part series, we tell the story of how the 1.0 version of FINAL FANTASY 14 came to be. How FINAL FANTASY 11 inspired its design, the ways in which the game fell short and how Square-Enix and the development team reacted to its failure.

commission: FINAL FANTASY DESKTOP BACKGROUND

As part of our continuing effort to collaborate with artists to create special pieces of artwork around our docs, we commissioned Erica "aurahack" Lahaie to create something special for this series. This time around we asked Erica to write some words about the piece;

There's a lot I could have drawn for FFXIV and I honestly had sketch paralysis for a couple days because of it. I wanted to make something that symbolised the Noclip doc itself—the path from 1.0 to A Realm Reborn—but also wanted to make it something that legacy and ARR players could look at and feel... emotional? It's hard to put into words. The events that brought 1.0 to an end are impactful and while that era of the game might not've been the best, that end is still vivid in the mind of a lot players and I wanted to capture that. I wanted to have the Mother Crystal there for ARR's rebirth, I wanted to have La Noscea's beautiful blue skies there to represent the open-air adventure of ARR, I wanted all the characters that stuck out the most to me and my friends while also having all the different races and classes that populate the world—all the strangers and friends that make the game such a wonderful thing. I hope that what's represented is something players of all kinds throughout FFXIV's history can look at and think fondly about their time with the game.