Final Fantasy 16 has been influencing Final Fantasy 14 since before the new game was even revealed.
In a new interview with Inverse, Final Fantasy 14 director and Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida sheds some light on the shared history between the two games. August 2020 saw the launch of patch 5.3 for Final Fantasy 14, where players would take on the Sapphire Weapon in a mech called the G-Warrior, as part of the post-Shadowbringers patches.
The Sapphire Weapon fight was really damn cool, and arguably one of the best and wildest things Final Fantasy 14 has done to date. A mech fight appearing in a fantasy MMO partway through an expansion was a huge left turn for Final Fantasy 14, and it generally went down a treat with players.
It's now been revealed by Yoshida that this fight was inspired by Final Fantasy 16's titanic Eikon showdowns. "It just happens that we were working on Final Fantasy 16 when the G-Warrior content came out," Yoshida tells Inverse, adding, "[It] was pretty much influenced by what we were doing in the background on Final Fantasy 16."
This all happened before Final Fantasy 16 was even revealed to the world. The new action-RPG wouldn't be revealed until the following month in September 2020, showing off its massive battles between Summons, which are renamed to Eikons in Final Fantasy 16, and are each bound to a human character that can summon them for battle.
It'd be easy to assume Final Fantasy 14 influenced Final Fantasy 16, given it's the older of the two games, and Yoshida has worked on both in leading roles. It's pretty fascinating, then, to learn that the MMO actually pulled from elements of Final Fantasy 16, before it was revealed.
We'll get to see just how these massive Eikon fights play out next month, when Final Fantasy 16 launches on June 22 exclusively for the PS5.
You can head over to our upcoming PS5 games guide for a look ahead at all the other exclusives coming to the console in the near future.
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