At the end of an excellent story, it can feel like a creative team had everything planned out from the beginning. In reality, especially on long-form stories told over the course of many years, everything is being figured out on the fly. Such is the case with Final Fantasy XIV.
In a candid interview with Famitsu (translated via Reddit user MKillerby), Endwalker lead story designers Natsuko Ishikawa and Banri Oda and FFXIV creative director Naoki Yoshida admitted they had no idea what the Ascians were really up to before Shadowbringers. Up until then, they were just generic bad guys.
“It’s easy to think we planned it out in advance, but in truth, that’s wrong,” said Ishikawa. The original Ascian lore only focused on letting the player know that they were paranormal entities with nefarious plans and no shadows. However, there were other characters whose shadows also didn’t display at the time, so this special feature was discarded and the Ascians were rebuilt into “a group of bad guys.”
Oda, who joined FFXIV during 1.0, agreed that the writing team had no idea what to do with Ascian lore at time. Yoshida contended that the nebulous nature of the Ascians was a standard feature of the characters.
“Even back during A Realm Reborn, Heavensward and Stormblood, it was said, ‘We don’t have detailed lore yet for what the Ascians’ goals are, so let’s just have them be doing bad stuff in the background,’” he said.
With Endwalker, it truly feels like we’ve put the story of the Ascians behind us. It’s time to look forward, not back, as we enter a “Newfound Adventure” with Patch 6.1. Yoshida, Ishikawa, and Oda all agreed that there are so many more directions for the future of FFXIV.
Yoshi-P jokes a bit about possibilities of where the story can go from 6.1 and forward, saying "well, there are different shards after all…"
However, instead of thinking "how can the next story top Endwalker," what is more important is to return to our adventuring roots. pic.twitter.com/aGJhiHE95X
— ☆オードリーAudrey☆ (@aitaikimochi) March 16, 2022
“Even though we’ve arrived at one of the finales of the story, we wanted to let everyone know that the adventure is not yet complete,” said Oda in a statement translated by Audrey “Aitaikomochi” Lamsam. “Although Endwalker was on a pretty larger scale where we went into space, we were able to convey by words and through graphic details that there are still many places that have yet to be revealed.”
“Well, there are also different shards after all, and if we pull from the multiverse, then anything is possible,” added Yoshida.
