Final Fantasy 14 director Yoshi-P talks about the Scion's 'half-hearted' role in Dawntrail, says they'll likely use smaller, more selective groups of beloved NPCs in the future
I've plenty of opinions on the story of Dawntrail in Final Fantasy 14—it's a narrative that I enjoyed, but found more problems with the longer I sat with it. My biggest bugbear by far, however, was how it didn't quite prioritise its characters properly, leaving me feel some were underutilised at their best, and downright cardboard cutouts of their former selves at their worst.
That's not to say that focusing on a new cast is a bad thing, mind, but to keep things brief: I think you've gotta commit either way. Have your Scion buddies take genuine, thoughtful supporting roles if you want—or have them be busy elsewhere, but you've gotta pick one.
During my interview with game director Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P) at Gamescom last week, he revealed this issue is a challenge the development team had been grappling with during the development of Dawntrail, and the fan reception has taught them a whole lot about how to work with the game's quite frankly enormous cast going forward.
«We wanted to showcase all of the Scions, but we also wanted to showcase new characters, and we wanted to see what would be the response,» Yoshi-P explains. «We wanted to see whether people would be like, 'Oh no, we don't want any more Scions, please, just get rid of them'. Or, on the other hand, people might be saying, 'hey, we want our Scions back.' … So we thought that we would need to do this [eventually]. And so in that sense, it was a challenge that we took on.»
Keeping in mind that this interview was conducted via a live translator (and as such, doesn't convey the interviewee's sentiment perfectly) I get the sense from Yoshi-P that the Scion's roles in Dawntrail were a band aid the team had to rip off at some point—it just came off with a few split hairs.
«As expected,» he continues, «There were some people who were arguing that they wanted to see the Scions more in the spotlight, and there were also others who said that they wanted the scions to take a step down and not be the focus. So in
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