In an act of auteur megalomania, Yoshi-P made the Final Fantasy 16 core team buy and watch Game of Thrones
pcgamer.comCan you tell that a new Final Fantasy is on the way? The new mainline entry in the series that is Square Enix's golden goose is imminent, and the Japanese publisher has the whole crew out on the PR trail. Final Fantasy 16 is out next month on consoles, though sadly us PC players will have to wait a little longer, so we're feasting on crumbs (like wondering whether to drop the number entirely) while waiting for that release date for the PC version they've announced but pretended they didn't announce.
One of the oddest tidbits comes courtesy of an interview with producer Naoki Yoshida, better-known as Yoshi-P, a man who's often amusing to watch chiding the naughtier fans of Final Fantasy 14 or baking cookies. Final Fantasy 16 is aiming for that chimera of broader appeal, which of course means all things to all people, but in this case meant that Square Enix's Japanese developers focused on fantasies that are currently popular in the western world. And by focused, I mean they got ordered to buy box sets.
«As I've grown older, I've found that I like my fantasy based more in reality,» Yoshida told Eurogamer. «We wanted to create something that really resonated with a lot of people. And when we saw how Game of Thrones, and before that the Song of Ice and Fire series, has really resonated with players, we knew that this was something that we wanted to do as well. When we first started creating the game, we had our core team of about 30 members very early on buy the blu-ray boxset of Game of Thrones and required everyone to watch it, because we wanted this type of feel.»
Sadly there is no indication on whether the team members were allowed to expense this rather unusual acquisition, or subsequently quizzed on the Targaryen
Read more on pcgamer.com
