Final Fantasy 14 game director Naoki Yoshida says we’ll have plenty of chances to show off our strength in the MMO’s upcoming stories, but warns that you might have to do some reading. Our Warrior of Light was supposed to be on vacation in Dawntrail, and, while that didn’t pan out quite as we hoped, we still took more of a back seat to give the characters around us a chance to step up and grow. Patches 7.2 and 7.3 make it increasingly clear that approach won’t be possible moving forward, however, so we sat down with ‘Yoshi-P’ at Gamescom to discuss becoming the hero again, solving puzzles, and Dawntrail’s focus on family.
As well as investigating his plans to address difficulty in a new way, Jamie also asked Yoshida about some of the more story-led aspects of the recent Final Fantasy 14 updates, and whether they’re similarly indicative of a shift in direction for the MMORPG. Without getting into specific spoilers, there’s a climactic moment in patch 7.3 that puts you right at the center of the action. It definitely got me cheering, and I saw a similar response from the many people I watched experience it in their own playthroughs. So is this approach something the team wants to keep doing?
“When it comes to expressing the unique role of the player as the hero, and in order to showcase really cool cutscenes and sequences where we can provide a real ‘hero’s experience’ and showcase the ‘strength of the hero,’ we do want to put more focus on this moving forward,” Yoshida tells us [via Square Enix translator].
Part of the joy of 7.3’s most triumphant action sequence is that you get a custom animation based on your job. It’s not the only time in the patch that matters, either; the new dungeon separates players out during one boss fight and hands them different combat tasks based on their role: healers must cleanse a Doom debuff, tanks must interrupt a dangerous enemy move, and DPS players need to destroy a machine causing constant damage ticks.
“Within the MSQ, we can’t always provide a unique expression for the jobs in every patch,” Yoshida says. But “when it comes to using the jobs in battle content and bringing out more of that uniqueness of each job, we are working on a big update.” Before Dawntrail even launched, Yoshi-P had teased that he wanted to counteract ‘class homogenization’ in an overhaul that was planned for 8.0.
As for what that will look like, he explains that “People might think of it as an expansion of the system that we have in the game. So the players who already like the way things are can feel at ease that nothing is going to change for their experience. But we are trying to do something new on top of what we already have.”
Yoshida says he’s unable to share more on this at this point in time, and I doubt we’ll get much news on the matter until at least Fanfest 2026, but he reemphasizes: “In terms of the individuality of each job and also showcasing the player character to the fullest in terms of how they are the hero of the game, we want to continue placing importance on both of these aspects moving forward.” If you were among those frustrated by our more back-bench role in Dawntrail’s MSQ, that’ll likely come as welcome news.
Another highlight of patch 7.3 is a sequence where the Warrior of Light and their companions investigate an old research lab. Again, I’ll steer clear of narrative spoilers, but it’s an extended section featuring some light puzzle elements that require studying the environment, talking to various NPCs, and putting together the pieces to solve. While it’s not quite Blue Prince in terms of complexity, it’s a refreshing change of pace that puts you in the thick of proceedings as the player, instead of feeling like you’re just being dragged along while the other characters talk to each other.
“It’s not necessarily the case that that kind of experience will always be incorporated into the main scenario,” Yoshida muses, “but if the idea is interesting, and we think that it would be fun for the main scenario, then there is a possibility that we would incorporate it.” Speaking to the player response, he notes, “Of course players who want to immerse themselves in the story and really experience it as much as they can found it really refreshing.
“On the other hand, there are some players who just want to rush through the main scenario as fast as they can. And for them, this kind of element was more of a burden for them and it got in the way. But at the end of the day, the important thing is the experience of the players, and the story is a part of that. So we want to take a look at what good feedback we received and what bad feedback we received, and we can look at making the best of all that feedback in order to create something new.”
Unfortunately, if you’re a story skipper, that might cause some small progress blockers. “They usually would skip all of the text just to get to the end of the MSQ,” Yoshida remarks, “but this time around they actually need to read the text in order to clear that portion.” He says it’s “difficult for us to tweak it in such a way that it’s accommodating for the players who really want to immerse themselves and enjoy it as much as they can, and also for those players who just want to rush through everything because they want to play the latest extreme trial as fast as possible.”
With Dawntrail now over, there’s one more question: who ended up as Yoshida’s favorite character? “We really put in a lot of hard effort and work to make sure that all of the characters’ stories would reach their completion in 7.3,” he says, “and because of all that effort and attention, it’s very difficult if you ask me to choose just one as my favorite.” Despite that, he thinks for a while and then points to the expansion’s youngest star, Gulool Ja (note that there will naturally be some light story spoilers here).
“When we look at Gulool Ja, he’s still a child,” Yoshida explains. “Out of all the characters that we’ve depicted in Final Fantasy 14, I think he would be the youngest in terms of age. But even though he is a child, he has a very strong foundation and a strong standing, but at the same time, he’s also malleable, as it were – I think that goes without saying, because he is a child.
“But when it came to depicting that trajectory of his emotions, I think that was one area we did that really stands out. Another example is Lamaty’i and Koana taking him in as part of the family. Showing that link and bond of them becoming family was another area that stood out. In a similar regard, I could also bring up the example of Cahciua and Erenville and their bond together as family as well.”
With those family bonds now forged, it looks like we’re getting ready to set off to pastures new. Quite where that’ll be remains to be seen: The frozen waters of Blindfrost, in Othard’s North? Meracydia, perhaps? Your guess is as good as mine, but I’d make sure to pack your best combat gear for this trip.
If you’re after something different to fill the months while we wait, we’ve rounded up the best new MMOs in 2025, along with the best fantasy games on PC today.
Want to share your wildest FF14 theories and speculation with us? You can do so via the PCGamesN community Discord server, so let me know where you think 8.0 is headed.
Additional reporting by Jamie Hore at Gamescom.
