In the first video in our three-part series, we tell the story of how the 1.0 version of FINAL FANTASY 14 came to be. How FINAL FANTASY 11 inspired its design, the ways in which the game fell short and how Square-Enix and the development team reacted to its failure.
Noclip operates entirely through the funding of its members.
Produced by Danny O’Dwyer & Jeremy Jayne
@dannyodwyer / @adackmusic
Music supplied by Audio Network
– Fractured: https://us.audionetwork.com/browse/m/track/fractured_140052
– Dream House 3: https://us.audionetwork.com/browse/m/track/dream-house-3_18139
– Spheres: https://us.audionetwork.com/browse/m/track/spheres_58238
– Future Perfect: https://us.audionetwork.com/browse/m/track/future-perfect_73029
– Icy Tundra 2: https://us.audionetwork.com/browse/m/track/icy-tundra-2_83525
– Admissions 2: https://us.audionetwork.com/browse/m/track/admissions-2_110841
To enable subtitles for Japanese speakers, please change your captions settings use the Settings (Gear) button at the bottom of the screen. Full closed captions are also available. We are aware that some YouTube platforms (such as AppleTV) do not support CC, but we wanted to ensure the best viewing experience for people of all languages and abilities. For those new to captions on YouTube, you can also change your text settings (size, color and loads more) using that gear icon. A special thanks to all our patrons who helped fund this project. We simply couldn’t have done it without you. Enjoy the show.
Thanks Danny! Been looking forward to this all day.
The shots you guys are getting! Do you have a helicopter?! A drone? Amazing work and I’m so excited to watch the rest of the video
There’s goes the idea of being productive.
Final Fantasy is not a game series I’ve played, it’s a game type/genre that doesn’t really appeal to me. But I love hearing the stories and details on how games are made, the struggles game devs go through and, especially in this case, just what they think of the decisions taken by “higher ups”. I think it finally lays to rest the notion that the developers themselves don’t care, and shows that they are indeed very passionate people who want to make content that people enjoy, that they hurt when things go wrong
They certainly seemed to have been very open and honest with you Danny and I think that is a testament and credit to your level of work.
Very looking forward to part 2
A Japanese person says Final Fantasy III and you put footage of VI up? The actual Final Fantasy III had the players running up a long tower, fighting a boss and then through the final dungeon. If you died, you had to restart from the courtyard at the bottom of the tower. I think he meant that.
Other than that one tiny mistake, I really enjoyed this one. This is definitely one of your best ones so far. I think I would’ve enjoyed this even if I wasn’t a fan of Square.
Koji Fox you adorable butterball.
Thoroughly enjoyed this, and I’m glad to see that SE was willing to be so open about the state of things, that said I wonder how many PR people were scrutinizing what the interviewees were saying?
I love the candidness from Yoshi P. Very few people would dare to talk about their company as having acted arrogantly, especially an employee for a Japanese company.
He’s pretty dead on too. Square was always known as trailblazers in console graphics, especially post PS1. I recall being speechless seeing pictures of FFX for the first time; I just couldn’t believe those where actually real graphics in a video game. And I guess getting that much praise for so many years can eventually go to your collective head. Almost like they needed a big failure to be brought back down to earth, and to realize they weren’t miracle makers that could do no wrong.
Wow! This was such a joy to watch! The production value is through the roof! Looking forward to the next part!! 😀 (also, Koji Fox is bae.)
English – Japanese Speaker correction:
32:56 – So,* (over “So.”)
36:07 – knew* (over “new”)
42:17 – ‘this is impossible, you’re putting too much on us’ (over “‘this is this impossible you’re putting too much’ on us”)
(Note: I’ll edit this with any other typos I catch)
The 1.0 alpha testers (of which I was a member of the EU team of ~1,000) had pointed out a large number of content issues from March through June 2010 on the forums S-E supplied to us, but we had a feeling that feedback wasn’t being passed on. We were used for stress-testing the client-server loads and reporting graphics issues, but content-wise we were totally ignored.
So to hear S-E devs state that they didn’t think there were any major fundamental issues until the Beta (which seemed to be more of a marketing exercise to spread the word to XI players, rather than any true test) seemingly shows how little regard they had for those testers.
Coming from being an XI player that has played XIV since that alpha test, I think the reasons for the failure of 1.0 have been mis-attributed somewhat. There were a couple of fundamental mechanisms that made the game unplayable (client-server timing, server load crashes), a couple of things that were not thought through and felt stupid (Market Wards, XP limitations and methods for gain), and a couple of things which were unacceptable in contemporary games (limited player guild facility, copy/paste of the Black Shroud pathways; though tbh that made it the maze it was designed to be). The game’s rejection by the MMO community was based on these and it meant that the majority were unwilling, or unable, to experience the great things that were on offer.
With the end of 1.0, we lost an incredible and inventive storyline, a trial-an-error discovery of crafting materials that relied on collaboration between players, an effort to make gathering and crafting classes as viable as battle classes (with content such as hamlet defense to reinforce such), dexterity-based gathering, crafting success based on an undefined minigame, areas that were areas full of enemies double your level that you had to sneak or pull past to get to far-off aetherial gates, large-scale random, but rare, enemy invasions… the list goes on.
The Eorzea that was Reborn was certainly slick and pretty, but it was also very much WoW with a Final Fantasy skin. It all felt very simple and held your hand from beginning to end, with the only significant challenge coming at that given patch’s endgame trial or raid. It’s a success though, so as a fan of the series I can’t complain, but it does leave me whimsical for what could have been.
Anyhow, thanks for this video; it was interesting and (aside from the captions, which need spell-checking) very well-produced. I look forward to the rest of the series!
love them or hate them without square enix jrpgs would be so much worse so glad they did not give up on FF14 wished more AAA companies gave that much of a crap about the games they put out
It’s so hard to wrap my mind around just how difficult a pitch that must’ve been to make and consider. Even now, years after we know it was successful, thinking that Yoshida-san had to talk to corporate and suggest they need to start from scratch and invest yet more time, money and manpower into a failure that might fail again and irreparably damage the Final Fantasy brand forever… That’s a damn hard pitch to make.
I truly believe the work that Danny is doing, is so important. This industry unlike others, has greatly fallen behind when it comes to preserving its history. So I think the work No Clip is doing, and other folks like Drew Scanlon is extremely important.
And the quality of No Clip is unlike anything I’ve seen before. Danny should be proud of this work. I truly believe we will be watching things like this documentary 20 years from now.
“I thought I was just normal to grind for 12 hours to go up one level, only to go back down after pulling to many adds…then realized that’s not normal.” God bless you Koji Fox. That was exactly why I played FFXI for like 10 hours, then never went back
when is the next episode gonna be up?
and yet I STILL don’t like XIV. I guess it’s just a matter of tastes…
Holy shite, y’all killed it with this one! Keep it up!