10 Years Ago, Final Fantasy XIV Destroyed Its World to Build a New One

Ten years in the past, in a cataclysmic rain of flaring power, Final Fantasy XIV died. That’s each true within the sense that the land of Eorzea was raked with the almighty megaflare of one among Final Fantasy’s strongest beings, the dragon Bahamut, and that developer Square Enix shut down the servers of its troubled MMORPG for good.

The launch of Final Fantasy XIV had been an unmitigated catastrophe, and almost cratered the studio behind it within the course of. But at the same time as gamers gathered in cities and fields to gaze up on the sky awaiting Bahamut’s reckoning, plans have been underway to rehaul the MMORPG solely, relaunching it as Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn—a game with the exact opposite story of the unique XIV. It was a wild success that’s nonetheless going sturdy to at the present time, and sure for the foreseeable future.

But what makes XIV 1.0’s shutdown so memorable—past the success story it grew to become in A Realm Reborn—is that this was greater than the top of 1 sport and the beginning of one other, a tragic, quiet shutdown earlier than a vaunted relaunch. Final Fantasy XIV’s inheritors had time to plan the unique model’s finish and pave the way in which to their new model, and in doing so created an epic closing story for gamers to witness, one which went on to echo all through the last decade as A Realm Reborn’s lengthy story performed out. The choice to not simply shutter Final Fantasy XIV however to rebuild it into a completely new sport was made the 12 months earlier than 1.0 would finally finish, and within the time given, its new producer—Naoki “Yoshi-P” Yoshida, who nonetheless helms the present model of the sport and is engaged on Final Fantasy XVI—made the selection to retool 1.0’s authentic story to inform a story of apocalyptic proceedings.

The factor about Final Fantasy is that the apocalypse occurs on a regular basis. Almost each entry within the sport franchise’s historical past has tackled some type of probably world-dooming risk, and its heroes have prevailed, as a result of that’s what Final Fantasy heroes do once they’re not summoning gods or working within the rigorous hair care routines required to appear to be Kain Highwind or Squall Leonheart. The risk of Meteor in Final Fantasy VII, the rise of Kefka’s godhood in VI after he sundered the world, the battle in opposition to Sin in X, time and time once more Final Fantasy is a narrative of myriad warriors and mages coming collectively to face a fated finish and deny it. The finish of XIV’s authentic kind was an opportunity to inform that story the place its heroes, the remaining gamers, did that and misplaced.

1.0’s finish is heralded by a small pink moon—the synthetic assemble Dalamud, summoned by Final Fantasy XIV’s main villains, the Garlean Empire, in an try to devastate the land of Eorzea earlier than its forces swept in and seized the ashes for themselves. As gamers and the leaders of Eorzea rallied collectively to battle again in opposition to the Garleans, what began as a small pink dot within the skies received larger and clearer as, patch by patch, Final Fantasy XIV went to its finish. Even when the story climaxed with the defeat of the Garlean commander, Nael van Darnus, on the gamers’ palms, they discovered that it was a Pyrrhic victory: Dalamud would nonetheless fall, and the world would perish beneath it. In the ultimate days and hours of the sport, gamers took half in occasions to push again in opposition to the invading Garlean forces, thrown into disarray by their chief’s loss of life, a way of dread within the air—and the occasions saved going. Dalamud kept getting closer. Until, within the closing minutes, Dalamud’s fiery visage burned within the skies with echoes of unusual, ethereal music, and Final Fantasy XIV died with one final cutscene:

“End of Eorzea” is a six-minute epic nearly in contrast to something Final Fantasy XIV had seen, because the forces of Eorzea, heroes and grunts alike, clashed with the Garleans. Dalamud’s true goal was revealed—not a moon, however an historic jail, housing the almighty primal dragon Bahamut. Eorzea’s armies fall to Garlean arms, our heroes—the identical heroes that had heralded XIV’s arrival in its original cinematic trailer crushed again. At the ultimate minute, an act of prayer by your closest allies in XIV, a gaggle referred to as the Circle of Knowing, makes an attempt to magically restrain Bahamut, solely to dramatically fail, and be rewarded with the beast unleashing its strongest assault from the sequence, Megaflare—solely this time not wielded as a participant fantasy, however a horror to carve fireplace internationally that they had failed to guard.

But in fact, Final Fantasy XIV wasn’t ending perpetually. In the ultimate moments, the Circle of Knowing’s chief, Louisoix Leveilleur, whisks the heroes away to outlive the devastation Bahamut brings, to allow them to re-emerge within the remade world for A Realm Reborn. But the legacy of 1.0 ending prefer it did didn’t simply linger in that metatexual premise that gamers went on even after the world itself was razed to the bottom. The option to rebuild Eorzea from apocalypse was woven into the story of its rebirth, its ramifications echoing not simply throughout A Realm Reborn, however each growth the revived sport has had within the final 9 years, as Final Fantasy XIV kicked off a whirlwind redemption arc to make it one of many crown jewels of Square Enix’s library. The tune that performs to bid farewell to 1.0, “Answers”—composed by Final Fantasy legend Nobuo Uematsu—even grew to become an important a part of the newest of these expansions, Endwalker, framing a equally apocalyptic narrative the place the heroes of the remade Eorzea confronted an almighty doom, solely this time they defeated it, saving not simply the realm however all the world. A justice for the world that they had failed to guard all these years in the past.

One of probably the most compelling, endearing, and maybe daunting elements of Final Fantasy XIV is that’s an ongoing story, one which offers with highs and lows of stakes and journey as story cycles wax and wane, and one that’s steeped in a form of historical past nearly unprecedented on this planet of video games past it. Its gamers have taken their character on a journey that has been occurring for nearly a decade, and a few of them—gamers of the unique XIV who introduced their characters over—for even longer. Making the loss of life and rebirth of the sport a basic a part of that base story, and having it echo all the way in which as much as XIV’s newest apocalyptic occasion, is a vital a part of what makes its success story so miraculous within the first place. Not many video games get the second likelihood Final Fantasy XIV received, whether or not in the actual world or within the land of Eorzea itself, however taking that story of failure and weaving it into one among redemption is a captivating a part of what makes it such a compelling sport within the first place.

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