There is not a single game in the history of the franchise that has not been referenced in some capacity by Final Fantasy XIV. This in and of itself is not exactly surprising; the game postdates all but two mainline entries, and producer and director Naoki Yoshida has made no secret of how much effort he puts into making sure that the game is a cavalcade of references to the series up to this point. Some of those references are pretty easy to pick up, but some of them are a whole lot less obvious, and I want to work on cataloging some of them since we’ve got a little time.
To be clear, my goal here is not to simply point out things like “Hey, did you know chocobos appear in several games in the franchise” or “Cover is an ability that has been used in several games; here are the ways it has worked in other titles.” These things are interesting, but they would balloon any look at series references to comb over basically everything forever. Instead, my goal here is to highlight the stuff that is particularly interesting about job design, series references, or the like. With that having been said, let’s start with the most obvious point of contact with jobs.
First and foremost, it’s worth noting that while Reaper is an original job for FFXIV, it is also a reference… to Final Fantasy XI. In FFXI, Dark Knights could use either greatswords or scythes with roughly equal proficiency, and the job was very much set up to be a damage-dealing job with heavier armor rather than a tanking job. Reaper has many abilities that share names from Dark Knight in FFXI (Arcane Crest and Arcane Circle) or with Scythe weaponskills from that game (Guillotine, Nightmare Scythe, Spinning Scythe, Cross Reaping, and so forth). It even goes so far as to make Reaper’s ranged attack a spell cast, which mirrors how Dark Knight was able to use Black Magic in FFXI.
We also have at least one job and possibly as many as three that are based specifically on other characters. Gunbreaker was explicitly based on Squall Leonhart – not so much his gameplay in Final Fantasy VIII but rather gameplay in the Dissidia games. Several of the abilities are named after his abilities within those fighting games, although obviously he’s not really a specific tank in the games because… well, they’re fighting games. That’s not how it works.
It’s already clear that Pictomancer is name-dropping Relm from Final Fantasy VI as being the in-universe source of the art ahead of the expansion. Furthermore, there’s speculation about whether or not Viper will be based off of Zidane from Final Fantasy IX (or Dissidia again) in its gameplay; there’s definitely a similarity in weapons, although in FFIX his double-bladed swords were a specific and separate thing from his usual daggers.
Two different limit breaks are also direct references to prior characters. Final Heaven, the Monk level 3 limit break, is a reference to Tifa from Final Fantasy VII’s final limit break within that game. What is a bit less known is that the Astrologian level 3 limit break is also a reference to Orran from Final Fantasy Tactics. The name is very slightly different (Celestial Stasis vs. Astral Stasis), but the reference is obvious if you’re familiar with the character.
I also hesitate to state this because it has been noted about a million times before now, but the Paladin ability Spirits Within is named after the sword weapon skill in FFXI of the same name. Maybe it’s a reference to something else, too. I don’t know.
Ninja has two interesting references going on with it. The first one is a bit close to the realm of things that I have otherwise said aren’t worth going into, but each of the six “main” Ninjutsu abilities share the name of the six elemental Ninjutsu spells from FFXI. Their functionality is usually quite different; Huton is a wind-elemental attack spell in the older game compared to being a maintained buff in FFXIV, but the names are all identical. (Your single-mark thrown star, meanwhile, is a clear reference to the otherwise series-wide “Throw” ability and thus merits no further commentary.)
But it’s the other reference that I find more interesting. In Final Fantasy I, unlike basically every other game in the series with jobs, your six starter options each upgrades into a more advanced form later in the game. Most of these changes are either completely absent in later games (Black Wizards are pretty much wholly absent, for example) or have developed into separate jobs (Warriors and Knights are now different traditions). But in that game, the agile Thief – which Rogues are based upon – upgrades to Ninja. It’s a bit of a reach, but it stood out to me.
Many of the main Machinist abilities – Air Anchor, Bio Blaster, Auto-Crossbow, Drill, and Chainsaw – are specifically named after the tools Edgar uses in FFVI (all we’re missing is Flash, Debilitator, and Noise Blaster). Similarly, while it might seem odd to have FFXIV’s Bards using bows, Edward in Final Fantasy IV was able to use bows along with harps. And while Scholars have been fairly rare in series history, their first appearance in Final Fantasy III did indeed use books as their main weapons.
While we’ve had Red Mages in the series since the very first game, Final Fantasy V was the game that introduced Dualcast as a signature Red Mage ability (which you will note is kind of the key to Red Mage gameplay in FFXIV). On a related note, Masterful Blitz along with its two most powerful abilities, Phoenix Rising and Phantom Rush, are all references to Sabin from Final Fantasy VI.
That game keeps coming up in the ability references, but I promise, the developers pretty much have mined everything anyone possibly could from the game’s characters at this point. But there are games that haven’t necessarily been mined out as much for abilities, such as FFIX, which actually took an ability from Freya in the form of High Jump. Yes, High Jump first appeared in that game, where it was actually a support ability that buffed her Jump damage. You could argue that it’s kind of different, but seeing as High Jump is just a straight upgrade to Jump, I would argue not so much.
Last but not least, this is probably the most incidental of the batch but personally amuses me. I mentioned way back toward the beginning of the article that Gunbreaker is very heavily based upon the abilities of Squall, but obviously, he’s not even namedropped with the job quests. However, it is specifically stated that the job originates with the Hrothgar… the leonine race that perhaps most closely resembles Griever, the leonine icon Squall uses as a personal insignia and even becomes an endgame boss. Just a cute detail.
Without a doubt, that is a dense web of references even aside from the most common abilities and themes. But it’s also not exhaustive; it’s covering only jobs. So feedback is welcome as always, but next week I’m going to continue on this tour covering more of the franchise references in the same spirit.
The Nymian civilization hosted an immense amount of knowledge and learning, but so much of it has been lost to the people of Eorzea. That doesn’t stop Eliot Lefebvre from scrutinizing Final Fantasy XIV each week in Wisdom of Nym, hosting guides, discussion, and opinions without so much as a trace of rancor.
