A couple weeks ago, I got a fun letter from a reader sharing his personal experiences with Final Fantasy XIV and Final Fantasy XI and speculating on the future of the franchise. It was a really fun back-and-forth about our histories with the games in question, which is always interesting to me since it’s always fun to talk shop, but the real meat of the letter was a question he had about Final Fantasy XVII.
Now, to be clear, FFXVII has not been announced in the first place, and we do not know if there will ever be another MMORPG installment of the franchise. This is purely a speculative exercise based on the franchise as a whole and what the game would even look like, and fortunately at this point we do have a fuller picture of how producer and director Naoki Yoshida looks at the series as a whole. So what do I think the game would look like? Well… I have some thoughts. Obviously.
You may notice that I specifically mentioned producer and director Naoki Yoshida for the game, while at this time he is neither producer nor director on this game and he would not necessarily have both roles on it. Indeed, he was not producer and director for Final Fantasy XVI. That having been said, it’s not exactly a mystery that he had an outsized influence and was seen that way by others. I don’t mean to imply that Yoshida would somehow be shadow-directing; I mean that in this case it’s fair enough to regard him as being in a similar leadership role in any FFXVII discussion.
It’s also worth noting that as a general rule, the MMORPGs under the series header have broadly been reflective of the time period rather than an attempt to reinvent the genre. I imagine FFXVII will be similar, reflecting the direction that the genre has moved toward instead of trying to strike a bold new direction. But I also see Yoshida, as a creative force, being very dialed into both the franchise history and the genre as a whole; I don’t see him trying to avoid housing or crafting based on lesser focus over time.
But I do think that first and foremost, the game is going to be more of an action-based game from the start.
To be clear, I don’t think that we’ll see something purely action-focused, but it’s going to be closer to FFXVI than anything. Expect something with a limited number of abilities on a hotbar, possibly that chain into one another, and a different primary and secondary ability on left and right click along with some sort of dodge-or-block ability. This will definitely have perfect mechanics to it if you time it just right, but I imagine it won’t quite be as exacting as an action game. The existing FFXIV mechanics probably show about as far as the team is willing to push netcode for risk of being unplayable on weaker connections.
The Armoury System will not be coming over from FFXIV; indeed, I suspect that a lot of things wouldn’t. Races probably won’t be coming along, either. That’s not to say that none of them will be present at all, but I suspect we’ll see a different lineup drawn from elsewhere in the franchise history, or maybe just wholly original ones from the beginning. I’ve never gotten the sense that Yoshida loves having to inherit FFXI’s basic lineup, after all.
I also don’t see the game ultimately going with a pure job system, though. In fact, I think FFXVI is instructive here with a treatment of the various jobs as ideas that can be filtered through multiple lenses. In broad strokes, I would imagine that players choose a weapon, a fighting style, and a magical style; the last one can include casting spells or it can just mean focusing power for melee abilities. So, for example, if you choose dual blades, your style is agile, and your magical style is elemental, you’re a Ninja. Change your magical style to focus? More like a Viper. What if you change to a power-based style? Well, then you’re more of a bruiser or tank.
Obviously, going too far here involves writing mechanical fanfic, and I have a different column where I do that. Let’s focus on content. I don’t see the game becoming any more instance-focused than FFXIV already is; if anything, I could see it focusing more on a Paragon City-like structure where more quests involve small instanced areas with a pool of randomized bosses alongside more structured and intense content. The reward structure and overall repeated content probably looks similar, as well. Trusts or something similar would probably be in the game from the start, and I imagine it’d be easier out of the gate to form parties consisting of some friends and some NPC companions.
I also suspect that setting-wise, the game would veer closer to the more 20th-century settings the series has explored rather than the one occupied by FFXIV and FFXI. One of the things I like to remind people of is that this franchise has always had strong science-fiction influence (the first game had robots and technological sky cities). It’s not even unique to this franchise. Might & Magic has been fusing fantasy and science fiction since early on just as gleefully. I wouldn’t be surprised by something akin to Final Fantasy VII’s dieselpunk aesthetic, where there’s modern-ish tech with a thin patina of rust and grime and oil everywhere.
Crafting and gathering will likely be pretty close to how FFXIV does it, but with some refinements and some elements rebuilt from first principles. My guess and/or hope would be that you still have crafting and gathering-specific gear, but rather than being an outright job change it’s something you can swap to in the field as necessary. That doesn’t mean they’re less important, just that the change from being a job-structured game shakes down through every level of design.
Now, this could all be wildly off; as of right now we haven’t heard anything about the next major title in the franchise. I am speculating right now based on very little information, and while I fully believe that there are ongoing discussions about what will be happening next in the franchise, I do not know if they even include another MMORPG at this time. About the one thing I feel fully confident in predicting is that Naoki Yoshida is involved in some capacity.
But that in and of itself makes me feel a bit more optimistic about it because we know that this man really likes MMORPGs. He’s not just best-known for bringing one back into prominence, he’s also a vocal fan of the genre. So while I cannot do much more than speculate on FFXVII based on what is currently a whole lot of nothing, I say that as long as Yoshida is getting lightly tossed around as one of the architects of Final Fantasy, there’s going to be MMORPGs in the mix there.
Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments down below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, since the column will actually be just before the next major content drop in FFXIV, I want to turn my eye to FFXI as we’ve just celebrated 23 years of operation… and talk about how it’s all right to be done.
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.
