Hironobu Sakaguchi knew what he was getting into the first time he picked up Final Fantasy 14. An avid gamer himself, he had once forced members of Final Fantasy’s development team to play EverQuest under the guise of doing research.
“My first [MMORPG] was EverQuest. I got absolutely addicted to it and forced a dozen or so SquareSoft staff members at the time to play as well, telling them it was required knowledge. Incredibly, most of them got hooked too, which led to [Final Fantasy 11],” Sakaguchi remembers.
“Actually,” he laughs, “some of the staff never made it back to the real world.”
Sakaguchi knew that would be his fate if he were to ever play Final Fantasy 14, which has steadily grown in popularity since its 2014 reboot. But the desire to feel prepared for an on-stage discussion with director Naoki Yoshida in September 2021 finally pushed him to venture into Eorzea. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened.
“Part of why I'd never played [Final Fantasy 14] is because I've always liked MMORPGs,” Sakaguchi says, “and just like I feared, I got addicted to it once I started.”
Goblins by the sea
Early game developers who manage to stick around the industry tend to fall in two buckets. On one end there are the developers who become executives and develop a mercenary outlook on the business; on the other there are the developers who retain a hobbyist’s appreciation for the medium. Sakaguchi seems to fall into the latter category.
Sakaguchi has been making games since the 1980s, one of his earliest projects being The Death Trap – a text adventure released for Japanese PC. Polygon’s Oral History of Final Fantasy 7 describes Square’s office in those early days as less a company than a room where people came and went, and where Sakaguchi designed games while working part-time.
“We treated it like a hobby, not a career,” longtime Square composer Nobuo Uematsu is quoted as saying. “We just wanted to do what we liked. We weren’t worried about our salaries or living situations or thinking, ‘Where is this company going?’”
Sakaguchi’s always liked games. Even before Dragon Quest burst onto the scene and formally introduced Japan to RPGs, he was playing on an Apple II, where he became fascinated by genre stalwarts like Ultima. That experience would lead him to make Final Fantasy, the series that would go on to define his career.
Now living in Hawaii, it’s been more than two decades since Sakaguchi last worked on a Final Fantasy game, but he retains what seems to be a deep affection for Square Enix’s famous RPG series, even going as far as to call Final Fantasy 15 his favorite game of 2016. When he ventured out of FF14’s Ul’dah for the first time, all of the old memories came rushing back.
“I didn't get much of a sense of it at first since I was only fighting enemies like ladybugs, but then I started seeing bosses like Titan, and when I got a lot further in, I saw goblins drawn in Mr. Amano's style,” Sakaguchi says, referring to longtime series artist Yoshitaka Amano.
He would point out details like the chameleons having been drawn by Amano, which he says “shocked” the people he was traveling with.
“The 3D staff have really done a good job modeling the chameleons after Mr. Amano's original drawings. His art has such a two-dimensional feeling to it, so I was moved on even a technical level by their ability to preserve that sense in 3D. Of course, I did wonder why his goblins were by the sea,” Sakaguchi laughs.
It didn’t take long for word to get around that Final Fantasy’s creator was playing Final Fantasy 14. Sakaguchi used his own name, so fans quickly recognized and greeted him about the world. Some would approach with what they described as “shaking hands,” but Sakaguchi would laugh and suggest they calm down so they could have a “nice conversation.”
The interactions reminded Sakaguchi of the old days, when console games still came with postcards. In those days, fans would correspond with the dev teams, with the most dedicated among them sometimes joining up as playtesters.
“You come to learn relatively personal things about other players in MMORPGs. They might say that their cat is meowing, or talk about their children, for example. You also learn how old they are in these moments. Still, you don't dig too deep into their lives, right? It's almost like a new form of relationship, where you know just a bit about someone's private life,” Sakaguchi says.
“On the other hand, though, you talk to them in depth about the game, like ‘You need to start with rings there, not legs,’ or ‘I need to get my crits up.’ It's those kinds of odd conversations that I like. Someone might type, ‘My hands are so cold that they don't move…’ only for me to reply, ‘Sorry, but it's 27 degrees (81F) here in Hawaii!’”
Sakaguchi’s routine has him waking up between 5am and 6am, which is between 11pm and midnight in Japan. “Things are right around their peak just as I wake up,” Sakaguchi says, “so once I meet with everyone and start playing, they'll leave one by one until I'm all alone in the end. That's perfect for me, since I get to enjoy soloing for five or six hours after everyone has left.”
News of Sakaguchi’s exploits also began to circulate on social media. Sakaguchi meticulously documented his progress, sharing updates and making off-the-cuff observations, which were in turn shared around social media. Fans noted his rapid progress, which saw him finish the base game and the Heavensward expansion in just over two weeks — a grind that can take more than 100 hours based on HowLongToBeat.
By October 29, 2021 he had finished Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and smaller patch content. He even managed to squeeze in enough time to attend his daughter’s wedding. At last count Sakaguchi has clocked more than 1000 hours in Final Fantasy 14,
“I really shouldn't be getting this obsessed with a game, should I? I have work I need to do!” Sakaguchi laughs.
"It's like Disneyland"
Sakaguchi’s embrace of Final Fantasy 14 comes at what may well be the pinnacle for Square Enix’s once troubled MMORPG. Benefiting from years of positive word-of-mouth, Final Fantasy 14 saw a huge wave of new players in 2021, many of whom were abandoning World of Warcraft. The influx of new players overwhelmed Final Fantasy 14’s servers, at one point forcing Square Enix to stop selling new copies online.
Those who love Final Fantasy 14 praise its high-quality storytelling, steady release cadence, and the transparency of its developers. Its success is frequently credited to director Naoki Yoshida, known as “Yoshi-P” to fans, who took over Final Fantasy 14’s development after its disastrous 2010 release. Yoshida is an outspoken fan of both Final Fantasy and World of Warcraft, infusing elements from both games into Final Fantasy 14.
Because of this, Final Fantasy 14 is chock-a-block with references from the larger series, with famous moments including getting the Magitek Armor from Final Fantasy 6 as a mount. Final Fantasy 14 also includes scenarios created by Final Fantasy Tactics director Yasumi Matsuno, who is said to be a hardcore fan of the MMO himself.
In the process of rebooting Final Fantasy 14, Sakaguchi says Yoshida approached him for his blessing on the project. “When I first went for dinner with Yoshida, he asked me, ‘Is it really okay for me to be making [Final Fantasy 14]? How much of your series is it okay for me to change?’
“I replied, ‘[Final Fantasy 14] belongs to you. I don't intend on meddling in any way. It's yours, so do as you like with it.’ It seems like that resonated with [Yoshida] to some degree, and he said he'd really go for it in that case.”
Sakaguchi says that he has since emailed back and forth with Yoshida “a few times,” including a long message with his thoughts on Final Fantasy 14. Yoshida replied that he was reading Sakaguchi’s Twitter account and that the “whole team was moved by the mere fact that [Sakaguchi] was playing the game,” which Sakaguchi says made him happy too.