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Whether you’re trying to deal with the obnoxious son of the late Shinra president and his pesky pet or just learn a cool new trick to help you tackle Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s battles, we’ve got you covered this week. We’ve also got the lowdown on how to rank up your Fortnite Festival pass without playing the game, and lots more tips and guides for you in the pages ahead.
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Kotaku Staff
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In the words of Paula Abdul and MC Skat Kat, opposites attract. Perhaps that kernel of wisdom can explain the recent announcement that Final Fantasy XIV—an epic, fantasy MMORPG—is crossing over with Fall Guys—a colorful, small-scale battle royale—in a future update.
Final Fantasy XIV was a giant disaster when it first launched in 2010. However, following a complete shutdown of the original version in 2012, FFXIV was reworked into a better game known as Realm Reborn in August 2013, which was received much better by fans and critics. Since then, the game has received numerous updates and expansions, becoming one of the most popular MMOs in the world. And in the near future, the world of FFXIV will include Fall Guys content, for some odd reason.
The odd news was announced in Las Vegas by FFXIV producer and director Naoki Yoshida—known online as Yoshi P—during the first day of Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest 2023 on July 28. While the team didn’t release any videos or trailers of the Fall Guys content coming to the game, some screenshots were shared that show obstacle courses familiar to anyone who has played Epic’s popular game show-like battle royale.
“These warriors of light are having a bit of a different time than usual,” joked Yoshida on stage during the keynote.
According to the producer and director, the new content will support up to 24 players at once and is currently in development. This new Fall Guys-inspired content won’t be added randomly to missions or in the open world, but will instead be added to the preexisting Golden Saucer, an in-game amusement park that contains mini-games for players to enjoy.
Yoshida further added that since it was given this opportunity the developer really tried its best to make the most of it. That’s evident in the screenshots, which contain obstacles and platforms that look very accurate to what you would see in Fall Guys. Even HUD elements from the battle royale seem to be included in FFXIV’s version.
As for when you’ll be able to play this, Yoshida promised the new mini-games would be included as part of the 6.5 updates sometime in September.
But if you really can’t wait for that and you need some Fall Guys X Final Fantasy content in your life sooner than later, I’ve got some good news for your weirdly specific desire. On August 23, a Final Fantasy-themed battle pass will launch in Fall Guys and will run for six weeks. The update will include costumes based on iconic Final Fantasy characters and creatures, like Chocobos.
Now, somebody just needs to add MC Skat Kat to one of these popular online video games. Please. Oh, and in other news, FFXIV is coming to Xbox Series X/S consoles later this year.
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Zack Zwiezen
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At long last, Xbox owners will soon get to enjoy the MMORPG PlayStation players have enjoyed for nearly a decade. Final Fantasy XIV is headed to Xbox Series X/S in spring 2024 after being a PlayStation console exclusive since 2014.
Producer and director Naoki Yoshida made the announcement on stage at the game’s 2023 fanfest in Las Vegas, NV alongside Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer. The Xbox Series X/S version will offer 4K graphics and faster load times, like its PlayStation 5 counterpart. While the full release is still almost a year away, an open beta will be available for players to try much sooner when patch 6.5x arrives in the months ahead.
For those who have been living under an adamantoise shell, Final Fantasy XIV has you complete fetch quests, dungeons, and raids across the dazzling world of Hydaelyn, full of political intrigue and mythical wonder. The game was one of the first live-service disasters when it first launched in 2013, and was even entirely shutdown for a time before re-releasing as A Realm Reborn.
It’s recieved increasingly excellent expansions ever since, each introducing new characters, classes, and conflicts. And while it’s an MMO, a Duty Support system lets you play solo with AI-controlled NPCs. By the time Final Fantasy XIV comes to Xbox Series X/S, Square Enix says the feature will enable players to complete everything from the start of the game up through its most recent Endwalker expansion without ever needing to interact with another human being.
The story of how we got here, however, is a long one. Yoshida was asked as early as 2013 why the game wasn’t on Xbox One. His answer at the time was that Microsoft’s stance on crossplay was too restrictive. “The main reason from our side is that I don’t want the community to be divided; to be split into two or more. For example, one player might be on the PC version, another might be on the PS4 version, and I’m playing the Xbox version – but we’re not able to join the same game servers,” he told RPGSite at the time. “That is just… I just don’t like the idea. I disagree with it.”
That was back when Microsoft was the company seemingly standing in the way of crossplay between the two consoles. Years later, roles were reversed, with Sony pushing back against crossplay for games like Fortnite. Yoshida repeated his requirement for crossplay in a 2017 interview with Kotaku, and things seemed to be progressing in that direction not long after.
Spencer publicly promised to bring the game to Xbox at the X019 fanfest event in London. “We have a great relationship with Yoshida-san and we’re working through what it means to bring a cross-platform MMO, that they’ve run for years,” he told VGC at the time. “It will be one of the games that’s coming and it’s something that I know our Xbox fans will be incredibly excited to see.”
No deal immeidately materialized, however. Yoshida was asked again what the problem was during a 2021 interview around the time Final Fantasy XIV came to PS5. “So I feel bad for saying the same thing every time,” he told Easy Allies. “But we are still in discussions with Microsoft and I feel like our conversations are going in a positive tone.”
The positive tone of those conversations seemingly wasn’t enough to finally get Sony to agree to crossplay though, until now. The two companies also recently reached a 10-year agreement for Call of Duty to keep coming to PlayStation after Microsoft’s acqusition of Activision Blizzard is finalized. Purely a coincidence, I’m sure. Sony, Microsoft, and Square Enix did not immediately respond to requets for comment.
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Ethan Gach
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After seeing Honkai: Star Rail for a few minutes during a live media preview, I mostly liked what I saw. HoYoverse’s “space fantasy” RPG doesn’t reinvent turn-based combat, but the performance was smooth. The fighting animations were among some of the best I’ve seen out of anime games in recent years. The combat’s turn tracker, team combos, type matchups, and battle animations were reminiscent of games like Shin Megami Tensei and Persona 5. But HoYoverse absolutely does not want you to think of it as either of those games. Besides the seeming identity confusion, my conversation with the developer left me without much optimism about racial inclusion in Star Rail’s space fantasy.
Here’s how Star Rail works: Although you start off with a protagonist character, most of your roster will come out of rolling for wives and husbands through the gacha system. You use them to explore maps filled with enemy encounters (rather than real-time combat like in HoYoverse’s current mainstay Genshin Impact).
Once you run into an enemy, you’ll start a turn-based battle. Each of your four party members will have two skills. Some will be offensive, while others will be support or healing based. Each attack corresponds with an element, and using elemental type matchups effectively will allow you to break shield bars. Once an enemy is vulnerable, you can use team combination attacks to kick them while they’re down.
Despite the relatively simple combat, the game will feature an auto-battle mechanic. This should make it easier to grind daily battles for resources, which is an essential feature some modern gacha use to keep the games alive.
Star Rail will have a main story campaign and regular sidequests. While it shares similar characters from Honkai Impact 3rd, Fish Ling, a representative from HoYoverse, assured me that there wouldn’t be any story crossover with their incredibly lore-heavy real time action game.
Driving Honkai: Star Rail’s development was HoYoverse’s desire to diversify its portfolio from the usual action games it’s released, according to Michalel Lin, another representative for the developer. Secondly, HoYoverse felt turn-based combat was conducive to “the story that we want to tell.” Its design philosophy was driven by the desire to make turn-based combat approachable for newcomers.
Things got murkier, however, when I tried to ask who the target audience is. The Star Rail presentation mentioned that the game would feature different cultures. Remembering how badly Genshin Impact flubbed depicting darker skinned people and Southwest Asians in the Sumeru update, I asked how the developers intended to improve representation in Star Rail. What lessons did they learn from the overseas community?
“The game is set in a fictional world,” Lin said. “What we do is dependent on how the IP grows. As a combination of cultures in our world, there’s not a specific culture we target. We will continue listening to fans’ feedback, but how the world will be built, we can’t say for certain.”
It’s 2023, and Asian RPGs keep dropping the ball on diversity. This immensely disappointing answer reminded me of Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida’s response as to whether or not that game would include people of color. Their answer was that their world was fantasy, so it couldn’t be held to any diversity standards at all. Star Rail includes characters who are culturally Chinese, so it feels really shitty that its launch characters seem to be even more light-skinned than those in Genshin Impact. Once again, we have to start holding Asian RPGs to higher standards.
I got similarly vague answers when I asked where Star Rail took its inspiration from. “We think turn based RPGs are very engaging and have an active audience in the market,” Lin said. It took me a couple of minutes to remember that the Persona series has sold 16.8 million units globally and was probably at least one of the games alluded to. When I pressed about the studio’s creative inspiration, Lin told me Star Rail’s team consists of 500 individual developers. Therefore, it would be impossible to narrow down specific influences.
I can guess why HoYoverse is being so coy about its Persona 5 game set in space. It’s likely because the internet tore into Genshin Impact at launch for its similarities to Breath of the Wild, to the point where the developer had to reassure players that the game was more than a clone. But Star Rail will likely release sometime this year, and people will be able to see the Persona DNA embedded in how the game plays.
So here’s the honest summary of Star Rail: It’s a space fantasy game that you’ll probably enjoy if you’re a fan of the Persona or Shin Megami Tensei series. Be careful of the gacha system, and don’t hold your breath over improved diversity from what we’ve seen so far.
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Sisi Jiang
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It shouldn’t be a big ask from gamers to have more gender-inclusive pronoun options in a video game, especially in RPGs. One producer at Square Enix thinks helping gamers feel welcome by including non-binary pronouns is such a small ask that it was a no-brainer to have it be a part of his new game.
The game in question is the cutesy farming simulator Harvestella, which RPG giant Square Enix just released yesterday on PC and Switch. Similar to Stardew Valley, characters in Harvestella are charged with tending to crops, befriending their neighbors, and overcoming calamity in the form of environmental disasters. Harvestella, Eurogamer pointed out today, features a character creator that offers players the option to choose male, female, or non-binary pronouns.
In an interview with Eurogamer, producer Daisuke Taka said he thinks it is “completely normal” for games to include a non-binary option for players. While having gender-neutral pronouns feels like a small part of the farming sim as a whole, Taka said it was important to let players choose their gender identity because the game is meant to be “for everyone.”
“The protagonist of Harvestella is the player,” Taka told Eurogamer. “We thought it was important to have the player create their own character, selecting different elements, including gender, appearance, voice and name. We felt this was important so players aren’t limited, and feel free to express themselves however they want and as a result are much more attached to their character.”
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Read More: Trans Inclusion Means More Than Just Adding Potential Gender Options To Hogwarts Legacy
Recently, characters in video games that’ve come out as gender-neutral have been met with ire amongst the bigoted peanut gallery of the gaming community. Look no further than the vocal minority within the Guilty Gear Strive fighting came community that had conniptions when Bridget and Testament came out as transgender and nonbinary, respectively. Fee fees got so hurt, one troglodyte took it upon themselves to impersonate a customer service representative and fake emails about Bridget’s gender.
In recent times Square Enix has been making strides in making sure some of its games are more inclusive. In a July 2021 interview with The Gamer, Final Fantasy VII Remake co-director Motomu Toriyama said LGBTQ+ inclusion is an important issue for both gamers and developers.
“In Final Fantasy VII Remake, we rebuilt the original game using the latest technology, but we felt that it should not stop at the technical side and we needed to update the story content being shown in line with modern sensibilities,” Toriyama told The Gamer. That same month, the company debuted a non-binary character mascot, Mina, for that year’s Pride.
However, the JRPG giant doesn’t always get it right. For example, someone might wanna remind Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida that, contrary to his centrist view that people of color walking about ye old Final Fantasy would violate the “narrative boundaries” of the upcoming game’s medieval European setting, Black and brown folk aren’t a “new game plus” feature on planet Earth.
I’m much more into the vibe I’m feeling from the Harvestella guy. “The visibility of gender non-conforming people has become much more commonplace, so we thought it was important to reflect this within the game and show that all players are welcome to Harvestella,” Taka said.
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Isaiah Colbert
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