The Final Countdown

i FORMAT PS5, PS4 / ETA AUTUMN / PUB SQUARE ENIX / DEV SQUARE ENIX / PLAYERS 1-24

Remember Paris in 2019? Naoki Yoshida walked the stage in front of excited Final Fantasy XIV Online players, dressed in the full garb of a Gunbreaker (a Job class in the game). When he asked the audience where they thought they’d be going next, one fan shouted out “The moon!” Yoshida laughed and grinned. “The moon? Maybe that’s 7.0!”

In a way, the lunar setting of forthcoming expansion Endwalker (due this autumn) is another in a long line of promises Yoshida and his team have made and kept for fans of the Final Fantasy MMO. “I said [that] half-joking,” says Yoshida when we ask him about that moment. “We did actually have that already in mind, back then.” Yoshida’s penchant for running a well-oiled machine is one of the things that enabled the team to bounce back from the original failed PC incarnation of Final Fantasy XIV, rebooting it as the beloved A Realm