In the 65th Letter from the Producer Live taking place during the annual 14-hour broadcast, producer/director Naoki Yoshida shared information on Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, its PC benchmark and various events coming to the game before year’s end. Today’s broadcast also featured special guests and NieR creators Yoko Taro and Yosuke Saito.

Benchmark

Available from July 11 at 12AM PST for PC download, the benchmark will let players see where their hardware stands while getting a glimpse of in-game assets and the character creator featuring male Viera. Square Enix has provided a trailer as well.

Endwalker Announcement Recap

• Endwalker will feature conclusion of the Hydaelyn and Zodiark saga. The main scenario will feature more scenes than previous expansions and more voiced scenes.
• Old Sharlayan will function similarly to to The Crystarium/Kugane/Ishgard. Radz-at-Han will be similar to Eulmore/Rhalgr’s Reach/Idyllshire.
• Sage and Reaper will be added as new Jobs. Alphinaud and Zenos will take on these new jobs respectively.
• You’ll be able to use Explorer Mode to revisit Endwalker dungeons later on, presumably after the expansion patch.
• Pandaemonium is the new 8-man raid, and will be released 2 weeks after the Endwalker launch. The Savage mode difficulty will come 4 weeks after launch.
• Myths of the Realm will be the 24-man alliance raid series that will begin in Patch 6.1 after launch.
• A lottery system will be implemented for housing. Requirements will be added to participate, you must deposit the gil, can’t use a free trial account, etc. More information will be available later.
• Data Center Travel between data centers will be available in the same region, Japan, North America, Europe, and Oceania at first.
• Regarding the game’s battle systems, values will be downscaled to prevent a variety of issues, though Yoshida asks that you not think your Warrior of Light getting weaker.
• Belts are no longer equippable in Endwalker and will no longer drop. Belts in your inventory will remain there. You can speak with the Calamity Salvager to access currently equipped belts, belts in your Armoury Chest, and any belts your retainers have equipped. Belts can be sold to vendors, desynthesized. Any affixed materia can be removed but extraction will no longer work.
• Belt slots will be re-allocated to weapon and ring slots. They will increase capacity from 35 to 50.

Job Gear

Upcoming Game Events

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The Final Fantasy XV event is returning. If you already completed it before, you can participate again.

Square Enix is planning Endwalker media tours for mid-September.

Moogle Treasure Trove will return on October 19.

Endwalker early access goes live on November 19. The expansion proper launches November 23.

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Male Viera

Male Viera can be explored in the character creator packed with the Endwalker benchmark. They’re smaller in stature than female Viera.

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Q&A with Yosuke Saito and Yoko Taro

• Regarding the end of the YoRHA Dark Apocalypse alliance raid series, it seems all worlds chose Anogg. Would the story have been different if we had chosen Konogg? Yoko Taro says he thought a game engineer messed with the outcome. They thought there was a problem with the data, but that wasn’t the case. He thinks everyone just picked the first choice on the list.
• Will more NieR glamour come to Final Fantasy XIV? Yoko Taro says that Square Enix is a company that listens to its fans so they should do it. Yoshida laughs – maybe the flying unit as a mount?
• Why was the series called “Dark Apocalypse?” It turns out Yoshida was the one that chose that name because he’s wanted to use the name since he was a kid in school.
• Yoko Taro is refusing to answer story questions. He thinks if the Warrior of Light had lost the final battle that the characters would have all went on a journey together. He doesn’t think about it because a hero is supposed to beat the final boss. He loves the question though.
• Dark Apocalypse was a collaboration where Yoko Taro worked with the FFXIV team in the planning phase, but says he doesn’t want to blame them for any mistakes. He can’t take full credit either way. He also praised the music that was developed by Keiichi Okabe for the collaboration. For example, the FFXIV team wanted to make a flying building for a certain section, and Yoko Taro told them to “make it the Square Enix building.”
• Yoko Taro says he has been told that twins often appear in his stories and that he likes to kill one of them. He says his motivation is money, because you can make two characters for the price of one.
• Will the story continue? Yoko Taro says if he gets money and they can work on it at the bar, then yes.
• Yoshida says a lot of people on the FFXIV team have played Yoko Taro’s games, which influenced many of the designs in the raid. If there’s interest and enough budget, they might do it again.
• Yoko Taro says that most stories end on a happy note and wrap up conclusively, but he wanted to tell a story in a MMO which is ongoing and evolving. The weekly quests that followed weren’t to build up to a finale, but to show that the story would continue in an everyday sort of way.
• Why was the instant death area during the Red Girl battle in the Tower at Paradigm’s Breach implemented? The answer is that they thought the fight would be too easy if you could move through the center area. Yoko Taro says he is upset they rejected his original idea of having a raid wipe if any player got hit by a red orb.
• Yoko Taro says that he made this content with mysteries that may not be resolved, which NieR fans may be used to but FFXIV fans are not.
• Yoko Taro joked that he applied to be a scenario writer for Final Fantasy XVI.
• Yoshida says they’re done with the scenario for FFXVI and they’re about to wrap English voice acting.
• Yoshida says there might not be an update about FFXVI at TGS and that he’s already said too much – that said, the team is trying to get it into a playable state by then.
• Saito says they’re working on a new game with Yoko Taro and Keiichi Okabe. It’s not a smartphone game. That’s the news.
• Letter from the Producer Live 66 will air in mid-September alongside the media tour. Live Letter 67 will air in early November which will be informational for the early access phase for Endwalker.

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