Babylon's Fall addresses why it's using Final Fantasy XIV assets

Developed by PlatinumGames and Square Enix, Babylon’s Fall is an upcoming multiplayer action-RPG designed as an ongoing service game. Recently, the third closed beta test was conducted where testers were asked to stress test the servers amongst other features. We summarized the highlights from the previous beta test here.

During this test, players noticed that certain gear obtained looked remarkably similar to sets used in Final Fantasy XIV. Amidst criticism that the game was borrowing assets from other titles rather than developing it’s own original content, Babylon’s Fall producer Yosuke Saito and Final Fantasy XIV producer/director Naoki Yoshida responded in tandem on the Hanging Gardens community website.

“Ahh, so he’s making a hardcore action-based hack-and-slash game. I’m kind of jealous.” Yoshida thought to himself when Saito unveiled his plans to develop Babylon’s Fall. “Preparing all of the gear variations needed for the gameplay is going to be really difficult.” Yoshida himself is a noted Diablo fan, with an understanding that creating a wide variety of gear options makes a loot-based game all the more attractive.

“Naoki Yoshida was also in attendance and offered his help,” Saito shared, “to which I replied, “Yes, please!” From that point the two teams coordinated how the assets would be used for the game. The two previously collaborated for the YoRHa Dark Apocalypse series featured in Final Fantasy XIV’s Shadowbringers expansion, which used character models, motion data, and music from NieR Automata.

I myself am a huge fan of online games, a gamer, and a developer. That’s why I couldn’t be happier if BABYLON’S FALL succeeds and reinvigorates Japanese online games while boosting the number of players in the genre. So, I said, “Let’s use FFXIV’s assets too. We have so many, it’d be a shame to limit them to FFXIV alone,” and that’s how it all started. Back then, I didn’t realize that it would become such a hot topic…

Of course, the subtle design changes and adjustments during their implementation into BABYLON’S FALL will be fully supervised by the FFXIV team to ensure that they fit into its world.

Naoki Yoshida
Producer & Director, Final Fantasy XIV Online

By borrowing data, we’ve been able to implement a much wider variety of gear and emotes in the game than we’d originally planned.

Just to be clear though, the visuals of most of the gear that players aim to obtain in-game are unique to BABYLON’S FALL.

The data borrowed from FINAL FANTASY XIV was used for gear from the introduction to mid-level range of the game, which is why they were so prevalent in the Closed Beta Test.

Yosuke Saito
Producer, Babylon’s Fall

Even outside the context of a collaboration or a cameo, Final Fantasy XIV has borrowed assets from other Square Enix titles including Final Fantasy XI, XII, XIII, and Type-0 HD. In the eight years since A Realm Reborn‘s launch, the team has maintained a reliable content release cadence that has helped keep players engaged or returning for more. To that end, it’s not hard to imagine how maintaining that schedule would become more difficult if every new asset had to be developed from scratch, ballooning the amount of time and budget necessary to implement them.

Babylon’s Fall is currently announced for Windows PC, PlayStation 5, and PlayStation 4. No release date has been annoucned.


About the Author

Tony Garsow Tony joined Nova Crystallis in 2015, and has spent more than a decade writing in the Final Fantasy community. He also contributes to the Nova Crystallis Twitch and YouTube channels, where you can watch select gameplay highlights, previews, and streams.

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