GameWatch [JP]: Trial to the Heavens interview, the road to 8.0 starts here.

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I missed this earlier. There's a lot of shared coverage on topics with Famitsu, so if you haven't read that one it's here. Here are some notes from this interview that aren't already covered by the Famitsu interview summary: There was a lot of concern about players would react to focus returning to an Ascian character, as former characters like Emet-Selch, Hythlodeus and Elidibus were so well received, but he's happy with how Halmarut has been received by the community. As she's very different from the others due to not being one of the Unsundered and having very different mannerisms and emotions from those popular characters, there was a little concern. She is going to become a key member of the story going forward. Calyx's comments about her old fashioned looks are apparently going to be relevant. As for whether she's an ally or foe, Yoshi-P simply says that can be a matter of perspective like so many older characters, and that she's primarily an "ally of those who live on this planet". The key points that she touched upon at the end of 7.4, and what will shape into FFXIV's new "big goal" or "trial" to overcome will be revealed very quickly at the start of 7.5. The Ascians will not return to being the center of the story, but by nature they are obviously very involved in the mechanisms of the world and Etherys's history, along with other mentioned groups like Preservation and the Winterers. The clashes we see going forward will exist on a different axis than simply between Light and Darkness. Yoshi-P believes that they've hit the reasonable limits of the design behind Relic Weapon series, due to the ever-growing Job count and time investment required in these questlines, so there are plans to wrap up this kind of design with Dawntrail and do something different in the future. Since theres a big gap in feedback between difficulty opinions, the burden being too great, and so on, they want to move onto completely new ways of providing the fun of developing weapons and armour, so the current format will be put on break for now with more details to come in the FanFests. He believes we haven't seen the last of Gerolt and Rowena though. While Echoes of Vana'diel has entirely used existing music from Final Fantasy XI so far, Naoshi Mizuta (FFXI, XIII-2 and LR, MobiusFF, Episode Prompto, and some XIV here and there) is actually producing one original track for Windurst: The Third Walk. They're hoping to include it in FFXI itself in the future too. On the earlier covered topic of FanFest's big changes, Yoshi-P notes that he decided to change his policies around the time 7.2 came out, and with the knowledge that an MMORPG needs to keep evolving, they hope to continue the changes to core systems that they've already started rolling out with 7.4 and what's announced already (such as Dyes). There's a lot more there on BST, Occult Crescent, the development of FFXI, and touching more on the previously covered major changes going forward, so do give the interview a read yourself too. submitted by /u/RablaAndrews [link] [comments]

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