Due to the recent resurgence in interest in Final Fantasy 14, a few more folks have been reading through Yoshida Uncensored. It’s a fan-translated book that collects all of Naoki Yoshida’s Famitsu column (he’s the producer of FF14 and FF16) into one volume. That means a few more tidbits, with the added context of FF16’s development, are being highlighted. This includes today’s revelation that before FF16, Yoshida and director Hiroshi Takai were working on a “hardcore action game similar to Bloodborne.”
As highlighted by ResetEra, the game was targeting Western audiences and had the same gothic style and hardcore action feel. On top of what you might expect, there was also a 4v1 multiplayer component. Given this was the early ‘10s, that’s rather ahead of its time. Yoshida says he believes it would have been a “disaster” if development had continued and they hadn’t instead been moved on to working on FF14’s resurgence.
Obviously, this isn’t the first time this info has come to light. RPGSite, in a piece introducing people to Hiroshi Takai, makes mention of it. The author, professional translator Jérémie Kermarrec, highlights how diverging thoughts on how to handle the workload of early production were already occurring. Naturally, it all rather fell apart when Yoshida and Takai, along with many others, were drafted to FF14 to help build what it has become today.
Kermarrec also makes mention of Bloodmasque, a mobile game with a planned console release that was eventually canceled. There’s clearly some ideas in there with shared heritage, and the development team was the one that Yoshida handed projects off to when he was put in charge of FF14. It also looks mad as a box of rats, which is a bonus.
All that said, Takai and Yoshida are now late-ish in development on the action-focused, gothic-looking, combat-heavy Final Fantasy 16. Shared DNA or even a prototype that branched wouldn’t exactly be shocking. While it wouldn’t make huge JRPG-heads happy, “FF16 is like Bloodborne” is certainly a very exciting phrase to utter.
Plenty of other bits and pieces have come out of more folks reading through Yoshida Uncensored. This story of Yoshida breaking the heart of an American boy who thought he was a Japanese schoolgirl is also doing the rounds.
Written by Ben Barrett on behalf of GLHF.
