Yoshida's latest interview, Comic Exhibition Taiwan 2025

[Hallarem]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...n_taiwan_2025/


Sure seems like a lot of PR speech again and more lies about them "implementing a lot of player suggestions" and pushing the dumb DT "vacation" angle.

Funniest part though is how the "Garlemald was never planned" people get finally silenced in this by, I quote:

"We planned to use 5.0 till 7.0 to end our decade-long Hydaelyn and Zodiark arc and bring everything to its climax. Originally, 6.0 was meant to focus on the Garlean Empire. However, 5.0's reception exceeded our expectations, so we decided to condense the Empire's storyline to allow for greater developments."


I frigging knew Endwalker was a rushed smushed package to rush to the end. They should've taken their time and done it in two expansions. No wonder the pacing was so off.

[Auro_Seldaris]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxivdiscus...n_taiwan_2025/


Sure seems like a lot of PR speech again and more lies about them "implementing a lot of player suggestions" and pushing the dumb DT "vacation" angle.

Funniest part though is how the "Garlemald was never planned" people get finally silenced in this by, I quote:

"We planned to use 5.0 till 7.0 to end our decade-long Hydaelyn and Zodiark arc and bring everything to its climax. Originally, 6.0 was meant to focus on the Garlean Empire. However, 5.0's reception exceeded our expectations, so we decided to condense the Empire's storyline to allow for greater developments."


I frigging knew Endwalker was a rushed smushed package to rush to the end. They should've taken their time and done it in two expansions. No wonder the pacing was so off.

"5.0's reception exceeded our expectations, so we decided to condense the Empire's storyline to allow for greater developments" , when translated from Yoshida Speak, means "We were afraid if we went into a slower-paced, more thoughtful exploration of war, nationalism, and the consequences it has on people and the world that all these people that flooded in during ShB would get bored with 'Dr. Zhivago but in a Fantasy Land' and unsubscribe, so we speedran it to get to the HYPE EXCITING FINALE."

Well, I've been saying this for YEARS now, and looks like I was right. I knew from the moment that Zodiark was the very first trial that we were on a speedrun.

Clearly, the Moon was supposed to be the "mysterious unexpected last zone" and Zodiark was supposed to be the Final Boss of Hypothetical Garlemald Expansion. Which would lead into the Final Days being the patch storyline, leading up to What We Know as Endwalker. This would have given every plot element room to breathe. It explains why "The Telophoroi" are really just "Fandaniel and Zenos and some minions" instead of an actual cult who want to bring about Armageddon. It explains why the Telophoroi towers, which would have been a good way to reuse older zones and revisit them to fight Terminus monsters and topple the towers, kinda just... fall down, offscreen. By extension that explains why the Final Days mostly only happen in Thavnair - they were originally meant to be happening all over the world during the Hypothetical Garlemald Expansion patch cycle.

But instead, they were idiots and rushed it when it should have been a two-part finale. Almost all finales are better as a two-parter. Imagine what a rushed mess Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows film would have been if they had tried to cram a massive final book into one movie. People make fun of how Peter Jackson's film version of The Return of the King has "6 different endings" but think of how many characters and plots would just have... not had a finish if they had rushed the ending. The finale of the rebooted Battlestar Galactica , "Daybreak", was a three-part finale, because there was so much to wrap up in the ending of the show - and it still is debated to this day on whether or not it truly succeeded.

If all the haters could put one dollar in the "We Were Right About Endwalker Being a Rush Job" jar, that would be nice, thank you.

Instead what Yoshida and co. did in their infinite wisdom was rush the ending to get all that leftover plot from 1.0 (which he has admitted he hated being saddled with) out of the way to get to the story he REALLY wanted to tell.Which was... Dawntrail, I guess. "Dawntrail is a vacation" , once again translating from Yoshida-ese, means "this is an excuse to make players pay us for the privelege of stalling for time while we come up with.... something for the future plot"

Which wouldn't have been necessary, btw, if they had just stuck to the plan. Hypothetical Garlemald Expansion > Endwalker would have given them plenty of time to figure out what to do next. Their spinning their wheels with DT wouldn't have even been neccessary if they had just stuck to their own plan.

Yeah, I think I would have rather had a thoughtful Garlemald expansion and been knee-deep in a better-written and not rushed Endwalker by this point, than the EW Rushjob and the Dawntrail Sloppa.

[Supersnow845]

^to be fair under that schedule that would have left what amounts to elpis->labarynthos->ultima Thule as the totality of 7.0 and I don’t think it would be possible to make that plotline stretch any further than it did already. Elpis already feels like it goes on for 5 hours too long and I don’t even think elpis is 5 hours long

EW was too rushed but each part of EW couldn’t really adequately be stretched to fit two expansions and a patch cycle without serious pointless bloat or additions we cannot guarantee they would have added or not. The final days are too time sensitive to drag out over patch cycles (it’s why we removed everlasting light in vanilla ShB) but if you pushed all of the final days to 7.0 then 6.0-6.5 wouldn’t have anywhere near enough content as I feel like people overestimate how much people would have wanted a “sympathetic garlean” expansion, and if we spent 3/4 of it opposed to garlamald we would just be retreading SB

[Jeeqbit]

No one is disputing that they intended to do Garlemald. They have said consistently that they wanted to speed up the end of the arc and us being a primal slayer, especially with how the game grew in Shadowbringers.

As for the other post about Zodiark not being the last boss, the writers all agreed that he should not be the last boss and this was their viewpoint even if Garlemald wasn't included. My guess is because this would have been too obvious and predictable.

[yesnt]

Instead what Yoshida and co. did in their infinite wisdom was rush the ending to get all that leftover plot from 1.0 (which he has admitted he hated being saddled with) out of the way to get to the story he REALLY wanted to tell.Which was... Dawntrail, I guess. "Dawntrail is a vacation" , once again translating from Yoshida-ese, means "this is an excuse to make players pay us for the privelege of stalling for time while we come up with.... something for the future plot"

I’ve been thinking about this. FFXIV, as we knew it, really ended with Endwalker. But they can’t just walk away from the game, it’s a major cash cow. Still, it seems like they’d rather focus on creating new titles than building on what’s already there. So what do they do? They sideline the existing lore, shift the setting to a new continent, and act like everything before Dawntrail essentially doesn’t matter. That way, they can effectively make a new game without the effort of developing an entirely new MMO. Instead of expanding the story meaningfully, they recycle plotlines from other Final Fantasy games, reuse old assets, and rely on the loyalty of the playerbase to keep things going. The reason why Dawntrail feels so off is because it is disconnected from everything we learned to love.

[ShadowyZero]

Gaius should have been more involved with the Garlemald story section they wasted his character development an threw him to the side quite literally when his whole entire stick of being the "shadowhunter" was to hunt ascians an learn the truth of his nations' empire. but they abandoned that plot thread sadly an just threw in characters who sat an did basically nothing the entire time while the twins negotiated lol further perpetuated when we had to step in an offer the aid of thavnir to revitalize the empire's economic stability lmao

and plus the other thing that really bothered me was just where the hell were all the other convocation members??? what were they so otherwise engaged playing fisticuffs with the other shards of Azem that they couldnt hear their god being unleashed unto the world? nor even try to rush to his aid when Fandaniel went awhol? we are expected to just believe they didn't care? X'D
meanwhile durante out there in the 13th doing their job for them an reviving zodiark

[Daralii]

I’ve been thinking about this. FFXIV, as we knew it, really ended with Endwalker. But they can’t just walk away from the game, it’s a major cash cow. Still, it seems like they’d rather focus on creating new titles than building on what’s already there. So what do they do? They sideline the existing lore, shift the setting to a new continent, and act like everything before Dawntrail essentially doesn’t matter. That way, they can effectively make a new game without the effort of developing an entirely new MMO. Instead of expanding the story meaningfully, they recycle plotlines from other Final Fantasy games, reuse old assets, and rely on the loyalty of the playerbase to keep things going. The reason why Dawntrail feels so off is because it is disconnected from everything we learned to love.

But they need to periodically remind the old guard that it's the same title to keep them subscribed, so here's the Scions, Vrtra, and Footfalls anyway.

[Hallarem]

No one is disputing that they intended to do Garlemald. They have said consistently that they wanted to speed up the end of the arc and us being a primal slayer, especially with how the game grew in Shadowbringers.

As for the other post about Zodiark not being the last boss, the writers all agreed that he should not be the last boss and this was their viewpoint even if Garlemald wasn't included. My guess is because this would have been too obvious and predictable.

Oh there were plenty of people disputing the fact. A lot of people saying that "They never planned a Garlemald expansion". You can look at the varied Endwalker threads from the past for that proof.
The speed up part was a mistake and it shows. Perhaps they just hated to remain in that storyline and got bored with it, and decided to just do a rush job sprint to the finish. When they should've given a onscreen villain we had for multiple expansions their due of exploring their culture from within properly.

It was a risk they took and it failed, because of their lack of patience and care. I'm just talking about the story of course here.

[Hallarem]

^to be fair under that schedule that would have left what amounts to elpis->labarynthos->ultima Thule as the totality of 7.0 and I don’t think it would be possible to make that plotline stretch any further than it did already. Elpis already feels like it goes on for 5 hours too long and I don’t even think elpis is 5 hours long

EW was too rushed but each part of EW couldn’t really adequately be stretched to fit two expansions and a patch cycle without serious pointless bloat or additions we cannot guarantee they would have added or not. The final days are too time sensitive to drag out over patch cycles (it’s why we removed everlasting light in vanilla ShB) but if you pushed all of the final days to 7.0 then 6.0-6.5 wouldn’t have anywhere near enough content as I feel like people overestimate how much people would have wanted a “sympathetic garlean” expansion, and if we spent 3/4 of it opposed to garlamald we would just be retreading SB

Plenty of people wanted a Garlean expansion, of course you'd feel symphatetic for a part of them, there was the Populares who were driving for reform in the empire, we could've had whole clashes with the imperial family at the center, nobles, factions within the large city of Garlemald and it's surrounding villages and communities, all the legions had their own goals and armies sometimes, one even seceded. You'd have the evil bastards we'd need to stop and of course, Zenos might've had an actual storyline instead of a badly painted anime fight-psycho shtick. That is a writer issue to sort out, all the ingredients are there. That's like saying "Nobody wanted a Ascian sympathetic expansion, and here we are. With people understanding where Emett came from and some of the ancients with their rejoining, but still opposing them.
The whole game is retreading other final fantasies too, so what are we even talking about here.

[Hallarem]

Gaius should have been more involved with the Garlemald story section they wasted his character development an threw him to the side quite literally when his whole entire stick of being the "shadowhunter" was to hunt ascians an learn the truth of his nations' empire. but they abandoned that plot thread sadly an just threw in characters who sat an did basically nothing the entire time while the twins negotiated lol further perpetuated when we had to step in an offer the aid of thavnir to revitalize the empire's economic stability lmao

Honestly it's sad how the raid stories don't connect more vividly to the world and are just treated as pump and dump one-off's that slowly fade to the backround as well. Could've guessed it from the moment Gaius was in the Sorrow of Werlyt that we'd never hear of him again. It's why we will probably never see Dalmasca as an area.