Final Fantasy’s staple winged creature, the Chocobo, will play a larger role when the game relaunches. Currently, Chocobos only serve as player mounts, but Yoshida’s team plans to introduce Chocobo raising as a feature with the relaunch of Final Fantasy XIV. In short, players will be able to visually customize their Chocobos and raise them to fill combat roles, including tank, healer, caster, and more. I originally confused this with Chocobo racing before I was corrected, so I decided to ask about that, too. Why the heck not?
As it turns out, Yoshida’s team is also interested in doing Chocobo racing in Final Fantasy XIV, but the exact implementation poses a number of challenges in an MMO. While the team and players want to see Chocobo racing in the game, everyone has a different idea of how they’d like to see it happen. Do players simply want to bet on Chocobos? Do they want to raise Chocobos to race? Do they want to race the Chocobos themselves? Fortunately, Yoshida’s team is looking for a solution that addresses these challenges and they are definitely interested in pursuing Chocobo racing once they can get past this particular roadblock.