Final Fantasy XIV was dead ten years ago. The land of Eorzea was raked with the almighty megaflare of one of Final Fantasy's most powerful beings and the developer shut down the server of its troubled game.
The launch of Final Fantasy XIV was a disaster and almost destroyed the studio behind it. Even as players gathered in cities and fields to look up at the sky, Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn was about to be rehauled and reborn as a completely different game. It was a huge success that is still going strong today and is likely to continue for a long time.
XIV 1.0's shutdown was more than the end of one game and the beginning of another, a sad, quiet shutdown before a vaunted relaunch. Final Fantasy XIV's inheritors had time to plan the original version's end and pave the way to their new version, and in doing so created an epic final story for players to witness. Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida, who still helms the current version of the game, made the decision to rebuild Final Fantasy XIV into an entirely new game before 1.0 ended.
The end of the world is a feature of Final Fantasy. In the history of the game franchise, almost every entry has tackled some sort of potentially world-dooming threat, and its heroes have prevailed, because that is what Final Fantasy heroes do when they aren't working in the rigorous hair care routines required to look like Kain Highwind The battle against Sin in X, the rise of Kefka's godhood in VI, and the threat of Meteor are all part of the Final Fantasy story. The end of XIV was a chance to tell the story of the heroes who did and did not do that.
The end of 1.0 is marked by a red moon, which was summoned by the Garlean Empire in an attempt to destroy the land of Eorzea. Final Fantasy XIV went to its end as players and the leaders of Eorzea fought back against the Garleans. It was a Pyrrhic victory when the Garlean commander, Nael van Darnus, was defeated by the players. During the final days and hours of the game, players took part in events to push back against the invading Garlean forces, thrown into disarray by their leader's death, a sense of dread in the air. Dalamud continued to get closer. Final Fantasy XIV ended with one last scene, in which Dalamud burned in the skies with echoes of strange, ethereal music.
The six-minute epic is almost unlike anything Final Fantasy XIV had ever seen, as the forces of Eorzea, heroes and grunts alike, battled with the Garleans. The true purpose of the moon was revealed, and it was a prison. The heroes of XIV's arrival in the original cinematic trailer were defeated by the armies of Eorzea. At the final minute, an act of prayer by your closest allies in XIV, a group known as the Circle of Knowing, attempts to miraculously restrain Bahamut, only to dramatically fail, and be rewarded with the beast unleashing its most powerful attack from the series, Megaflare.
Final Fantasy XIV was still going on. The Circle of Knowing's leader, Louisoix Leveilleur, whisks the heroes away to survive the destruction caused by the Bahamut, so they can return to the world they left. The legacy of 1.0 ending like it did didn't stop after the world was destroyed. The choice to rebuild Eorzea from apocalypse was woven into the story of its rebirth, its ramifications echoed not just across A Realm Reborn, but every expansion the revived game has had in the last nine years. The song that plays to bid farewell to 1.0, composed by Final Fantasy legend Nobuo Uematsu, became a vital part of the most recent of those expansions, Endwalker. They had failed to protect the world for so long.
An ongoing story, one that deals with highs and lows of stakes and adventure as story cycles wax and wane, and one that is steeped in a kind of history almost unprecedented in the world of video games is one of the most compelling aspects of Final Fantasy XIV. It's players have taken their character on a journey that has been going on for almost a decade, and some of them have been with their characters for even longer. Making the death and rebirth of the game a fundamental part of the base story and having it echo all the way up to XIV's latest apocalyptic event is a crucial part of the success story. Not many games get the second chance Final Fantasy XIV did, but taking that story of failure and weaving it into one of redemption is a fascinating part of what makes it such a compelling game.
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