Final Fantasy 14 developers plan to condense the base game’s main story

Square Enix is working on condensing the main scenario quest for Final Fantasy 14’s base game, A Realm Reborn, the development team announced Wednesday during a livestreamed update. The Japanese-language livestream, the 53rd Live Letter from the Producer, was translated into English by a Square Enix forum community rep.

A Realm Reborn is known to have a story that can become a bit of a slog at times, especially the line of quests between the main part of the story and the start of Heavensward. The translation notes that the team said it’s working on making it “more compact,” alongside the New Game+ system, but there are no details on what that means exactly. This update will come with patch 5.3, which is months away.

While the team answered questions about game lore, like what meol presumably tastes like, we got a bunch of confirmations of what’s coming in patch 5.1:

• first Shadowbringers beast tribe quest line
• extreme version of final Shadowbringers trial
• changes to crafting and gathering systems
• part one of the YoRHa Nier alliance raids
• Circles, a new feature for community groups that are less restricting than linkshells or free companies

There are also several other suggestions players had, to which the devs are considering or already working on:

• Y’shtola’s Black Mage outfit as a glamour item
• facial hair for male Hyur characters
• more hairstyles for Viera and Hrothgar
• Viera and Hrothgar for company squadrons
• increased armory space
• ability to preview battle voice options when making characters
• a Feo Ul minion
• a “farm” to display minions
• purple Lakeland trees as a furnishing item

Quite a few questions involved content that the team said would be talked about in the next Live Letter from the Producer stream, like Ishgard restoration. The developers also teased that the next stream would have a special guest to talk about the YoRHa raids, which is likely the mysterious Nier: Automata director Yoko Taro.