The new FF14 Dawntrail raid series is just the latest success story for the man who’s become known as the MMORPG’s not-so-secret weapon. Masayoshi Soken has earned a reputation for his incredible composition work, and he and his team are in full form in the latest Final Fantasy 14 update. Ahead of the recent Distant Worlds concerts in London, I had the privilege to sit down with Soken and discuss how he approaches adopting legacy soundtracks and which Final Fantasy game he feels is most underrepresented in FF14.
Final Fantasy 14 patch 7.2 is far from done – we’ve still got its two most substantial additions, Cosmic Exploration and the Occult Crescent, to come. But the new Arcadion Cruiserweight raid tier and its story trial are a triumph, striking a really nice difficulty level while also being one of the most fun groups of fights the MMORPG has ever seen. There’s everything from a dance battle with a disco-dancing frog to a heavy-metal showdown that sends you crashing through entire tower blocks.
While the raids have allowed Soken and his team to explore more weird and wonderful avenues, however, the main story music continues Dawntrail’s tribute to Final Fantasy 9. This time, we’re delivered a bold orchestral rendition of Nobuo Uematsu’s Roses of May (the rendition we hear is perhaps closer to FF9’s more battle-ready iteration, Something to Protect, but we won’t linger on semantics). It’s a fairly faithful recreation, so I ask Soken how the team approaches its homages to fan-favorite tracks.
“I think this is a very unique approach to [Final Fantasy] 14,” he remarks [via translator], “I think that in terms of taking past works and elements of them, we don’t think it’s good to cut a piece of it for the game content.” He stresses that the team is eager to ensure that the context matches the structure. “That’s something we find very important when we are going to pay homage to a past work. For this time in the use of Roses of May, there is a reason behind it, so we haven’t just cut out a part of it without reason.
“In the future as well, we’d like to avoid simply bringing an element in because we can,” Soken continues. “This is because we want to pay respect to the legacy players of Final Fantasy, but also because we’ve also played Final Fantasy and when we see that an element is being simply cut and pasted onto something else, we feel that we really need to take precious care of past content, and it’s something that has developed into somewhat of a habit.”
At this point in time, there’s really no telling where the future of FF14 might take us, and that means there could be potential to reach into almost any space musically. So are there any particular styles or games that Soken would like to find a space for? “I’m always being pushed back by the work in front of me, so I’m not necessarily thinking of what we could do and what is lacking, necessarily. But, uh, solely as a personal opinion I think that we do have less FF8 elements in 14… but I might be told off for saying that.”
Soken is quick to clarify. “In terms of the balance of everything, I think it would be better to have some more FF8 content. But with the 14 policy, we wouldn’t bring it in just because it’s lacking, if that makes sense. If we do end up bringing something in, we would firstly think about why that would come into the game, and we would have to list out all these reasons and go through all the processes.
“The 14 team in particular has a lot of Final Fantasy fans in who became part of the team, so I don’t think you’d be seeing such a rough action from them where they would just bring something in randomly and say, ‘Why don’t we do this?’”
It’s certainly reassuring to know that the team is always carefully considering how it places the pieces of its ‘theme park’ rather than simply throwing in things for the sake of it. With that said, I’ll agree with Soken and say I’d certainly love to see a little more Final Fantasy 8 representation in the future (and not solely so I can have the Balamb Garden theme in my Free Company room). With the road to patch 8.0 now underway, perhaps it’s a fitting time for it.
Find plenty more memorable musical moments among the best fantasy games, or take others for a dance in the best multiplayer games on PC.
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