Square Enix and Capcom announced a collaboration between Final Fantasy XIV Online and Monster Hunter Wilds.
Naoki Yoshida, producer and director of Final Fantasy XIV Online, said in a press event at the Tokyo Game Show that the work involved a lot of effort of both game teams and it reflected the close relationship between the two Japanese companies as well as the shared fans for both game properties.
Ryozo Tsujimoto, Monster Hunter Wilds producer, and Yuya Tokuda, Monster Hunter Wilds director said the longstanding relationship between the companies and their teams created a lot of trust to follow through on the project, which took a lot of effort.
Yoshida said the company aims to attract both casual and hardcore players to Final Fantasy, so they created content that catered to different players, with different difficulty levels and different rewards.
Tsujimoto said that he has known Yoshida for more than a decade and they have had mutual respect for each person’s creativity.
“When we had this opportunity to have a second collaboration, the first thing I did was
discuss with our own developers on how we would produce it,” Yoshida said.
Both teams admired each other’s passion and respect for their fans, which contributed to the successful collaboration. But the collaboration wasn’t easy in one respect. They’re from different genres, with Final Fantasy focused on RPG elements and Monster Hunter Wilds focused on action.
“There are two different genres at play here, but that’s actually a positive creative thing, because we can do things in this call out that are not possible in Monster Hunter Wilds, purely because we have the Final Fantasy 14 elements included in the collaboration,” Tsujimoto said.
Still, both Capcom and Square Enix had done a collab before between Monster Hunter World and Final Fantasy XIV Online. They let the creative teams come up with solutions that could take advantage of those differences and deliver a better experience for players.
“There are two different genres at play here, but that’s actually a positive creative thing, because we can do things in this call out that are not possible in Monster Hunter Wilds, purely because we have the Final Fantasy 14 elements included in the collaboration,” Tsujimoto said.
The project was born out of friendship. Tsujimoto and Yoshida had dinner a year ago at Gamescom in Germany, even before Monster Hunter Wilds shipped. And they raised the idea of doing a collaboration.
They formalized the agreement, but they waited for Monster Hunter Wilds to ship before they decided to get heavily involved in development. Both teams played each others’ games to understand the mechanics before doing the collab. And the gameplay for Monster Hunter Wilds helped the company to solidify what to do in the collaboration.
They also said there was minimal reuse of assets and much of the work required fresh art created from scratch. Omega from Final Fantasy was chosen for its unique positioning and intensive battle mechanics, making it a perfect fit for the game.