Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: FFXIV, FFXIV: Shadowbringers, Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy XIV, Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, Naoki Yoshida

Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers is Not About Darkness or Light, But Balance

Final Fantasy XIV's Producer and Director, Naoki Yoshida, sat down with Forbes for an interview about the MMORPG's upcoming expansion, Shadowbringers. Like many JRPGs, and the rest of the Final Fantasy series in particular, FFXIV deals with the duality of light and darkness throughout it's campaign. The player character is called the Warrior of Light, after all. And so far, the player has always been working on the side of light.

Things change in Shadowbringers when players are taken to another world, which has been overrun by the light. In this new world, the player must change sides in order to bring balance to the world. Of course, to make complete sense of Shadowbringers, you need to recall that the world that players typically play on is one of fourteen "shards" of an original world. Those shards are basically alternate universe splinters of the original world. The player's world is the shard known as "The Source."

With Shadowbringers players travel to a new world called "The First."

The fourteen shards of the original world have been referenced time and time again by the game's group of big bads, the Ascians. However, what exactly it means has been rather vague up until now because Shadowbringers will finally let players learn just what happened to some of the other shard worlds.

And the whole thing isn't just about the fight between light and dark, but rather about the balance between the two.

From Forbes' interview with Yoshida:

"The Crystal Tower stands tall in the First, even though it should not exist in that world. Furthermore, all the things the Warrior of Light encounters are similar to those found in his home world, the Source, yet exist in a markedly different form.

"I encourage everyone to prepare themselves for new adventures into the unknown. A harsh fate awaits you all."

The duality of light and shadow plays a big part in the new Shadowbringers setting and this was very much intended, as Yoshida explains.

"The inception of this idea was very simple: in recent fantasy works, the perception that light equates to good and dark equates to evil is very set in stone, we wanted to shake this up a bit.

"Until this point in Final Fantasy XIV, our players have been Warriors of Light: the hero. However, with Shadowbringers, we leave the Source and embark on a journey to the First, and through this I want our players to discover the truth of the world, as well as think about the real nature of light and dark. That is the theme of Shadowbringers.

"In any case, a light too strong could potentially become evil. Darkness and night are also necessary for the world to maintain its balance; that's the kind of theme we will be shedding light on."

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