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  • Massively Exclusive: A dinner with Final Fantasy XIV's Naoki Yoshida

    by 
    Eliot Lefebvre
    Eliot Lefebvre
    02.21.2013

    Having a conversation with Naoki Yoshida can be a very intimidating exercise. It's not because of his demeanor; he's friendly, genial, and has an obvious sense of humor. No, it's because there's an unmistakable level of energy to him, a huge amount of passion and ambition that drives everything he talks about. He's exactly the sort of person who would try something completely insane like remaking a game from the ground up after burning the first version to the ground, for example. I had the opportunity to sit down for a one-on-one dinner with Yoshida at the Final Fantasy XIV preview event, during which we talked a great deal both about the upcoming relaunch of the game as well as his own experiences in remaking everything. For those of us who play Final Fantasy XIV, it's obviously an exciting time, but for Yoshida, what's happening now is the culmination of work that started only a month after he took over control of a game that he had to revitalize after a horrible flop on launch.