At last week's TGA2021 awards ceremony, Square Enix announced that its luminous Productions studios' new action-adventure game ,Forspoken," will be available on May 24, 2022, on PC and PS5 platforms. In a recent interview with the creators of "Enchanted Lands" by foreign game media TheGamer, the game's co-director Takefumi Terada said that the team has done a lot of learning and reflection on Final Fantasy XIV, which has indeed had an impact on the development of new games.
Takefumi Terada said she and her team want to make Enchanted Lands a game that can compete with series like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. It's a big goal, but Luminous Studios is willing to take on the challenge.
Takefumi Terada said the team reviewed Final Fantasy XIV as a project, as well as where there were problems, where there was pressure, which had the most errors, and how the team avoided doing so this time. In addition, in terms of overall game design and story, the team also discussed things that were not done well or should be done in Final Fantasy XIV. Learning and evolving from that game to this project.
Players can see this connection in every frame of The Enchanted Land, with the game using the same engine and similar motion and combat options to its spiritual predecessor. Final Fantasy XIV is a perfect game, but it's still subject to a tedious development process and a hard-to-shake off IP fame in its own series. It makes sense for the studio to take risks and build a new IP, but that's not what happens by escaping player expectations. The project also collaborates with teams of well-known writers such as Gary Whitta of Rogue One and Amy Hennig of Uncharted.
Takefumi Terada revealed in the interview that the team learned a lot from Final Fantasy XIV, and one of the lessons was story design, where the team was thinking about how to proceed with the narrative. Mitsuno, the creative producer of the game, said that the team constantly introspected, examined its own strengths and weaknesses, and believed that for the studio's next project, the team wanted to have a massive global appeal, hoping to attract all users, every player around the world. So the best way for studios to do this is to work with creative people to shape the world and make this story. The studio passed the baton to Allison and Todd, and it was they who orchestrated the story together.
Mitsuno said that when the studio first came up with the concept of The Enchanted Land, the idea was to portray duality, to show this modern and fantasy elements, and to think about how to combine the two, starting with the fantasy element, the team was deeply rooted in RPG games and the genres of games for which their company was famous, and the team wanted to create a whole new fantasy world full of magic and the matriarch who ruled it, but also wanted to add a fresh modern view of things, which was the ultimate idea. Let the game depict the world of the team's fantasy, and let the protagonist become the team's creative reaction. All she went through was exactly how the team reacted or felt in that situation.
Mitsuno continues that the team didn't want to create a typical perfect protagonist who wouldn't make a wrong choice. Frey Holland, the protagonist of Enchanted Lands, is a young troubled woman from New York City who finds herself teleported to the mythical kingdom of Athena, where she has a lot of trouble in her life. Mitsuno said that everyone's character is flawed, which is a common human feeling, and it is not always the right thing to say and do the right thing. That's part of what makes Frey Holland so special, the imperfections of human nature.
As for the game's protagonist's explanation of women of color, Mitsuno said it was a deliberate effort by the team, considering that Enchanted Lands wanted to appeal to an international audience and seeing more and more female-dominated games was a trend. Most players feel that female characters exist only for sexiness, but that's not what the team wants. The team wanted to create a very real character, a character that you might know in real life or similar to your friends, which is the concept they really want to keep intact. And they have a very diverse development team.