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Thank you.
you
you
you
you
you
you
you
you
you
I might throw a bottle of water sticking to my eyes
I'll just pull you in and we'll get to the bottom
Come, baby, look, come in, you'll be surprised
This storm is a win-win race
Come, storm, save me more
Save me more, it's an hour to me
I'll just be making my life
It's not a storm, I'll just set the storm as there is one
I want to keep my hands down
I don't like the sweetest thing I'll try for a while.
My heart is dear, so it's the least I can ask for.
My throat is a pile of flowers that can put your heart in it.
My throat is a blister and it makes me alive.
Come take a deep breath, darling.
It's the blood in the weary place.
It's the blood in the hungry place.
It's the blood in the hungry place.
It's the blood in the hungry place.
I
I
I
Okay.
Okay.
The crowd doesn't hear the crowd
The pain is caught through your ear
Your safe birth will drown it in your tears
The crowd won't know you're telling me where
Oh, I won't feel the time again
Oh, I won't feel the time again
I am the enemy to the right
I will never win
Deep, deep in my heart
And I'm just...
Take the light
To the shadow of my life
The heart behind
At the street
Your streets
Can't hide
If you're born for this
I want to run
It's too hard to hide so much in your face
I'm not a man
I'm not a man
You can't hide very long
You can't hide very long
You can't hide very long
You can't hide very long
You can't hide very long
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
.
.
.
.
.
I am a modern time
Points with me, waiting for you
Soldiers of me, breaking time
Marching forward, left behind
Shadows flash, overcast
Fault falls, in vain, they vanish
You got my friend
You're getting me
Slippery, slimy, ting
That's just a good one
But I'm from the good side
What's it got to do with me?
Curious, mischievous, and
Unpitying, we're just
Just a good soul
And I'm a-
Take it all
To the end
And I'm a-
It's not a thing, but it is
All of my feelings
And I'm a perfect human
I'm a dream in your head
It's not a thing, but it is
All of my feelings
So be kind to me now
I'm a dream in your head
It's not a thing, but it is
All of my feelings
And I'm a dream in your soul
And I hear your thoughts
In your heart
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
The sky's never too far
Now I'm too far
And I think I'll never fall
To the ground
I'm too blind
Now I hate you
But you know I'm sure
That you can't do it
I don't think I'm a criminal
I'm a criminal, I'm a criminal
I'm a criminal, I'm a criminal
I'm a criminal, I'm a criminal
I'm a criminal, I'm a criminal
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
And I'll make some more
Oh, oh, I'll catch you in my park
I'm in for fun and I'm in for fun
With you, you'll get to see my shit any time
I'm not your baby doll, but I can make you smile
Don't make me sooner see me outside in my laps
I find a spirit that makes me smile
I throw the bottle flowers they can't find
I'm in for fun and I'm waiting to come on
I think we're out of here.
We're not supposed to be here.
We're into the light.
Come take a deep breath.
Destroy the world.
In the big, green place.
We are.
In the fall.
In the night.
We are alive.
We're all out.
We're out of doors.
But I'm not sitting right here.
Painted in light.
Anything.
Oh, there's always something more.
Yes, there's always something more.
And I'm not here.
This is the one that I see.
I can't see, but I'm not right.
There's no problem.
Everything's going to be okay.
I'm not here.
I'm not here.
I'm not here.
I'm not here.
It can never be enough.
Just want you to look up to your friends for a year.
You'll paint a face if you do anything.
I'm not here.
I'm here.
I'm not here.
I'm not here.
I'm not here.
Oh, but again, I feel so good
And I'm a-
I'm a-
Over
Over
Over
So be a T.C.
I'm a T.C.
Love T.C.
Love T.C.
What?
I love T.C.
Just be a-
I'm beautiful
I'm a-
I don't wear a shirt
I'm a T.C.
I'm a T.C.
I'm a T.C.
I'm a T.C.
I'm a T.C.
Love T.C.
You're the one
I'm a T.C.
I'm the one
I'm a T.C.
I'm a T.C.
I'm a T.C.
I'm a T.C.
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
Good morning.
Good morning, Fan Fest.
How y'all doing?
I love the crowd up front.
I was expecting more up here.
Yo, let me hear it.
Who's ready for some PVT today?
Awesome, awesome.
Y'all really showed up.
Thank you so much.
If you didn't know it already,
my name is Aya,
also known as PsySeeker.
But before we get started,
oh, thank you so much.
Before we get started on the festivities today,
I'd actually like to welcome
somebody y'all know,
the producer and director of Final Fantasy XIV, Mr. Naoki Yoshida!
Wow, all the cheers!
Alright, so Yushita-san, thank you so much for joining us on stage today.
Do you have any words for everybody who enjoys PvP as well as our competitors today?
I'd like to ask the players to take a look at the match and the players who are coming out to the match.
Yes, I've been watching the match for a long time, and I'm really looking forward to it.
For sure, I've been looking at the different qualifier matches for this crystalline conflict
regional championship for North America and it's been really exciting to see them kind
of fight and go through these different ranks and I'm really looking forward to them putting
up a really good fight, but also at the same time, I think our priority here is to just
have fun.
So, yeah, I hope they would do their best fight today.
And of course, for those who are watching here at the venue as well as those who are watching online, your voices are heard and those players, they may be very concentrated and focused, but I think they will definitely reach out to you.
And of course, for those who are watching here at the venue as well as those who are watching online, your voices are heard.
And those players, they may be very concentrated and focused,
but I think your encouragement is going to help get them excited as well.
So I would love for you to offer your support.
Awesome. Thank you so much for those words.
And I think we'll be calling you back here once we crown our winners for the day.
So thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
We'll be back when the winner is decided.
Yes, I'll be watching you in the finals.
Let's have a meeting together.
All right, and so we actually do have some other people that I'm gonna call up to the stage
You might know them. So let's give it up for Merlin Frosty and Brian Riccardo
Oh, I'm sorry, that's not frosty that's Mattan
there's a lot of love for the people up here right next to me right now and we
actually have a newcomer to this amazing like team that's been working with me
throughout the start of the year so why don't you tell everybody about yourself
and yeah yes hello everyone for those that don't know me I'm Merlin good
morning it's an absolute pleasure to be here I want to start off by saying
thank you to Square Enix for letting me have this opportunity I've been a
players since 1.0 and over the last several years I grew a huge passion for
PDP. So I've been working as a PDP coordinator hosting many crystalline
conflict events. I can tell you that the games are going to be extremely high so
make sure to stay tuned. It's going to be a very very like messy, messy fun
games to watch. Super exciting. I'm gonna be working as your eyes in the
sky. So what I mean by this I'm gonna be your spectator for today and with
That said, good luck, have fun, everyone.
All right, and Brian, would you like to say something before we begin?
Yes, hello, hello, everyone.
My name is Brian Ricardo.
I've been supporting FAMFES 14 PVP for about like 10 years now.
I do live streams, coaching, commentary.
I help build like the biggest PVP Discord.
And I'll be doing play by the commentary for this tournament.
So I hope you enjoy.
And the last but certainly not least from I mean the Tim Frost you would you like to say anything?
Yeah, I appreciate it coming out here yet again. Thank you for the invitation
I've been doing this since the beginning of these stage events for PVP in Final Fantasy 14
And it's the best atmosphere to be in so many people are so passionate about it
I love the competitive community in Final Fantasy 14
I'm very lucky to be here if you guys aren't familiar
I I do mock talk and I do stuff the world race and everything
but today my focus is watching people just beat each other up.
We're going to have really quite the show, but for now,
can I ask you all to report to your battle stations?
Please, as we're about to get ready.
So before we begin, I'd like to thank our sponsors.
We'd like to give a huge shout out to them, Jolly Bee,
Immersed Game Pack by Embody, I by Power, Secret Lab,
Logitech and Gigabyte. Thank you all so much for sponsoring this event, but now I think it's time to call in our players. So
On this side coming up soon is big goat city starting off with buzzy was he
Oh, and then we also have Ellie Meese as well.
And next we also have Original DSI.
And next up we have Eyes at Sien Xu.
And also Pitcora Miao, Tomo Kote, and last but certainly not least, Mountain Boo.
Alright, and now we have other their opponents for this match.
It's Team, Team.
So can I call out doom balloon to pingus, please?
And then next up, we have Afai Atlantic.
Next up, we have Seto Mimio.
And then, Theory Eye coming up to the stage now.
And coming in next is Big Spike.
Except we have Full Heart Grids.
And last on team, it's Reginald Kluweth.
Alright, if it's not too much to ask, can I have the team leaders come up to the center real quick for a few words?
Team leaders, can I have you come up to the front, please?
So I'm going to talk to y'all just for a second if that's cool.
So Buzzy, coming into this match, how are you feeling?
I'd be alive if I said I wasn't a little nervous, but to quote my goat, Lee Sang Hyuk, also known as Faker.
I always think I can win, but I never underestimate my opponents.
We're feeling good today.
We want to take it home.
I hope everybody watching here and at home are
Oh, no, they have a good time. You know
How are you feeling great? Well as team teams team captain I can say we're very happy to be here
You know, we just wanted to come out here and show you all what a team is about
Because nobody does team like us team team. That's who we are. Thank you
Awesome, so if I could have y'all return to your battle stations, we're probably going
to get this match going very soon, so thank you both, please return, awesome.
So before we go ahead and get started, I'm just going to lay a few ground rules here.
The semi-final matches, like this one that we're about to have is the best of three,
So as we go into the final maps, excuse me, those are going to be best of five.
So please keep an eye out.
And yeah, at this time, can I ask the reserve players to go ahead and step backstage, please?
the reserve players. Now you're good.
Alright y'all, so now I'm going to ask y'all to get to your battle stations as well because
we got our first map coming up. Let me hear it one more time. Who's ready for this match?
So, I actually want to know from the audience right now, who is a fan of, oh my gosh, who's
a big fan of Teen?
Let me hear it.
There's a lot of support out here for Teen, but big goat city fans, where you at?
All right, so it seems like we're about to get things going Brian and Frosty
I'm gonna leave it to you. Let's go
Frosty are you ready for this? I'm ready for it guys. Oh my oh are you guys ready?
I assume we already had a lot of hype earlier, but let's hear it one more time. Are you guys ready?
All right, man, this has been months and months of competition we've had the privilege to actually
seeing the preliminaries and the quarterfinals
and it was a lot of really insane matches.
Right, yeah.
I mean, this matchup in particular,
we have Big Goat City versus Team Team.
And I think a lot of people are looking at Big Goat City
as the scary team at the moment, correct?
Yes, absolutely.
We saw them play in quarterfinals
and all the rounds leading up to this
and they were destroying everyone very solidly.
but we have faith from every team here.
Oh yeah, there's a lot of stuff that could come up.
I mean, it was pretty much cut throat
for most of the teams getting up to this point.
We saw a lot of two ones leading up
and we had no clue who was actually gonna pull out
on top coming into the quarterfinals.
But now we have these extremely impressive teams.
And I think we're gonna see probably best of three
all the way played out of every single match.
Do you guys wanna see that?
Yes, absolutely.
The more matches, the better, for sure.
Oh, as long as my voice can handle it.
Yes.
And if you guys did not see the lead-up matches,
so the quarter partners are still on Twitch,
so you can go back and watch if you want to.
Absolutely.
And I know, again, we're all trying to have fun here.
All the teams are trying to have fun.
But there is a pretty big cash prize for the winner
at the end of this.
Yes.
I believe the winner gets $22,500
for the team that wins at the very end.
That's a lot of money.
a lot of money. So these guys are going to be bringing their all for this. Yes, absolutely.
And I heard they are, they have been trying for months and months and months. Some of these
teams have been practicing three times a day, different time zones, just to play with other
regions because they can get more practice playing with other, you know, regions, team styles.
So like European players and Japanese players. So yeah, we might see some surprises outside
side of what we see on the standard comps, but I don't know, it's, it might be a little
bit comfortable. What would you say we're expected to see from these teams?
Yeah, so if you guys did not see the previous tournament, right now the meta leans towards
like pick the master and barred. Both are really solid jobs. They provide support for
your team while also doing a lot of range damage. And along with the pick the master
and barred, we'll see like a tank and a healer. So that's, that's what people
all like standard meta right now and we have seen team team run a lot of
different stuff so I'm sad to see what they bring out. Yeah I mean I don't know
if we'll see the same thing we saw last time with the four healer comp but we
are getting the ready check. Oh let's go. We're about to get into our first map
of the day. Let's hear it one more time guys you ready?
Alright, and of course this is going to be Palatstra.
Before we get into it, do you want to tell everybody a little bit about Palatstra?
Yeah, so this is the more neutral map.
There are no map mechanics, but there is a sprint lane that will allow your team to advance or retreat easier if needed.
Yeah, and one thing I always like to do before we go in is see who wins on the portrait side.
Let's see. Let's see if these guys
All states look good. Let's see
Catgirls and lollipops. Yes. Yes, and team T. Oh
Screen I'll give it the big ghost city. You give it a big ghost city. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. Look at the cops here
Let's go over it.
Yep, we got Paladin, Scholar, Dragoon, Bart and Pico
as I mentioned earlier, versus Paladin, Astral,
Saint, Samurai, and Machines.
So, team, team is death hole, not running meta.
That's what we like to see.
Yes, yes, we love to see a large, bright, adult,
Dink's wave.
Oh, man, we see him dancing in the base already.
Oh, my.
We got about five seconds here
before the gates are locked,
and they're going to run to the middle.
And again, this is the first match of the day.
First fast stick thing, let's go!
Alright, we're seeing the shields go off.
Pick the master shield going off, getting the logistic mitigation going.
Look at them driving immediately.
We're on the first target.
But Ma'am will be taking a little bit of damage.
Zoom Balloon!
One of the cases for LoL.
But they have cover on your team.
So let's see if they survive.
There's a pilot cover.
On to Zoom Balloon.
Going to be safer now.
Let's see who the next target is here.
Yeah, they are going to definitely try to be a little bit careful.
Careful I assume here, but the core get a little bit of pressure for her grit now getting a little bit of pressure
Happy using that cover
Yes first down there 5v4 right now looks like team greek old city isn't lead right now doomblue also still taking a lot of damage
That's very little resources
Mutuses ready
Oh
Barely hanging on there about to take
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
5v3.
Very much in favor of Big Goat City right now.
Team Team looks like they're going to try and retreat,
but they're chasing Seto, not going to let it go.
Oh, the follow-up there as they run out.
Very, very unfortunate.
Full Heart Grid did use cover there,
so they're going to have to try and retreat as best as they can here.
Yeah, we are getting already to the checkpoint for Big Goat City.
Will they be able to break it before they actually get back on to the point?
I think so that's why if you're not going for the fast cap
They only have one third of point if you have multiple players in the point it goes faster
Yeah, but we do have a lot of limit breaks also coming up this next engagement. It's gonna be really rough on Duke
Oh, wow, the dive straight going aggressive soon gonna survive for a little bit here
There are some limbricks ready right now scholar. I'll be going out gonna help mitigate the team
Tomo still getting low despite that machines. I'll be going out gonna get the snipe onto Tomo not gonna get the kill
unfortunately oh wow that was actually really good surviving that we still have
a pretty hefty lead here but because all doom
very unfortunate there we still have buzzing but he picked a man sir LB on
the phone gonna get a red snow down there in that moment bullhark getting
super low here Michael down as well gonna try and escape yeah original DSI was
getting a little bit of pressure but just pop back and again it's a three bird
Oh, two versus five at this point.
They're walking this point up here.
This is going to be really difficult.
They're going to have to drip back onto the point.
Just make sure there's a cap setter going down now, too.
This is looking real good for Big O City.
Yeah, this is my on point last there remaining.
They're going to go for the last pitch after LB.
Benner tries to keep this team as long as possible.
They're living pretty long here, actually.
Yeah.
There's two players.
We do see Full Heart great with Powell and Lamprey.
Almost ready. They might try and destroy him before he gets it.
Oh, look at that.
Right, look at that.
There we go. First map goes to Bitcoat City.
Okay.
Man, that was some extremely strong play by Bitcoat City.
Again, saying, showing why everyone's a little bit worried about him.
Yes.
This does give the opportunity for Team Team to actually choose a map.
Yes.
Do you have any idea what you think they would choose to come back?
Yeah, they do have a sage flare in their team.
A fun thing that sage can do is they can use their limit break
to stop the volcano mechanic explosion.
So that could be a good strategy.
You could do a similar thing with red sand,
so that could also be an option.
Okay, okay.
I don't think we're gonna see either of those maps.
What are you expecting?
Well, I already know.
I kind of have the look ahead here.
We are gonna be seeing cloud nine.
Oh, okay, okay.
All right, before we get into it,
do you wanna explain Cloud9 a little bit?
Definitely, so Cloud9 mechanic is a big turbulence.
Basically, every player will be launched into the air
and take 30k damage.
They can use Guard to stop being thrown in the air,
or they can run into a black chocable feather
that's in the ground.
So they have options here.
Okay, it's one of my favorite maps.
It's been around since basically start here.
Yeah. Just seeing people fly in the air
and then you can tell when they're gonna die
half the time before they hit the ground.
So it's a lot of fun to play around with.
But yeah, guys, who are we rooting for?
Big Go City?
All right.
What about Team Team?
Oh, we got a crowd favorite right now.
Oh my goodness.
All right, well, let's see what they can do.
We have Big Go City, the dominant force
within the PVP team going against the teamiest
of the teams of teams.
Oh, wow.
Yes.
Oh, man.
Team wins.
We do see more.
So definitely for that now are we seeing the same cops we saw last time it does look like that look like yeah, of course
yeah, all right, and
I think they have a chance the one thing they did not get to do was your sage limit break if you can get to build that in
Time that's gonna make a big difference because states and break is one of the longest building ones
Here we go. We're gonna find out if they choose to do that. They're running straight into it
We're gonna see how aggressive if they're gonna play it a little bit more defensive here
Big Ghost City having that lead they could be a little bit more comfortable and
their aggression. Yep, yep here we go. Looks like they're gonna dive right away.
Doom looks like to be the first target once again before taking a lot of that
change. Holding in there they're putting so much pressure to lose that cover
advantage here. Oh that potion's almost up! Let's see if they chase or
Fulhar's gonna get the elixir off here. Well they went to Doom Balloon now
Putting a lot of pressure on the him. Yeah, good switch targets here. It looks like doom is gonna be the second target has
Samurai cheese enough gonna be able to mitigate a little bit
Yeah, okay, very good to fit in off that powerful attack at the beginning
It's crystal just barely a little bit. Yeah, we're back at the new show. No kills here
Everyone's back. No, now they're diving in Dallas. Goal to Flood again!
They do not want this Samurai to get a latches off here and be very aggressive on them.
Go, Govo! So close! Can they actually get him? He's running, he got the potion.
Nice, nice ground pot there. Full heart still taking a ton of damage.
There's a stun. We do have to worry about limit breaks too.
We do see Spaller almost ready as well as Jirgu.
Oh, he's trying to use Elixir right now to recover.
It looks like he's in a good spot to do it.
Coming back, we are getting Crystal Push going to the checkpoint.
Likely able to make it to the 50% and but we have Turbulence in 5 seconds.
Are they ready for it?
Bucky's going down!
What?
He's doing the terribleest!
Oh, I saw someone go near him.
Oh, it's Full Heart, okay?
Okay, yeah, he's fine.
Oh, about full going down!
Oh, DT!
DT's doing some major pressure right now.
Godfors is three!
Doing an amazing cutback for Corey.
Going down is wide!
Full Bucky!
DT!
DT!
Hey, come on and push it.
That's fucked.
Oh, there's an option for tornadoes.
I can't do blue getting really low though easy careful
Break ready the stage one as I mentioned earlier could be a great thing to use here at the 50% market to make it
But they're gonna go for two blue forest. There's a stage up
Gets covered gotta be okay. Oh, but full heart taking so much pressure now using the hauling around to be able to stay alive
And we do see doom balloon back up and perfectly
Yes. Really good defense there.
You also see that samurai limit break ready.
Samurai limit break is to kill people if they get hit by the Cheetah debuff.
Oh, Reginaldo!
Reginaldo!
Off the court now. I'm taking a little bit of pressure here, but I believe they should be okay.
There's the Cheetah. I might get the samurai limit break here.
Oh, are they gonna get it?
Looks like no.
Very close, though.
Okay.
Well, they are pulling back. It looks like they got it almost to 50%.
Yes.
Doom taking a lot of damage, going up and down here.
Looks like Team Big Goat City is about to take an advantage here.
Okay, yep, swinging it back the other way.
They have a little bit of Tahoe, Seto going down.
It's going back into favor for Big Goat City.
They're likely going to be able to get past the checkpoint here,
and it's going to be up to Team Team to put the pressure back on
and push it back across the map.
They only have about a minute, 40 seconds left to do it.
Yeah, yeah.
Samurai Lemon Break is a big thing here, so they got to be careful for that.
But it's not super easy to do because scholar shields can mitigate that instinct.
Yeah, okay.
I'm trying to get that. Thank you.
Is he gonna do it?
No, there's a lot of...
There's a scholar that might break it.
Oh!
Pull hard going down.
Pull hard going down once again here.
Oh, there's a little break room. This is the samurai.
Oh!
I think it was shielded there.
Doomblood's gonna take punishment for that.
There's so much pressure there.
We see now big ghost city doing really well taking that retinal
They are now in a very good situation to keep pushing all shoot all the way cross
Yes, and they're even using the station our pick-to-all be here on buzzing
They want to lock it in leave it in our member here. It's not looking great. Yep
We need a little bit more energy for team team if you guys want to win go to cheer
Oh no, this looks like it's getting there. They have to drift out and stop this point
for moving. The crystal can't move anymore. We're at 93.4% and we really have to lock
this in and regroup.
They can have that machiner somewhere for Friday, but it's a very difficult situation.
Gonna try to invest though. Big spike, doing a beautiful thar there to mitigate lots of
damage, but gonna keep, take a lot of pressure. Big spike gonna go down here, I think.
They did really good so far, but they have a lot to do now.
There's only 13 seconds before we get into overtime here.
There's overtime and they have to keep one member at the point.
Oh, no!
Oh, no!
Barclays on super quick.
Reginald, last step in here.
And it goes to...
Oh, it goes to Big Cope City!
Wow.
That was a really amazing play though for Team Team.
Everybody cheer for Team Team here too.
What an amazing game to start off our day with, we have only two more left to go here,
Big Goat City again showing why they are so powerful.
One note to know about Big Goat City, they haven't lost a single map in any of this event
at all.
The preliminaries and the quarterfinal or anything and they are continuing that record.
So we're going to see when they get to the finals here if they can get a map taken
off of them.
Yeah team team again wonderful play. They almost had to come back there very nice second match there very close
Yeah, yeah
But okay well that leaves us to get to our next one in just a second. We're gonna get our players situated
I believe
And we're gonna bring out our next set of teams which I'm gonna wait for someone much better at doing this to introduce them
absolutely and
But before while we're waiting I guess
You know how you feel and after seeing that first match
Oh my god, the meta is strong.
The meta is really strong.
We'll see what other teams run, but I'm super excited to see what everyone brings, complies.
Okay, well, I believe we're waiting on I-
Oh, no, we're good, okay.
But yeah, no, what we were going to see, do you think we're going to see more changes in the meta going into the next set of games?
I would hope so, but if we saw quarterfinals, not very much.
much. Yeah, you never know, right? Team Team Team Team was the most meta-defying team. So yeah, yeah, yeah.
But yeah, our players are getting situated and leaving here. Again, we see them getting leaving. Make sure
you guys cheer for them as they leave here.
Beautiful job.
I think we're going to wait for some words from them, too, but yeah.
So yeah, and just to let you know, we're going to see Palatia two more times, right?
So the next map, we'll see Palatia is the first one every single time, then they get
to choose what they get next.
It's going to be another best of three coming up, just so you guys have that for expectations,
and then we're going to have a best of five at the very end.
Yeah, after seeing that big-coat city. I don't know if we're gonna see all five games in the area.
Oh my God.
I don't know.
This next match should be super close, so.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, man.
Well, I mean, while we're waiting, how are you guys enjoying Fan Fest overall?
Are you excited for those changes?
I know the one that I'm looking forward to is the data center part,
where we're actually giving those,
everything's kind of meshing together
in the same region and everything.
Very excited to see how that plays out.
But yeah, are we ready?
Yes, let's go for it.
Yeah, okay, Aya, welcome back to the stage.
Hello, everybody.
What y'all think of that first match?
All right, so now our next competitor is coming up.
I'm gonna bring in our first.
So team Eidolon, get ready.
Because first up, we have Naya Hartfeld.
Celeste Archon.
Zestel Sawyer.
And their team leader, Neo DiMium.
All right.
All right, and then next up, we have our their opposing team.
And we have first Atreus Auditor.
And next up we have Pio Pio.
Coming in now is going to be Air Weaver.
Coming in now is gonna be Air Weaver.
And then next up we have Worms and Worms. I'm just kidding. It's my girl.
And then next up we have Ezeek Iwoza.
And then next up we got Moon Eclipse coming through.
And last, but certainly not least, we have Lucio Harundo.
Alright, so before we go into this match, Neo, Atreus, can I have you both come center
stage please?
All right, I want to clean, so I'm just kidding.
So how are you feeling about this first match coming up?
Feeling really good.
Thank you all of our friends for coming.
We hope to put on a really good show for you guys,
as you know we do.
Awesome, awesome.
And Atreus, how are you feeling?
We're feeling good.
We're excited to be here.
We're either gonna pull up, we're gonna win,
or it's gonna be a stooge moment.
Either way, it's gonna be fun to watch.
Well said indeed, I'm going to have you both return to your teams and now you can go ahead
and head back and get ready at your battle stations.
May I have the reserve players actually exit backstage right now please?
Reserve members can I have you exit backstage?
Alright, so for all of you here, please prepare at your battle stations.
Let's get this going.
Brian Frosty, I'm handing it back to you.
Thank you so much, Aya.
Let's hear it one more time, guys.
Let's hear some noise.
We are in the second one!
Alright, we got Team Idleon vs. Team Stooges.
Yes, yes.
These are both extremely powerful teams.
Both were just at the razor edge, I believe, of actually getting to the finals.
This is going to be a very close matchup, I think.
Yes, hopefully.
Yes.
Any thoughts here on, while they're going to set up, any thoughts on the teams?
Team Idleon?
Yes.
So Stooges has been a well, I'll say students first. Okay, sure. Sure. Stooges have been around for a very long time
Some of these players have even playing the PBD more before Crystal Conflict the feast. So these people have a lot of experience
Okay, okay. What about I actually I recognize so many of these things. I'm really old
A lot of these people are old too. I see
And then Team Idle on Team Idle on yes
So this team is super profitable. It is so well in the quarterfinals. Yeah, yes
I mean, I I'm expected a lot from someone who is trying to be a summon. Oh
I did see a really cool sign out there for stooge is though. Can we see that again? Oh
Lights up it's so cool. Wow
Man the fans really came out. I want to go to say a big shout out to everybody that's up here in the front
You guys are amazing
true PVPers. This is a PVP community showing up, man, at FanFest. I love this. So, again,
Team Eilan versus Team Stooges is going to be a best of three again. Yes. We're going to start on
PlayStation. We don't need to re-explain it. You guys kind of get the point, I think, after that.
I believe so. But I think that this is... What's funny is I know Team Stooges has players
who have one on stage all their roster. They do have Mr. A. Weaver. Yeah, a little shy.
A little shy. Yes, yes. A. Weaver did win FRC in 2018. You were on stage with him too.
Yes, I was also a competitor. Yeah, that was amazing. I love those games. That's the first
time that I did any kind of commentary here at FanFest. So it was a huge moment for me personally.
How many of you guys have been playing PvP since, you know, back in 3.x?
No, not a lot.
Great. That's a long time.
That is a long time ago.
Yeah.
Well, we have been like since then the PvP community has evolved.
Yes, for sure.
It's grown so much since back in the day that it's such a wonderful community.
So many tournaments going on being hosted like all the time.
Like if you there's like a calendar of like they have to coordinate between
different tournaments to make sure that they don't overlap. Yeah, the community puts on a lot of
community run tournaments throughout the years, sometimes several in a month, sometimes several
in a week even. And this is the main way that these players get to practice. Yeah, and I mean
these that's how they fit practice. Oh, some of them are a little bit more sneaky and they go in
the private games. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. You definitely have to do that too sometimes.
Yeah, if you're a competition hit in and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. Again, this is a pretty
big moment for a lot of these teams. This is the end goal for all of them, right? Oh yes.
Fanfest coming up here and winning in the CCRC. I don't know, this is the biggest
stage. Yeah, this is the biggest stage, biggest prizes. This is gonna be the highest tier matches.
Yeah, and whoever wins this will be going to face Big Goat City afterwards. Right.
And that is gonna be super heated. We still have more people cheering and they...
Oh, I see idol and signs up there, too.
Oh, right there, yeah.
There we go.
Super cool.
All right, I believe they're still logging in and finishing setup here.
So I guess, you know, we can talk about a couple other things while we're waiting.
What do you think about, what, live letter-wise?
Yes.
Was there anything that stood out to you?
Oh, my God.
I'm not a lackluster, sorry. Kino.
Kino, yes, that line's right.
The what?
That line's right.
The line's right?
Yeah.
That was a big shock.
Oh, the, yeah.
How many people are looking forward to the 8.0?
I guess it's 8.1 likely, right?
Yeah.
A line is right?
Yeah.
The community has been talking about that for so long.
Yes.
It's been something that people were hoping for.
and I know I have been personally.
Yes.
And I'm pretty sure more people are looking forward
to the Glamours.
The Glamours.
Are we have any Glamour fans out there, I assume?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know what else I'm super excited for?
What?
The new PvP map is coming out.
The PvP map?
Yes.
Oh, we do have a PvP map coming out.
Yeah, the library.
Yeah, the library.
Are you guys looking forward to that one?
Very soon.
Yeah.
That's going to be an awesome map.
I love to see what they can actually do with mechanics.
I mean, I'm a huge fan of all the different mechanics
that are in the game.
Playster is nice, you know, it's okay,
but I just love seeing people get flipped on tile mats
or exploding into the air, you know, that's a lot of fun.
You know, I'm curious what the crowd thinks
of their favorite map, but I don't know how to really do
there's so many maps to talk about.
Oh my God, yes.
How many Playster fans do we have out there?
Okay, okay.
How many Volcanic heart?
Little bit there. Okay. Okay cloud nine
Okay red stance
All right, all right clockwork castle town
That's my favorite that's your favorite all right forget one I think that was all
I like the one I like because like it's just you jump in there and you just start battling immediately. It's such a brutal math. Yes, I like that sense. I feel like there's a that's has like the most mechanics there, Joe. The rest. Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot. You run and get your region that you go up and you like me. You have something to do right at the off the start of that. It looks like our players.
players are joining us?
Still, yeah, still a little bit of time here.
Okay, yeah, still get a little bit more set up.
Yeah, so with the mechanics, so yes,
it's something you play around,
but it's something you can strategize with as well.
Okay.
So for example, for red stands,
you can go into the wasis to get a regen.
And then when the mechanic happens,
you can avoid the dot damage, for example.
Yeah, I mean, well, I just go in there and start fighting.
That's what they're doing, to be honest with you,
sometimes.
All right, well, I guess we only get to see each map just so you guys know in case you're curious if they do pick a map
They can only pick it once so if we see it one time up here between the the match up here on stage
Then that's the only time that they can actually use it right. Yeah, there is one that they practice
Let me have to be at least good at two. Yeah
I may not see all maps unfortunately, but I do at least this is cloud nine already
So we'll see if they choose a different one there
Um, but yeah, no, okay. Well, what else have you done at fan fest here? Oh, I did the sticker change
The sticker change? Do you guys like the stickers at fan fest aside?
Yeah, there are so many people
That sticker book was amazing! Like that, my daughter has been actually going around collecting stickers from everyone and just kind of placing them in there
By the way, if you guys don't know, my daughter is out there in the crowd somewhere as well
Uh, hi Ellie
She is absolutely adorable, but yeah, I think that these this next matchup. Do you think it's going to go to one or oh?
I hope to one, but we never know
Who are you voting for?
I think
I said do I have to I'll say I don't I'll say I don't I don't okay idol on
Okay, anyone else idle on? Okay. Well, I'll be a stooge too.
You'll be a stooge too. Let's go stooge's. Anyone else for stooge's?
Okay.
Man, we have a party going on. You guys can't see it right now, but there's a huge party at Wolf's Den.
And everyone's just kind of dancing around here.
More players than we can probably see.
Oh my goodness. Yes, they found the PVP.
They always find it. Yeah, they always find it.
We do see our players starting to join in here though.
It looks like most of that stuff has been worked out.
They have gotten their setup ready to go.
So we should be going here in just a moment.
Let's talk about your favorite job.
My favorite job is playing PVP.
My favorite job to play in PVP is Paladin.
Paladin.
I love Paladin so much.
I'm so glad cover existed about PVP. Oh, yes
I know not you know, there's a lot of opinions about it
But that's how I played back in the day when I was doing my top 50 and everything else
I would just cover all or yeah, all this and meta or strong like for a long time. Yeah
I
Don't know. What do we have minus age? I like to play stage. Okay. Any stage players?
Okay
Maybe you don't know we not because he switched out there. He switched out is like saints. Do you think twitch chat says?
Okay, it could be okay. Okay. I do I'll be honest when I see a paladin there
We know the matches are gonna take a little bit longer because these players know exactly. Oh, yeah
Oh, we're getting a ready check guys. Are you guys ready?
Okay
Let's see if our players are as well. Oh again, we're going into play sure
I appreciate you guys bearing with us as we're getting all set up here
And this is going to be well, I think they're actually wait, but we see some nose in the region. Okay. Okay. We still a little bit top. Sorry guys
They're doing their final bits of stuff
They want to make sure that they are completely ready in game that they only get this moment want absolutely make sure every two
Degree years. This is the big moment. Yeah, right?
Yeah, make sure there is UI looks good. So this takes a little time
Yeah, and I mean everybody has their own custom set up and everything and if anything's just awful a little bit
Yeah, yeah, we still see some UI going on over there
Well, the other thing that I was fortunate up to see was the piano concert
And it was wonderful I I
I like the automaton, isn't the automaton the right one?
I'm a huge fan of it.
That's a classic.
But tonight we have another concert coming up.
What's the prime one? Are you guys excited for that?
I think it's close to 6 hours.
I bet people already have their seats.
Oh wow.
The concert right now is such a huge thing.
We have this big open area at the front of the stage.
party out while we're doing it.
And I'm very excited to see what songs they can play.
I unfortunately have no clue.
They didn't let me know.
But I remember I watched the Primal's in 2014.
Did anyone here go to the 2014 fan fest?
That's a long time ago.
Oh, yeah.
I wasn't even there.
Guys, yeah.
I mean, we're old now.
But, yeah.
Yourself.
I was just kidding.
They came out.
We didn't know what to expect to the Primal's.
and they just rocked it. It's so hard, Ben.
And they have been making it better every single show.
They've been going out and touring as well.
Oh, yeah.
And I hope you guys are ready for it.
And you guys all have your glow sticks, right?
Do you guys have your glow sticks?
Yeah.
Yeah.
There we go.
All right.
I see a lot of setup almost done.
Yeah, so we've got a little bit more time.
OK, well.
I also went to the aquarium.
The aquarium, oh yeah!
A little bit of unofficial gathering.
That's right, there's a lot of unofficial gatherings
going around.
I love to see when the community comes here
and they all have their own little special group
of things they do.
Right now we're in the PDP group, right?
Yes.
We got all the CCCR, CCRT fans out there.
Yes, yes.
We have a lot of them online too,
because they're all jumping around us right now.
They are.
I think the aquarium has like over 100 people.
a hundred people over and there's some amazing cosplays out there too oh yeah
the cosplay show yeah I saw a lot of really cool tyrants oh man and there's
a lot of amazing like these huge setups and everything else I mean I think I
see so much cosplay here first it's a lot of other conventions that I go to
everyone's just coming up and it feels cozy yeah yeah a lot of work goes into
cosplay too. So thank you guys for bringing that to every fanfest.
All right, it looks like we got the ready check over there. Sorry guys, I
appreciate your patience, guys. I appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Oh, man. And we're all and are we queued in? Yes, we are queued in.
Let's hear the noise again, guys.
I
Don't see if they can summon their strength going against Stooges don't let the name fool you though
These guys are absolutely no fools and all right. Well, hey portraits. Let's see what they did
Okay, I'll go with it I'll go with it I'll go with it I don't did okay
Okay
Do you guys think I don't want that portrait contest or Stooges?
Alright, I should say, Eidolon!
Okay!
Sturgis!
Okay, Sturgis Warner.
Alright, we'll be on the second. Let's talk about our comp.
Yes, absolutely. We have Warrior, Astral, Dragoon, Bard and Picto
versus Paladin, Astral, Ninja, Bard and Picto.
So we are seeing the Meta Spokas, Bard and Picto, plus the standard tank, plus healer.
Yeah, but no cover here.
team idle on true yeah so that's gonna be interesting they're probably we a
little more aggressive yeah we're a little bit more aggressive we have that
pull in the at least on all right
all right great that's right that's really good oh my goodness amazing
archer is taking so much damage this is so aggressive
Right off the gate!
Right off the gate, but still gonna go down too!
Oh my goodness!
Alright, shoot this!
Look at that taking the lead here at the beginning!
That was super blood!
Yeah, the fifth member is already back here.
They get really close with a 50% mark.
Yeah, they're just walking over there while the other team is adding pressure,
making sure they can make it to that checkpoint.
So close to 50%, 47%, 48, 50!
Really click in there 50% already Sparrow Hawk taking a lot of pressure though
No cover there they do not have a paladin Gold just gonna take a lot of damage next year
I'm gonna try and escape pick those pretty decent at that, but
Yes, make both that makes it to the floor ocean. We're good. We're good
Uh, uh, that, uh, game, the my fourth game.
All right, uh, Estelle taking the pressure right now, but actually getting back just a bit.
It looks like they're not going for a full engagement yet.
Yes.
These elixirs.
Yeah, it looks like both teams are gonna play safe, gonna reset all using their elixirs right now.
Celeste being a little greedy there does get that gravity off, but the next engagement's gonna happen here right in the middle.
Ninja landbreak ready, warrior landbreak ready.
Who's gonna go in first?
Oh
Get a little bit there let him walk it up. It's like that's good. I want to say here
Much pressure right there that had to hurt yep yep yep and those are easy to pick the match over there going to go
To put a follow-up on Tray is
Almost ready.
Hey, will we get it?
Hey, guys, hey, guys!
Are you going to click it, though?
Oh, no!
Oh, no!
Oh, no!
Oh, no!
Big high ground.
You got to be able to stall just a little bit longer here.
Only have four members up right now, so you got to take advantage of this.
Yep.
You need a 50% as well.
Still going into the game.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
At the same time, not able to use the flip right here.
They're taking so much pressure.
Oh, Celeste having very low health, but able to recover.
Well, maybe.
Oh, let's give us down there.
Oh my God, so many people going down to that engagement.
Yeah, so let's go live though.
Might be able to get away.
Looks like they're playing.
Oh, Zeke is chasing.
Okay, Zeke just engaged there.
Okay, we're going to get those.
And look at it, we're at 50-50.
50-50? How easy could you be?
Yeah.
Oh, right. We do have a little bit of LBs going on.
We have the Goon LB ready to go out too.
out too they might use that exegation part they'll be going out right now
let's pick the mess there i'll be from air weaver here's the dives coming in
gochal taking a ton of damage gonna be okay for now gonna keep the pressure up
oh
sparrow hawk with the drew limit break getting micro down atreus also gonna go
down right after what a follow-up there now going super spot going
together oh my god team idol on idol i'm pushing back taking a
Take an advantage here.
Oh, they're actually still chasing.
Feel the LV.
Oh, no, there's nowhere to go for B here.
I think it's going to be over for you.
LV, oh, they're making sure he doesn't get the potions.
What are you going to do?
Oh, warrior LV on TPO.
There's a long stall.
Oh, there's the cover.
There's the pilot cover.
Wow, what a put-and-escape here.
We've never seen it go past the checkpoint now.
We're seeing 66% here.
Going down here. We did pass a 50% mark there.
It's easy.
6%. See getting a little, taking a little damage here.
It's done.
It's still okay for now. Ninja's really invasive. They have their teleport out.
So, very nice job there.
They're just kind of touching each other red.
They're just touching like, trying to just like,
fight each other just a little bit there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Astralbeam. Big damage. He's going out soon here.
Everybody's taking a super safe.
Yeah, they're playing super safe.
25 seconds left.
There we go!
Oh!
Sparrow's in the air right now, looking for your true good health B!
Oh!
It's so cold and healthy, we have to get out of there.
Yeah, Sparrow has a big shield right now, but gonna need some help potentially.
Getting the potion just in time here.
Yeah.
Oh, we're at 76% 30 seconds and still overtime.
Oh my gosh, this is getting super close.
83% on the point right now.
Atrey is jumping in, does have pallid limit break ready so they can stall once again.
Going to go for the Astral, K. Dive.
Nice dive.
Oh man.
Here's Sel, now going down as well.
Getting a trade.
Yeah, overtime.
Over time, just five seconds.
Yes, yes, yes.
Team Sujus.
Half the team Sujus is on the point.
Yeah, Team Sujus needs one person on the point.
Okay.
Airweaver and the Trace on point right now.
Got to be super careful.
That was super close right there.
Yeah, yeah.
Team Idle is going to play in safe here.
They're going to back off just a little bit.
and have limit breaks for the next team fight.
Okay, I mean, I should reset.
There we go.
We're about to see some explosions.
Pick the match limit break ready.
Ninja limit break ready.
Warrior, who's gonna go first?
Here's the corner, they're picking it to the corner right now.
Yeah, there you go.
Uh-oh.
What's happening?
Uh-oh, both picked Elbis are out.
That means big damage is ready.
No.
Oh, here we go.
Oh, here we go.
Go, man.
There's actual spell.
Oh, Elfin, not able to beat him.
Wow
Oh my goodness the damage is so high there, but still getting super low to appeal. Oh
Oh my goodness warriors next warrior super low warriors go down next only two players remaining Celestin bonjo
Are they gonna be able to do it they just have to make a past this point so just getting super close here
Goal-jump up on point. Goal-jump gets super low, though.
He's back up in the sale!
Goal's stalling, but you can help me right now.
As soon as that land, they have a shield.
Oh, I can hear a scrooby-dove through the side here.
Sparrow trying to hold the point, letting them drip back in.
Here's big damage. Going down, Sparrow goes down.
Three players remaining on Team Idle on.
That's a nice try. It's taking so much pressure.
Whoa, they're not going to kill here.
I'm trying to get him super low.
It's going to be okay for now.
It looks like they're okay, they might get recovered.
Yeah, it looks like they're recovering right now.
Only Sparrowhawk is missing.
The seal's taking a lot of damage here next, so...
Here's the stun.
Oh my goodness.
All these LBs are about to come up.
We're gonna see a huge explosion,
and hopefully they'll be able to push it past this checkpoint.
Yes, on these two just air weavers getting super low right now.
Doesn't have to empty.
Gonna go for the Pikmance LB.
Oh, Neil goes down.
Good save on airweaver there. Good pecs to kick the match out.
There's a ninja on the break.
Big gas, the leathery. There's the next ninja.
That's like Team Stooges might take it here.
Go just jumping on points.
There's the guard.
Go just running off. They need to have someone else jump up point right now.
Stooges!
Miss Steel.
Miss Steel's gonna go down here I think.
Someone needs to get on.
Stooges takes the first hit.
Wow.
That was a really good comeback on Team Stooges there.
Were you expecting that?
No.
We did say it was going to be a close game there and it was.
That was super close then and we're going to expect that same thing in the next map coming up here.
What's your prediction?
I want to see more matches so I'm going to see.
No, no, no, no, what is your prediction on the next map?
Well, I launch it.
Oh, map.
Mmm.
I hope they do it for the crowd and just do something other than cloud nine.
Like, castle or clockwork, castle town.
That would be great to see.
Oh, well, it's whatever makes sense for them.
Yeah, true.
But I would love to see it.
The audience gets here for that.
The loudest.
Do you guys want to see that map?
I'm hyping you guys up for something you might not see, castle town.
Clockwork, castle town.
Oh, okay.
Never mind.
Oh, you guys can be quiet.
It's fine.
I can't clock work castle town. Yes, but guess what it is going to be yet again
Let's go cloud nine guys
All right, we're ready checking here. Do you think the comps that they pick will favor idol on oh
They come some very similar because they're both running the people bar and standard so
If I favor this one, I favor this other one.
The only big difference is the warrior versus Paladin.
The warrior versus Paladin feels big to me.
It didn't seem to matter as much because they get to kill so fast you can't even react.
I think that's because of the warrior.
That is so strong. I love to see it.
We can't even predict that half the time because if we could predict it,
likely the other team could predict it as well.
Yeah, these teams need to be really good with their swaps.
You're seeing a lot of damage gone on one person and then it's which is someone else
That's like the best way to be tricky and get a good kill. Well guys, we're about to get in here
Are you guys think Stooges is gonna take it home?
You guys think island's gonna come back
You ready to right yes
Just making sure you never know do you think they changed portraits here?
No, no
Most time they just they have to lock it back to DMV. They have to okay. Okay. We have three space thieves
There's a little bit of coordination partially there. Yeah, a little bit there
But yeah, it's still the same no nothing. That is a wonderful ninja though. You like to do one. I like the bar going
Alright guys, we're in our second game. This could be the last our second map here could be the last one of this map
You can hear him in the crowd. Let's see what they're doing here on stage. You can see they're just kind of concentrate
Are they pre-boating?
Okay, okay, okay
Very good ten seconds left until we go in though. It's like they had a lot of caffeine there turning around. Yeah, okay
Oh man, we don't need to explain this map again because we've already explained it previously.
Definitely. And we're jumping right in.
Jumping straight into this. Let's go, here it goes!
Alright, let's see if they actually just dive in here if they're going to be a little bit careful.
Looks like they're being slightly... Oh!
Jumping through the barrel, making pressure.
Sparrow taking a lot of damage here, but the cleave is going out atreus and micro taking at least a lot of damage there
But no kills fight yet. Yeah. Yeah, just kind of going in there see if they get an advantage
It looks like they call me okay super low done
That's the power of Barton fixing it. That's a beautiful range to kill
We see Pio doing okay there Sparrow now getting a lot of pressure trying to retreat here
They might be able to get away yet. Oh, they're chasing though
They're all together right now.
That seems to deny the 50% here.
Yeah, it looks like they're not looking forward to it.
You can see them running back in right now.
They might jump in right as it gets to the 50%.
Yeah, it's a good time to deny if they can,
but they don't.
They had to go for a full retreat here.
We see a lot of guards going out right here.
Michael's going down!
Oh, Zeke now taking a little bit of pressure as well.
Well atreus as yeah same thing here it has no more heels available to him
absolutely LBs are about to come up though it looks like a trace might be the
next target here taking a lot of damage like go down down very clean it looks
like we're gonna have to turn this event happen in five seconds here is that a
contest that battle happening right there's no way they messed this up you
So it's a good idea to just take it and just
Because if you the other way you would mitigate that it's by using guard and if you scarred you will have it for the team
So they're still gonna need the dodger out of here water going in the picture. I'll be going on there ready for the engagement
We see a lot of girls. Let's go. I'm this guy
Yep, I chase currently cover and we've got to get a lot of damage here. I a lot is on fire right now
Doing so well. We're at a 50% to 50%. So much pressure.
Oh, Treyus!
Wow, that tornado finished it off there.
Idle on making it to 50%.
Gonna break the checkpoint here, too.
Yeah, this is really big for him.
Yep, SLS will be able to take the shortcut.
Astralimit break is ready. They have a shot here to finish it off.
They definitely can. And we do see them trying to counter-reproof here.
Atreus still in there.
Looking for the fish.
Mike, we're all using that. Astral will be here.
at near 80%. P.O.P.O. taking so much pressure.
There's a cover, cover on to P.O.
Who's the next person? It's gonna be Airweaver.
Beautiful swap, right after cover.
A trace almost goes down to the point where he's P.O.P.
He does.
Yeah, the point's also in a dangerous situation.
96-3 right now.
He's gotta be super careful.
There's Atreus. There's Farrell.
Farrell's trying to run away right now.
Looks like they're gonna be able to just a little bit.
Not all the way, though.
Neal jumping back in.
They're gonna find a burst target right here.
I don't think Zeke potentially. Zeke super low, doesn't have any more MP. I don't know if Copper is ready right now.
Oh, he gets the line of sight though. It's so close!
Which, if you think he says...
Oh, I'm afraid!
It's not over yet. We're back until 4v4. Neil taking a lot of damage here.
Oh, Zeke taking some pressure.
I have no clue which way to Zeke. Look at Zeke right here.
Oh, Zeke going down!
Yes, this still has no more resources.
Oh, we're gonna go for pick the master LB onto Goju.
That means Goju's gonna try and do a lot of burst damage
right here.
They're trying to win it right now.
Yeah, they're pushing it a little further.
Yeah, I don't want to want to win it right now.
They're not going for any retreats.
And they need to, so they can go into the third map here.
Absolutely, there's a point.
No, it's no close, it's a high D&G.
And the end is set.
Jeffy got a point, a trade signal.
Trace goes down, Neo might get traded.
Oh, damn, no, no, no, no.
The point is such a scary position right now. They gotta be super careful with stepping off and Celeste taking a lot of pressure
They might go down turbulence. Herbal is happening. Three two one
A lot of people up in the air
No one's gonna die here, but a lot of damage every person is gonna be
Oh, they're using elixir
They're gonna wait first and don't they're not safe over there. Oh
Oh, Sparrow going down! Airweaver going down!
Celeste gonna go down next, I think.
Oh, Eidolon now kind of losing that advantage here.
Vistell actually taking the pressure.
2v4, 20 seconds left on the clock.
Oh, there's 20 seconds left.
Yeah, there's a lot of work to do here at this point.
Here we go.
Oh, Stooge is walking this forward.
They have to stay on point.
A lot of work to do.
They get off and lose.
Yes, yes, yes.
Go.
There we go.
I mean, it's an epic special area.
Alright, overtime guys.
We gotta watch this crystal like a hawk.
Oh, my goodness, Duke, taking a lot of damage.
Gonna get the Warrior LB off the toe.
Atreus, getting super low.
D, getting super low next.
Get first down.
Pick the messes, LB going now.
A lot of mitigation, a lot of damage.
Gonna be here.
Eri, we're getting super low.
That's guard available right now.
Oh, there's your gun.
Jirguin help is in the air right now, you know?
Yeah, Jirguin's in the air, not gonna deal a lot of damage, a lot of shields are out.
Yes, P.O.P.O. trying to escape, doesn't make it, unfortunately.
5v... 5v2 on point right now.
I don't know what it looks like, they might take in here soon.
Paladin, let me break his spawn point currently.
Only has two seconds left on it though.
Yeah, I mean...
This is a really rough spot for Jirguin.
There's Atreus, there's Atreus, he's gonna try and escape.
Gets pulled in by the warrior, I'm gonna go down next.
Oh!
Zeke's on the point currently with Bard.
Bard wears off, there's gonna be the next first target.
Zeke goes down, Noah's on point right now.
Michael makes it lice, last second.
Oh my gosh, that was so close.
Very close, Michael dashing out.
Noah's gonna rotate in time!
He'll make this on the pullout.
I think they take it here.
There it goes!
We're in 1-1!
Eidolon takes a map here.
Wow, these are so close.
This is such a close matchup here.
Eidolon definitely picking the right map to come back on, but now Stooges actually gets
the choice.
Yes.
And we're going to see a new map because they can't pick the same wall.
Yes.
Oh.
What?
Go ahead.
I was going to say, do you have any predictions on what they'll choose?
Claw 4 Castle Town.
Claw 4 Castle Town.
That's what I'm expecting from Stooges.
Got it.
They would be a full Nazi.
Okay.
Okay.
Alright, they are choosing, working out what they want to do.
There's so many really good maps right now to play in CC, and I'm just, I'm excited to see any of them.
Yes.
I mean, huge fan of Cloud9's shoe, but I think we've seen enough today.
I agree.
All right, who do you guys think's gonna take this next map? Is it gonna be idle on?
Okay, this is for Sturgis
Okay, okay, okay seems a little bit in favor by the lawn right now. Got it. Got it
We know what the map's gonna be guys. It is going to be the volcanic part
Alright, so for everyone who is unfamiliar with the mechanics of volcanic art, our heart,
do us the honor.
Absolutely.
So the main map mechanic for this one is a volcano eruption.
So you can even see it on a map, a volcano explode, bombs will start spawning on the
map.
They'll do like a line AoE.
You can dodge them.
You can use star to avoid the damage.
So it's something you can play around.
You can, you know, if you want to like get some good damage, you can like pull
someone into the A&E's and get some killed down there.
Oh that's a lot of fun guys.
I mean they had the warrior.
They had the warrior.
That warrior I don't think I saw that clearly but the warrior told the person off the plate
and that's why they couldn't make it back on.
Yeah.
I mean this is one of those things where like being able to play around with mechanic warriors
are so wrong you want to make sure to be I have to assume to be on a mechanic heavy
map.
Yes.
Take advantage of that too.
Yeah.
All right looks like the ready is happening right now.
I see a lot of Rs in chat.
Yep.
Yep.
All right, let's see if we get the QNs.
There we go.
One more last time.
This is the last map between these two teams, guys.
Go ahead and give us some noise.
All right.
They didn't, don't worry about the fortress.
They didn't change it.
They never do, they never do it.
Fine, it's fine.
They still look okay.
Honestly, they have to be locked in for this.
Wait a minute, I feel like the pictomancer changed a little bit in this dance.
Maybe I'm a man.
Okay, what about glamour crossing?
Which glamour do you like?
Glamour?
I tray us for the Paladin glamour.
Like a Paladin glamour?
What about you?
I like the Zeke Sliddle, fate of dancing, body piece.
Okay.
All right, let's check and see what the teams are doing in their bases.
This is the last time, possibly, for one of these teams in the base, trying to
hype themselves up.
Okay?
We actually do the CS walk here peel peel is on dark night now. Oh, we have the tune all right
Can you explain that a little bit of what they would do it?
It could be because the mechanic like we said earlier you can pull people to the bomb explosion so
Dark night has seltzer earth, which is an a we pull in so that's being option or you know
Just smaller mitigation shields are really good in PvP than that thing has a great one. Let's hear it guys
going right into it. Wow that looks a little aggressive already trying to get
in there and get some kills. That first damage is insane everything has some
damage. Atreus going next here but Neil, Neil gets just a low.
Neil! Beautiful counter burst. Oh my god, the clean down there.
That was tipped the banser. Tipped the banser is so good that that AoE damage there both you're gonna try and run away
Looks like they're not being allowed. They're not allowed to run away. They don't want it to happen. Yep
Go ahead and stagger those teeth displayers coming back. Alright, 50% for Stooges. Yep. Yep. Yep
Wow, I don't want to try to trickle in right here. That's all they have right here
Meanwhile the points are ready at 50% almost getting broken here gets super close. I mean, I think they're gonna do it
It looks like it looks like they're looking for things to come around the corner and then jump in and try to catch them off guard. Yep
No land breaks. All right available right now. This is so fast
It's like a steal air weaver. There's the kill
It's beautiful kill from team Idle on yeah, you'll feel taking a lot of damage next we have mechanics coming out in 10 seconds
Here POPO taking so much press
Mechanics you can come out
Yes, yes, Atreus still here on point.
Looks like they might go for the full retreat here.
Michael's still keeping a little bit of kills through their paladin.
Zeke gonna go down.
Atreus gonna die on point carefully.
Oh yes, he's now going down.
And there it is.
And here's about the next bunch.
So, this is beautiful timing.
Team Iowan has the opportunity to take these orbs here.
That gives you a little bit more damage boost and also limit break bar.
And they need it after that first loop engagement.
You see right here, Leo has one, Bolger has two, so that's a little bit of an advantage to have.
Yeah, and when they get to a 50% point, they're likely going to do another engagement here.
You see them kind of waiting for them over here.
Yeah, Eric got to watch out for those picked up LBs. That's where the fights are going to be, basically.
Already got them out.
There it is.
Yes, Astro.
The dream's in the air!
Wow!
Whoa!
Whoa!
LB.
Beautiful kill on T'Peel there as...
Oh, sorry.
Oh
Feel people not taking lots of pressure though
That they're not gonna let go Joe escape here at a point or maybe
There's nowhere to go, baby
Okay, they're gonna do it's good escape from go Joe there
We're almost out of food reset here. They're gonna
We're going to dive in a moment here.
We do have that bar damage amp going out from Bastille.
There we go.
He's going to dive it in.
Wait.
I'm trying to get these amount of damage, but it has guard up.
It's going to be okay for now.
There's the worst, Scott.
Beale taking a lot of damage.
She is also getting super low here.
A lot of heals, a lot of shields.
That's why people are not going down immediately.
Good reactions on everyone's side.
Oh
Makes it behind the wall all the old
The support isn't
Before
There it is.
So let's go with that.
I'm now looking more at the Astuages here.
Oh, Zeke, though!
Oh!
They also used to pick the master LB there.
This is right before the LBs came up.
Oh, and we've got them.
Okay, okay, okay, okay.
Eidolon, Eidolon gets to push here.
They still have a left on the block.
So, they'll probably have to win
like two T-Fights to solidify them.
This might be a long map.
Still a lot of work to go, but they do have that war element break ready for this next fight
Which is locked they have dark night after ninja there's a big
down right before the ninja limit break. Oh my goodness guys. Air weaver goes down.
Oh! P.O.B. goes down. I.O.I. come back. Let's go. Atreus gets you below nothing.
Oh! Okay. That's the one team fight. That's a two P.O.B. team fight. So yeah. Over, over
top starting. She's going off over there right now. Shelby. Okay here we go. This
could be the final team fight. They do need to keep one person on the point.
Oh, T-FIL!
Micro on the point right now. My favorite is Dash away. There's the pick-the-match.
I'll be going out for go, Joe.
Oh!
Oh, Michael, come on!
Oh, no!
I thought it's so close to taking this here.
This is all they need and then they get into the finals here.
There we go.
There we go.
There we go.
Everyone's taking a lot of damage, everyone's out.
Trance getting clean, Field getting clean.
Only two players remaining.
Team Island might take it here.
This is getting so close.
It's going to be very difficult to come back here.
Zeke currently on point. Zeke getting Warrior LB.
He's going to get pushed off the point.
What?
We're picks us away.
They're going to throw us together!
Oh my god! Wow!
Wow.
Woo!
What the?
That's what the coast looks like.
All right, let's get it, guys.
See why I want to see if there's a curtain.
You can see the energy up there.
Man.
All right.
Well, that's as close as it gets pretty much.
pretty much yeah we're gonna see if this next one which is going to be a big
ghost city versus Eidolon right but yeah I mean those matches again seeing the
paladin versus warrior those were some huge quick kills there it doesn't look
like the double take worked out as well yes but we did see that classic setup
but with a warrior doing actually extremely well I think a lot of people
Like see warrior out. Oh, yeah, I love seeing that the bloat up the Poland from warrior did so much gameplay
Love that oh, yeah, man. All right. Well
Stooges, I'm the old guys got kicked out guys
Unfortunately, but we have Big Goat City and Idle on coming up here in just a second.
This is going to be, we've seen them play against each other in community tournaments
as well.
Let's hear it for Mexico, guys!
Look at that sportsmanship.
I was wondering, thank you.
But yeah, alright guys, we have, I believe they're going to stay with their set up, but
we only have to set up here for Vicco City when they come back on stage here.
So Esther, leaving it, let's hear it one more time here for Team Stooges.
Woo!
I mean, everybody's first.
Yeah.
Everyone's like family.
I mean, this is like a fun trip, and they get to come out here and compete at the same
time to, again, highest level here players.
Yeah, it was a lot of work.
There was 35 teams, I believe, at the beginning of the tournament.
That's a lot more than there was in the past.
So that's like super amazing to see.
All right. Well, Brian, now that we're about to see our next team, I am curious.
What's the crowd thinking here? Is Big Go City going to come on stage and take the set?
Guys?
Okay, okay.
What about Eidolon?
Big Eidolon fans.
Okay, I think we have a favorite Big Eidolon fans here.
I would say if there was an underdog, Eidolon would probably be in that category,
But there's still not to like be second guess, right? Yes. Like we said, Big Gold City has won a lot of community tournaments
they do have
Amazing players who have actually won the last CCRC on their team even. Oh, yeah, so that's why you know
I mean part of this is like being on stage for a first time and like not having those nerves and everything else
It plays a huge factor into their gameplay overall
And so, you know, being so seasoned,
Big Goat City has an advantage just within that.
Definitely.
But, oh, we have a new PSR,
who are you gonna join it?
Don't look at party chat, guys.
I don't think you can see it anyways.
Okay.
Okay.
Sorry, I gotta join in, Jack, I gotta join in.
All right, there we go.
All right, only one more to go.
I am super ready.
going to be a best of five. I believe before we start up we have Aya to come back and say a
little bit to you guys. All right, all right everybody. So we got this final match coming up
and so with me I am going to bring out Big Goat City. Can you all come back out here please?
All right and team captains buzzy and neo can I have y'all up here for a second please
So we're gonna have to go
back to our spot. Yeah,
we're gonna have to go back
to our spot. Yes. Oh, okay,
Neo just coming off of that.
How are you feeling right now
going up against big ghost
City feeling really good. You
know, I beat buzzing in a
squatting or a playing
game competition the other
day. My shoes are nicer. I'm
a better player. These guys
are going to stop right
here. I'm ready to beat
these guys have put on the
best show for you all right
I like it. I like it. And Buzzy, what are you going to say to that?
All right. Coming into this, we know we're the villains. We know we're the favored.
But once again, quote my goat, Lee Sang Hyuk, aka Frankar, all roads lead to me, Neo.
You're dead! You're dead!
All right. So this is going to be a hype matchup, leaders.
You can go ahead and head back to your battle stations.
Oh, so this is going to be really, really electrifying.
And like I said at the beginning of this instead of a best of three
This is gonna be a best of five for this really
Intemplary hype finals match. So let me hear it one more time
Who likes Idle on let me know?
All right, all right, and how do y'all feel about big goat city
Okay, then well, I think soon we're gonna get things going Brian Frosty back to you
Thank you so much. I oh man. I am
I don't know this is the last one
Idle on was the favorite there from the crowd Idle on 100%
That's a lot of pressure to put on big-goats city
But I don't think they're gonna let that bother them at all. They don't seem like that was some trash talk
Yeah, that was some good trash talk trash talk. He's talking about his shoes, man
Talking about better shoes. Okay. That's those guys. Well, this is gonna be super exciting to see what they choose to do
Yeah in the maps because we're gonna see at least three maps. Yeah throughout the setup overall
I'm assuming you think they're gonna pull out the same comps as they played previously
I'm gonna say no because I did see a different player. Welcome stage this time. Oh
Oh, okay, okay.
Tomo this time?
And what do you know with Tomo and Orin?
Tomo likes to play tank.
Tank, okay.
So they have options.
Big Gold City has so many options on compositions and stuff,
but we do regularly see them that I spoke about.
Bard, Picto, and then the standard tank, and yeah.
Very okay.
And I will say, this is actually, after this is over,
we're gonna find out who's gonna win $22,500 here, guys.
This is the most intense batch. I think we're gonna see in a very long time. Yes. Yes. Oh, man
But no, it's not always about the money. It's all they like having fun here. True
I mean also like stage getting to come here and play like I said earlier is like a big reward. Yeah
Yeah, I do want to take a second by the way before we're done with commentating
So your style looks real good by the way Brian. Thank you. You look so good. Thank you so much
You guys think that Brian looks pretty good up here
I'm inspired by redmage right now inspired by redmage. Yes. Yes redmage was the job
I did play when I competed. Yeah, so that job is to my heart
Well, it looks great. It's a great job. I was fishing but I know you
No, your cosplay is great.
Thank you so much!
What's in is one of my favorite characters within the game.
The best, a downster, commentator, ever to exist inside Final Fantasy XIV.
Do we have any What's in fans out there?
Okay, some people are raised.
Yeah, I don't see them having ears on, actually.
Oh, my ears? Oh yeah, I don't have...
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to reduce my height.
My ears I couldn't get the actual the long enough cosplay. Got it. Okay. Okay. My best though
So I think it worked out. Okay. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah, great. Thank you
But that being said I believe we are getting them logged in and set up
Absolutely another thing to say is yeah, so obviously a lot of the players coming off from different parts of the country
I think does take, you know, having an impact on how they play.
That is true. I mean, like a lot of people are coming in and playing on these setups that are not their setups.
True.
Keyboards, peripherals, and everything else that they can play with here.
Our controllers, whatever they use.
Yes.
Do we have any controller users out there?
I'm a controller.
Okay, okay, okay. Keyboard mouse?
Yes.
Okay, we're like, this is the majority.
Yeah, I switched to controller recently and it is literally the best
Wow, I have so much fun with it. Is that a hot take?
Is it a hot take? I don't think so
But yeah, this has been a lot of fun with you so far
We have some really exciting matches and I this is gonna be this one. This one will be the craziest
This is literally my go to five
My go to five it will play every single map. Oh, right
out on the floor. Yeah, I got to do a couple. I did the actually did the
Chris with one of them. Yeah, that's what also over there.
Did you get to play it? I haven't had a chance yet. I would like to go out there.
The set up for isn't pretty. That's like the first thing I did was take pictures there.
Yeah. And the dancing green one was amazing. Oh, that's a lit one.
That one's super lit. They went out of their way with all these setups. Yes.
Yes. People are dancing super hard. I don't know if you got to watch people dance.
Yeah, really good get to it. Of course. Yeah, I think dancing green is one of the most iconic fights within the right here overall
So it's good to see him here as well
And they have a commentator there
They have a commentator there over there as well who's doing an amazing job. I hear about there
So quick applause for the commentator as doing the game
Okay, okay sign over there buff dancer
Well, to be honest, we haven't seen any dancers yet.
True.
True.
We haven't seen a lot of stuff, thanks to Bart and Picto.
Man, they're being so strong.
Perfect.
Picto Man, sir.
Yeah.
I mean, it is kind of cool to see them.
I think it does make it still a lot of fun to see those matches and see how they
position their players and everything else.
Yes.
Yes.
So I do enjoy them.
These players have theory crafts for years to see what's better.
And obviously, if PPP gets a lot of patches and updates, so this is currently what's
strong and definitely will switch in a future patch.
Yeah, the expansion coming out, of course.
Well, the new expansion, PVP is going to be very exciting.
I'm wondering what that looks like.
But unfortunately, that might be in the future.
We'll learn about that.
But yeah, everything that I've seen here,
this has been one of the best fanfests I think so far.
Oh.
I don't know if you guys think that.
Do you guys think this has been one of the best fanfests
so far?
Yeah.
Yeah. It's a great venue. The setup's great. The community team has put in so much work
into this. And I can't say thank you enough to them for everything here. The stage setup
is beautiful as well. I literally have almost no complaints at all.
And this is the first event today. We still have that big concert later in the primals.
Right.
Yeah. So it's going to be super exciting.
We have a Q&A with Yoshida, I believe, as well.
All right, there's several stuff. Yes. Yeah, so we have a lot of really cool things for you guys
Coming up shortly after this
I
Understand if not everybody wants us to go to five games because we have set up for the next one
They got to do all the stuff on the safe and everything but I know the players are looking forward to it. Yes. Yes
I I rather than be prepared and have everything ready. I don't want any technical issues. So take your time
Yeah, take their time. You don't want any reason for there to be like, hey, I wasn't able to hear. I wasn't able to do anything. It matters a lot again for them to make sure that they're set up as good.
But I mean, once we're in there, we're just going straight forward after game, right?
Yes, yes, yes.
So it should be pretty quick. Do you think we're going to see a lot of overtime?
Oh, yes. These teams are super strong. The best thing they're at are like rotating the point so someone gets on.
They stall for a little bit then the next person gets on to like stall if they need to yeah
So and part of that is like getting that huge lead at the very beginning to right?
Yes
That first engagement is so vital if you can push that over to their other base
Yes, and that way if you do lose the team flight afterwards you can actually trickle into their spot
Yes, it goes into overtime pretty quick because it's so close to your side. All right. Absolutely. Yeah
Yeah, so we should probably see a lot of that happening
Yeah, I don't think we're gonna see any quick games. I could be wrong though
It happened. Yeah, they get a really good need and snowball off of that that definitely could happen
Even with the best of players, right, right?
I mean, we did see a lot of close ones even though we talked about big goat city getting through and not losing a single map
I think they're gonna lose a map here. I'm saying he could be could be yeah
So I think we saw a lot of close games in the semi finals as well
So I expect this one to be super super close. Yes
It looks like we have our last player in there doing the final bits and then we're gonna get right into it
Let's hear it one more time here before we get into a big goat city
They are 100% the villains there
Okay, man
What is it with Pico City?
What is everybody so wanting to lose?
I don't know if that's the case or Ivalon just has more fans.
Okay, maybe that's it.
Okay, yeah, we can hear him.
Here we go!
We're going in!
There's Ready, Check, Zip, Pass, and we've already seen their portraits.
Like we didn't change it, but they did, it's back to DMG.
We'll see.
Here we go.
Grand Finals.
Okay, it's still okay. Yeah, it still looks pretty good. It still looks pretty good. I don't see any team synergy here
Except for I believe
Biggoats city is definitely the team synergy here break two colors. Yeah
Okay, oh man here it is y'all
Great one. Let's hear a little noise to see what they're doing in base. So are they ready?
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Looks like they're doing
Oh, push-ups? All right, cool. I'm down with it.
Get him pumped up and ready to go.
Yes.
And click on the comp here.
Warrior, Astral, Bar to Pickville, Vance, versus Kalen, Speller, Tribute, Bar to Pickville,
Vance.
Yes, it's pretty straightforward, isn't it?
Yes, yes, yes.
Here we go.
Here we go, guys.
Are we going to start aggressive here?
Let's see how popular the idol are special jumping in with the warrior.
Let's go down to the Palo Alto.
For the Biotolos, the lift lord there makes it out.
Okay, that's a good start. Let's start here for the team, Big Go City.
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Big Go City doesn't go for the tree a little bit here.
The former is about to jump in right now.
gets a beautiful guard there. Here he comes. Guard's wearing off. Guard taking a lot down.
It's going to get the pallet covered. It'll be okay for now. Meanwhile, the point is being pushed.
42% currently by Big Go City. Original again. A little bit of pressure, but backing out. Yep,
yep, yep, yep. Here's the retreat. Let's say both teams are playing it super safe here. Yeah,
Yeah, this is the last matchup that we have today.
Oh, oh, oh, there's a dive right now.
Leo taking a lot of damage.
Gets a good guard up.
Gets guard broken, though.
Gonna take a good amount of damage.
Leo's out again!
Looks like the follow-up might be too un-Pokora, but still also taking a lot of damage here.
Let's see that Potion is spotting on the floor.
They're still running away.
Pokora is chasing, though.
Oh, yeah.
They're here being so cautious.
So look at the crystal right now. Crystal is being pushed, but it makes it a 50% mark.
Yeah, we are going to see the limit breaks coming up for all the players very shortly.
Tribune's already going. The Skull-LB went out.
Skull-LB has a nice mitigation here.
There's a Tribune LB as well. Going to get some shields out the way.
And the old scout.
Yeah, Big Bowl City is not letting the warrior have a lot of fun here.
Yeah, that's really rough.
The last time I'm thinking, oh!
Oh!
That's so unfortunate.
It's just you picked the master LB, dying in the animations,
but still taking a lot of damage here.
Biko's CD, one, only CD, Biko's CD is coming up
so powerful right out of the gate.
Getting the 70% already is just less than three minutes
left.
Yep, yep, yep.
Now, if I don't want to, I don't
have that Astrologen and Warrior Lunefrig ready.
They're going to see Astralby. Oh my god.
Pick out City knows. They do not want the Astralby to have too much fun.
So let's just go down. You're taking a lot of damage next.
Going to go down as well. Wow.
So close. We're at 97%!
Pick out City might take it here.
What an insane start for Pick out City.
Yes, yes, yes.
Oh, stop out going down now.
Bolch is currently left on point.
They need someone to replace their Celeste jumping in right after gojo culture
The steel and Celeste last two players on what currently going to get here
Very dominating performance there. Yeah, that was okay. That was very quick three minutes left. Yeah
But I mean, Eidolon can still come back.
Do you guys think Eidolon can come back?
Again, cheers right now.
OK, OK.
They get to pick their map here.
Yeah, just give them a second to figure out
what's the next map to go against.
Eidolon does get to pick the map here,
so that can help them a little bit.
Do you know how hard we're going to see Cloud9 again?
Oh, I feel like it's likely, right?
Yeah.
I feel pretty likely.
I feel like this is their favorite map.
I feel like the map, everyone seems to go too,
for this time.
one so far this one. But I mean, well, yeah, okay, never mind.
We're going to see volcanic art.
Volcanic art. Come on, clap a little bit more.
All right, going into volcanic art again, we're going to see
what they can do if this improves their odds. Going against
Team Big Goat City.
I'm rooting for them.
I said I'm rooting for them.
Idle on? Of course you are, everybody is.
Oh, but Big O City, I mean, like, what can they do to fight this powerful force right now?
It looks like they're warriors about to lead a lot. That was, like, the main thing that happened
that match. The first target was always a warrior, so they just have to maybe not be too aggressive
with the warrior gameplay potentially. That sounds way easier than it actually is though.
Okay, because if the Warriors playing back then I could take an advantage of their A and B stun and
Stuff like that. So we are having a small delay. Sorry guys
We're restarting one of the players clients here to get them ready. Uh, and then we'll get into it
uh, but I
I don't know man after seeing that it feel I feel really worried for Eidolon. Oh, yes
I mean, but cc cc is such, uh,
a snowballing EVP mode sometimes, like you get that kill,
and then you're down a player,
and then there's nothing you could do until you retreat.
So if Eidolon can get that first kill,
that could change that.
You think if they just jump in there and knock it out,
they can just go ahead and snowball into the left?
Yeah, they gotta survive that first burst, basically.
Okay, okay.
And I mean, do you think the big OCS is going to be
pretty aggressive here now that they have this lead
of one map?
Yeah, I think that's definitely a thing you can do when you're leaving.
Take more risks.
Take a little bit of risk. Why not? It's not like anything's that safe.
Oh my.
All right. It looks like we're almost back here.
And once Pico is back, we will up a course.
Once Pico is back, I think we're going to queue back into Volcanic Park.
Let's go.
And we're going to do this. And it might get a little hot.
I haven't made a lot of puns today.
I feel like I should do more puns.
So let's see if they get the match heats up here for Iowa.
I don't know what it gets.
Big Go City, we're getting in the volcanic heart right now.
Match two.
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Astra and then T. Kondra will be Faco City.
Yeah, pretty sad.
Oh, Dark Knight, all right.
So Dark Knight, pal.
Oh, no, they're being definitely changed.
We have a dancer now.
A dancer?
So that guy at the side got what he wanted.
Maybe I don't know.
Maybe we have Reaper now.
All right.
This is going to be really interesting to see what
they can do.
This is going to be super interesting.
You can explain that comp a little bit.
Yeah, basically, they're not running the meta.
They're not running the meta.
OK, OK.
What do you think they're going to do with this comp, then?
Yeah, so this composition, Reaper allows for guard break.
So if someone uses guard, Reaper can break that guard
with their limit break.
Dancer also does the same thing.
So there's a lot of good combinations
with the Reaper and Dancer limit breaks here.
OK.
Not to cut you off, but we're going right into it.
We're still taking so much pressure, getting stunned.
Yep, looks like Dan's partner is on the field.
Oh, so close.
Oh!
Original though getting pretty low. I think they're able to escape here. Yeah, which will kind of get the literature off here
Those that Neil might be the next target here. They do have that stage now that doesn't allow for a buying. Oh
Not as easy to get away when you're up against a stage
That's rough. Yeah, now go to taking a little bit of pressure getting to potion. It does look like he's going to be fine though
Yeah, it's so close to the 50% mark already
That's 49.
The snowball has started.
The snowball has started already. 50%
Big Bill City in the lead here.
Here comes Neal. They're about to start the team fight.
They're bullying Neal.
Neal is getting below again.
Going in.
Going in high here. We see a lot of pressure.
Doesn't have a lot to heal back up.
Oh! Neal does
eventually go down though.
Oh.
But I see taking a lot of damage.
Gonna be okay still has a lot of MP remaining if you look at big big old city's resources
It's a less running away right now. Oh
Okay, oh original take a little pressure they can't kill let's go
I love getting a kill on the board here for before right on the point
Buzzy taking a little bit of pressure right now, they don't want to let him go!
Buzzy's going to be okay for now, of course it's going to be a swap.
Dancer LB going out, 83 players, not a lot of follow-up damage.
Neal going down here, mechanics for the map are out, explosions are happening.
4 vs 5, it looks like there's a little bit of disengage here just so they can heal back up.
Absolutely, yep, I'm going for Zach.
15% but 0.5% to the break.
Original down going down!
Oh!
We see the trigger in the air!
Tombo getting really low but using their LB to stay alive.
Yep, yep, yep.
Pokora also has that dark knight LB online.
There's Golja LB.
They're damage-y up right now.
Team Idle has a live back.
Oh, Bob's going down!
We're going to get the skill in it.
No, I'm going down.
Pokora's getting super low.
Oh!
Team Idle on that.
Wow, that is amazing. All right, there you go. There's the team.
Yep, we have one here. They have Pokora, Dick.
Pokora did save their Dark Time Limit Break there, so it'll be ready for the next teamfight, as well as Sage Limit Break.
And those are both game-changing.
Yeah, that will be a little bit rough.
Here's Sage LB coming out. Ready?
Wow, that was pretty quick.
Yep, that forces Team Hylons to either push them or fall back.
Ball back.
Oh!
Wow!
Beautiful kill at the ridge though, not letting Sage LB get any value pretty much.
They made PCOR use their LB now, so they don't have it available.
Yes, yes, yes.
So much pressure going out here, if you have this looking actually pretty good here.
PCOR, I'll be right off.
And Tomo's going to use the cover here, that means Tomo might be the next target.
They're gonna try and run away and super close, get close in.
Team Idle on showing life here, getting super close.
They also have that, you feel the brick ready?
There it is.
The steel's up in the air.
Are they gonna land on anyone?
Gets the original super low.
Idle on probably on fire here.
They still have a wasted build though.
the map are out right now there's gonna be explosives going around they're gonna have to dodge
at the same time. Bounce boot getting really low. Getting the cover though to stay up.
Oh we see the astro LP going out. Buzzy, Buzzy, Buzzy, Buzzy! Oh Buzzy's low.
Get it out. Buzzy is out. Gotta get the elixir here. Meanwhile back on point we can see
Pippora and Celeste fighting it out. They have to be careful with the map mechanics right now.
Yeah we have just 40 seconds or so left until overtime.
Team Island was able to get a little bit more damage boost, so here we go.
So I'm going to use Paladin. I'll be going to help mitigate a lot of damage.
Original getting super low though, going to be able to escape.
Celeste getting super low, Max. 20 seconds left on the clock.
Watch this.
Oh, the bounce is going down.
Wow.
Okay, okay.
Bickel City still has that dark knight and Reaper
I'll be ready.
Reaper, I'll be good, I guarantee a kill,
but Team Ailan knows that.
They're gonna chase Puffy down,
but they're gonna escape once again.
Reaper is so good at running away.
We hit two overtime here in five seconds.
Four, three, two, one.
Okay, here we go.
Yeah.
Versus 34%.
Gotta stay on the point for Core
Getting really low, they're a little bit breakin' stay up.
Yeah, there's Reaper LB.
Oh, somebody else went out.
Oh, they're dancing right up to follow.
You're still getting super low.
Oh!
Nice kill!
Oh!
Oh, there's two players remaining.
Bacal City might take it here.
The last taking a lot of damage.
Oh.
Let's go staff, only Gojou remaining.
Just complete this kill!
They're gonna take the catch.
Oh my goodness!
They're doing so good.
Yeah.
All right, all right.
Well, another one here for a big goat city.
They only have to do one more win.
And then they take the set.
Yeah, they'll be over.
They'll be all done.
That's really sad.
Oh my goodness.
Guys, Eidolon, you can do it.
Let's get some maps.
Eidolon.
Eidolon.
All right.
Yeah.
All right.
We have to pick the next one.
Yes, if you notice that there's a scoreboard at the end, it was 10 to 9 on kills.
Oh, was this?
Very close, very close.
Okay, okay.
I mean, think of City has to be feeling pretty good, right?
Do you think they're going to do anything a little bit wild here for the last one, or just close it out?
Like I said, they could take risk.
I mean, this is the time to do it.
Oh, it looks like we found our map.
It is going to be Cloud 9, everybody.
Back at the last one we see today.
Let's hear a little noise.
Woo!
Ready, Checks? Going out.
And this could be literally everything we have left.
They have one last chance to pick portraits.
They're focusing on just taking this home.
Yes, yes.
Okay.
Hello!
It could be the end.
It could be the final match.
I'm feeling it.
This could literally be it and we could just be done, but I'd be sad.
Come on guys, let's hear for Idle.
Let's give him as much energy as possible so we can see some more maps here.
More energy!
Idle on!
Idle on!
Very nice job.
Okay, okay.
Okay, here we go.
Okay, it looks like so.
Okay looks like so they did um revert back they do have Talbot, Scholar, Jagoom, Bard
and Pictomancer.
Wow yeah except for the healers and the tanks is back to the standard with uh the meta.
Yeah okay 10 seconds left.
Oh, I'm feeling it guys. I really am. They're both all running at the gate. They're ready to go in here and engage immediately
We're probably gonna see some happy aggression right at the beginning
All right, let's do what happens. Okay, here's the first two fuckers. Jumping immediately. NEO takes no time before you actually go in there
but going down
Yeah, stay do not let that worry or just jump in for free, unfortunately.
Yeah.
4 and 5 right on point.
It's like so less, you gotta be able to get away a little bit.
They're not full retreating though, they're just getting a little bit of poke damage in.
Yeah.
On Team Idle on.
Yeah, they're letting them take it to the 50% mark, which makes sense.
They're gonna have to regroup here and then jump back on as soon as they have their full T.
Yes.
Okay, so Binkhole City already takes us to the 50% mark.
Here we go.
He'll be jumping back in right away.
Gonna be able to-
Oh, Tomahawk, it's so low, it's going down!
Let's go.
Beautiful sun from Neil, beautiful jump in.
Let's see if they can get a follow up kill here.
Original taking a lot of damage.
Gonna use the hard.
We also have the turbulence happening in, 10 seconds.
Okay, picking up the potion on original.
About to see them all throwing up in the air.
Oh, Gojo actually might get taken down before it happens.
Yeah
Okay, let's see if this engagement continues after everybody falls out
Has a lot of MP don't
That's gonna be big shields both your goons in the air currently chasing each other
Before I taking a lot of pressure here
That's down they go!
That's one down. Ailong gets another kill on the board here, Fuzzy's taking a lot of damage.
Fuzzy gets covered by Tomo, gonna be okay for now.
We also see Celeste, Astralby going out, so big damage at least.
Okay, we see a lot of pressure about to come out.
They have to take advantage of these picked up LBs down on the ground.
Absolutely. Ailong's almost at the 50% mark.
Back just a little bit here gonna get some ellipsis going we're gonna have a reset and a next team fight in a moment here
We'll have that bar to my break advantage, so you'll have some damage boosts. I don't know but Neil taking a lot of damage immediately
The core take a pressure to but get in the ground pot. Yep, 45
Child going down
85 currently. Wow. Swinging back into big goat city's favor here. Yeah, big goat city pushing the points.
This thing did keep a little bit of pressure going. Not going to push all the way. They're playing somewhat safe here.
It's going to go up in the fast cap. All five players are on the point, drinking the Czech plant as fast as possible.
There it is.
52%. All right. Teamfight. Neo jumping in. This matters. All on here.
Here we go, mine alone they have to take advantage of this and actually get a kill. Yeah, absolutely
Wow, Neil
Me makes it to the wall gonna be able to get the elixir. No kill quite yet
We do have the jagoon lv up for them if they're gonna actually take advantage
Pick up city has also the picture lv that's going to pop the pop as well. Yes
Let's go Jaws, you're getting super low.
Celestin used that Ashe, I'll be getting chased by the Jagoon.
Oh, what a ton of damage.
A lot of shields.
Buzzy?
Buzzy's taking decent amount of damage here.
Tomo also getting super low.
Tomo also has to guard break.
But we have to wait for these mitigations to grow.
Oh, we're getting out of here.
I'm in a second here.
Mountain Boop, running away.
Yep, we're getting the full reset here once again both teams very smart don't want to play into the damage and this next engagement
Matters a lot whoever's gonna win this turbo is it's gonna happen here and just about 15 seconds under a minute left on the map
Let me go right now. Oh
original might get traded off here original get me all the power all gets covered, but we do have to worry about the turbulence here
Oh, they're trying to get the black chuck a little better.
Fokora, I think Fokora does take it.
Not going to take any damage here.
Should be okay, original taking a little bit of damage.
But they're okay, they're perfectly fine.
Yes, yes, but we have 30 seconds left on the clock.
I don't know, we'll have to keep at least one player on the point.
Oh, Bard LV going out here.
Hope your grunts have their LVs ready to go.
Yes, yes, we're good.
Oh, there's Neal, Neal jumping in with guard.
Gonna be able to mitigate a decent amount of damage here the soul in the air
Right before the chikun LB
He's still got to be super careful. I don't have to keep one member on the point at all times two seconds left
We're in our overtime
Over time so that's using astral beat gonna try damage boost shall use you picked LB gonna have some mitigation
This is team I launched against the kill and they do they get out to bungee get out to my boot
To hide a lot pushing the crystal forward
Okay, they can pay back. It's all on them now. I mean 63 point nine percent. Yes, what they have to pass
Yes, they have to break the checkpoints of this still quite a while ago
They're pushing onto the core for far using your gunel be gonna jump on point actually going back now
Oh, they're gonna actually die for that. Yes. Yes, more move. Here we go
Team pickle stage up again
See, I don't, very close to breaking the checkpoint here.
Pick them at their LB, going out from Buzzy.
They're gonna have to do this T-fight
with only four players currently.
Yeah, Buzzy, getting pressure too hard here.
Asgard available.
Perfect, brother.
We have a lot of LBs about to come online here.
Four team Idle on, though.
Zhao, you have to stay alive.
Oh, Xiao gets it for low here.
Oh, they're doing okay, actually.
That's, they're okay right now.
Originally using hard LB,
They're a damage amp right now. This is their chance to get a kill.
What's that?
There it is.
They get it. Do you use that LB if you need it?
Oh, what?
Oh!
Okay, okay.
Stakeville City's really close to winning here.
Four players remaining on the point.
Oh, oh, oh!
Oh, we got Kava!
Oh, God, if you got that.
Get it really low! Going down his funnel!
Oh, 3v4!
Oh!
Oh!
Oh!
And that goes to Big Go City.
Big Go City takes it in the end.
They went this entire event, this entire series, not losing a single map, guys.
Big Go City proving why they are such a dominant force here.
Wow, man.
absolutely amazing game I was hoping to go a little bit longer but if they could
do that within that match they clearly deserve this win and I think we might be
ready for I had to come back out here to wrap us up
hello hello hello hello hello hi everybody what y'all think I love this
there's like a bigger crowd up in front so good to see the PvP crowd showing up
all right so actually can I get Neo to come up please
Neo, it was a good run for y'all and how you feel and how was this whole experience for you and your team?
Honestly, it's been so amazing. We're so thankful to be here in front of you all. We really appreciate all you guys for doing this on.
I hope everyone had a great time watching and congratulations to GAT. You know, they got a bit lucky, but it is what it is.
For sure and thank you so much. Good stuff. Let's give it up one more time for Ida Line!
All right, and Big Goat City, can I actually have all of you come through, please?
So Buzzy, after all that, how are you and your team feeling right now?
How does it feel like writing this championship feeling?
No worries, bro.
All feeling it.
I don't know, dude.
I'm so glad it's finally over, man, it's like past three years I've been scrimmin', we've all been scrimmin' together.
Can I shout some people out?
All right, Cliff Zanza, Jay Vermillion, J-
Pro-Hexo, and Soren Maki, my favorite Korean, thank you guys for helping us scrim.
Ilanda from EU, thank you so much for the scrims you guys gave us.
From Japan, Malij, Wettit, Lucrezia, thank you guys so much.
I wish you guys the best of luck in your CSRC, and finally, and not last, not last, finally, from China, TK fans.
Thank you guys for your screams and hateful pasts. I love you!
All right, and now I'm going to go ahead and ask all of Idle on it.
If you could please exit backstage and then we are and then I am actually going
to be calling up Brian Frosty and Merlin if you are there.
So, Brian Frosty, how did you guys feel about this whole entire tournament as a whole?
I'll go first. That was super intense. Oh my goodness. These prayers have been
practicing a crazy amount. As you heard Fuzzy said. So I'm excited to see them win.
Big congratulations. Yeah this was absolutely amazing. So much power from
Big Oats City. Again not losing a single map and the entire CCRC is
impressive. Proving why everyone was very worried about facing them. This
was so much fun and I am so glad again I was able to be here on stage and
experience it live you guys. Alright and from our newcomer Merlin, how was this whole
security experience for you? Honestly it couldn't have gone any better. They go to
the city even though they 3-0ed, they definitely deserve it. They put in the
work, they put in the hours, they mentioned all these teams they
scrimmed against, they definitely deserve the win today. The sewage matchup
versus Adlon was super high, that's definitely one you put in the books.
I definitely want to go back on and watch as many times again. Thank you to Square Enix for hosting this
There's a lot of crystalline conflict players out there and light party can be super super fine
And I hope that today they're able to show that
So I'm gonna ask all of us to move over towards that side of the team because I'm gonna be calling out somebody very special
And now can I please have
Naoki Yoshida, please come back outside.
Let's take the check.
Oh, you got the fence?
Congratulations!
Alright, Yoshida-san, do you have any words for our players at home and for our winners?
I was watching there in the front row with Mr. Prime this whole time and every match was
so intense and it was just such a wonderful experience.
And of course the winning team, your strategy was so tight with each map you knew what to do and that was really good.
And Buzzy, Buzzy here, he never, he never got killed.
It was a great match.
I thought it was a real one-miss match, but it wasn't.
I think it was a great match.
Please give a big hand.
At the same time, I think it was just a matter of one single mistake that may have changed the game.
So, I mean, y'all did a great job.
Can we get another round of applause for Big Boat City?
All right, and all that's left to do now is to provide our champions with their trophies.
Come on down.
Hey.
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
You need to make sure to put on the white gloves.
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Woo!
Thank you very much for your time.
Congratulations!
Congratulations!
Congratulations!
Congratulations! Nice work!
Congratulations!
All right, y'all one more time let's hear for Ficko City!
That brings DCRC in North America to a close.
Thank you all so much for watching,
but please stay tuned.
Day two is only just getting started.
We'll see you all in a bit.
Thank you so much for watching.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I don't know what to do with this guy, but I'm gonna kill him.
I'm gonna kill him.
I'm gonna kill him.
I'm gonna kill him.
I'm gonna kill him.
I
You
You
The
The sounds are coming from all around.
I'm using my body immersed sound.
It's so good.
I'm hearing it from different angles.
It's actually pretty cool.
If I like very specific components of the audio design.
I love it.
I
Both the source and the reflections are hunting a irreplaceable life.
I would protect them all if I could, but if doing so means ushering in complete annihilation
And what can we possibly do?
He has now recluse but a coward before my true power!
May have the time has come for another journey to process up.
No amount of devastation and death can compel it to stop the wheels of creation from turning.
So many seeds of life have already been lost.
Countless perish has made sure runs its course.
Yet in spite of this, people continue to believe that the moral will come.
But it will not, for nothing lies beyond the solstice, and no one will be left alive.
No one.
Did you think you'd won?
Guess I'll have to spice things up!
I
I can't be fun
No, not your sweater, sweetie
I'm driving wild
My quarry's purest
It's the least that you can find
My dose of wild flowers
Sticking for your eyes
My lips are swollen
And we didn't come out
Come take a look
And you'll be surprised
This is the feeling
It's time to see
The power
Oh, it's an army
I'm telling the lie
I have nothing to store
I want you to try this strong step
Try this
I want to be my new king
Can you tell me why?
Do you think I'm the model?
Don't you think?
Oh, there's always something more
There's always something more
I'll be the face of the world
I can see you learn and make you feel
I'm a contestant following the street
You know the truth
I'll be your model
I'll be one
But no, no, not it up
It can never be enough
I'll take your step
You can't run free again, you can't run free again
You can't run free again, you can't run free again
Oh god, again I feel so different
I feel so different
I feel free behind the evil eye
I feel free behind what you've done to me, champion
I feel so worn out, I'm a royal version
I feel free behind the evil eye
Oh, I'll get through your bark
My wings are humming, honey, they all look wild
But just a bit, so be delighted, have you gone?
I'm not your panty-dove, I'm just a bit disappointed
But I know that you're sweet or sweet, I'll drive you wild
My heart is serious, please don't let this pierce me
My trails are wild flowers, they get to your car
My trips are busy, I'm ready to go on
I'll sleep with you, I'll let you sleep
What is love?
It's a very, very soft,
so tender, big heart.
It's all in the non-ending
heart.
It's a very, very soft,
so tender, big heart.
It's a soft, but
I want to see my new pain
in life.
I've never touched anything.
Oh, there's always something more.
There's always something more.
I love the faces of the bad
I'm gonna be the devil, I got it
I'll get the seat, I'll see you again
I'm gonna be the devil, I got it
I'm gonna start it up
It can never be enough
Put your hands in the air
I'll take your breath
Don't take the place you think
I'm gonna be the devil
I'll be your hero
I'll take your breath
Oh God, again
I feel the sun in the sky
I'm gonna be the devil
Be the honey, be the love
Be the one and only champion
A beautiful, fun memorial
Worship me, look me in the eye
Be the one to the end
I won't be a fishy, be the honey
Be the one, be the love
Be the one, I wonder
Be the one only to be Christ
Be the one to the honey
Be the one to the honey
Cross me, oh God
Again, don't really set you down
Oh God, don't really set you down
I'm gonna set it down
The sounds are coming from all around.
I'm using my body immersed sound. It's so good. I'm hearing it from different angles.
It's actually pretty cool. If I like very specific components of the audio design.
I love it
Both the Source and the Reflections are fun to irreplaceable life, I will protect them
if I could. But if doing so means ushering in complete annihilation, then what can we possibly do?
I'm old snow grudges and neither rages nor weeps for being sundered.
You've no recourse but to power before my true power!
May have the time has come for another journey across the salt.
No amount of devastation and death can compel it to stop the wheels of creation from turning.
So many seeds of life have already been lost.
Countless perish as nature runs its course, yet in spite of this, people continue to believe
that the world will come.
But it will not, for nothing lies beyond the solstice, and no one will be left alive.
No one.
Did you think you'd won?
Guess I'll have to spice things up!
I'll be the one to blame
I'll be the one to blame
I'll take this one more fight
One more fight
One more fight
With us
Time to stand
Holds on for the day
Now we have the freedom
I'll be the one
In the face of the safety
I'm the bullet of night, I'm the egg
Oh, I'm the end of night
You're the evil soul
The evil past
I'm lost, and it's always the reason
I'm the end of night
You're the genius
You're the genius
You're the genius
You're the genius
You're the genius
The
The sounds are coming from all around.
I'm using my body immersed sound. It's so good. I'm hearing it from different angles.
It's actually pretty cool. It highlights very specific components of the audio design.
I love it.
I would protect them all if I could.
But if doing so means ushering in complete annihilation,
then what can we possibly do?
But the star is tolerant to life, it holds no grudges, and neither rages nor weeps for
being sundered.
You've now reclosed by T'Kawa before my true power!
They have the timers come for another journey across the salt.
No amount of devastation and death can compel it to stop the wheels of creation from turning.
The so many seeds of life have already been lost.
Countless perish as nature runs its course, yet in spite of this,
people continue to believe that the more it will come.
But it will not.
For nothing lies beyond the saucepiss.
And no one will be left alive.
No one.
Did you think you'd won?
Guess I'll have to spice things up.
I
The
The sounds are coming from all around.
I'm using my body immersed sound.
It's so good.
I'm hearing it from different angles.
It's actually pretty cool.
It's highlight very specific components of the audio design.
I love it.
I would protect them all if I could.
But if doing so means ushering in complete annihilation,
then what can we possibly do?
the star is tolerant to life. It holds no grudges, and neither rages nor weeps for being
Sunder
May have the time has come for another journey across the salt
No amount of devastation and death can compel it to stop the wheels of creation from turning.
So many seeds of life have already been lost.
Countless perish as nature runs its course, yet in spite of this, people continue to believe
that the moral will come.
But it will not, for nothing lies beyond the solstice, and no one will be left alive.
No!
Did you think you'd won?
Guess I'll have to spice things up!
You'll be my friend if you leave me alone
I'll keep your freedom
I'll keep it back to that
Oh stop, again, I'll give you to the fed up
Love, oh never let me down
I'll be a thief, I'll be evil
I'll be a thief, I'll be the one who ties you to me, just be a thief
I'll be a fool, I'm the boy of mercy
I'll be a thief, I'll be a thief
I'll be a thief, I'll be a thief
Please, please, I'm gonna be lucky
To be adored by a worker
Need a fire on the cheeky eyes
Now I'm drunk on money
I don't know if you'll ever cross me
Of course, I'm dead
I'm really such a snob
To be the one you're good at
Dead or alive
I'm too much
I'm too much
I'm too much
I'm too much
Oh, oh, that's a good one!
Make money from drugs, get a beer on it
In the cold, in the night
Make money from my life
That's why I want to offer up doors to play
I want to see my new painted life
Catching my new life, I'll just get anything
Oh, there's always something more
Yes, there's always something more in life
I'm gonna get a beer as we go
And that'll make me feel better
They're been drinking all the coffee
I want it up, I want it up, I want it up
I'm not enough, he can never be enough
Just look at me look, I'll take your breath away
You'll pay the price of you tonight
I'll show you fear, I'll be your hero
Don't be a doctor, right?
Oh God, again I feel you should be safe
Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God
You'll see me hide, you'll see me hide
I want you to be the reason why you're dying to love me, champion
I want you to hold my hand while you're setting me free again
I want you to be the reason why you're dying to love me
I want you to be the reason why you're turning half-baked
I want you to be the reason why you're drawing my ears
Don't forget you never cross me
I want you to get the music
The sounds are coming from all around.
I'm using my body-immersed sound.
It's so good.
I'm hearing it from different angles.
It's actually pretty cool.
It highlights very specific components of the audio design.
I love it!
I
Both the Source and the Reflections are hunter irreplaceable life, I would protect them all
if I could.
What if doing so means ushering in complete annihilation?
And what can we possibly do?
The
The star is tolerant to life.
It holds no gorges.
And neither rages nor weeps for being sundered.
You've no records but to cower before my true power!
you
Hey, it's my emotional support, Estinian.
Emotional support, Estinian.
I got to meet him.
I'm nervous.
A lot of our Warriors of Light in the audience probably have an emotional support, Estinian.
Thank you so much.
I feel so much better now.
You feel so supported.
So supported.
So supported.
Good, good.
Well, hello everyone.
Oh, they're seeing your title slide.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
It is so, so professional.
Only the best stock footage and PowerPoint slide templates for this presentation got you covered.
You know, it's really funny because after the keynote, you know, this hard work and design
and animations and making everything so smooth and then Koji is like, hey, here you go.
Hey, you know. Fancy. All right.
Super fancy.
We have a lot of stuff today. We're going to have to kind of power through this.
So let me start with a small recap of who I am for newer players who don't know,
for the older players who maybe have forgotten.
And if you haven't forgotten me, I love you.
My name is Michael Christopher Kojifox, I've been with Square Enix since the day it became
Square Enix, so that puts me at about 23 years now.
Yeah, a lot of companies, you know, when you're there for 10 years or 20 years, they give
you like these special gifts.
Yeah, yeah.
Did you?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, on our side, every milestone, I think we get like increasingly larger crystal
trophies.
Nice.
my own confidential stamp, then I can now stamp things to make them confidential.
So you know, corporates like you're important,
you get a confidential stamp and I got a confidential stamp and I used it on my little thing.
That's really awesome.
Hey, I don't have a confidential stamp.
It could as a crystal.
My past projects include Final Fantasy XI,
which I started on, that was my first project.
Then most recently, I've done Final Fantasy XVI.
In between, I did a bunch of other cool stuff like Durg of Cerberus, Final Fantasy Adventure,
Morsi, and then others as well.
Lots of fun.
But yeah, I joined Final Fantasy XIV and I'm going to say it's probably 2008 or 2009.
I was still on 11 and slid over 2014.
I'm not 100% positive, but I was one of two English localizers on that.
I stayed with the team during the rebirth and I was either like team lead or
EM localization director and I mean, nobody knows what to call me.
Manager.
I'm like manager, supervising, director guy thing all the way up through shadow
bringers and which time I kind of transitioned over to 16.
I remained as a supervisory role on 14, but now I'm kind of back on 14.
Again, it's in that supervisory role, but most of the day to day operations
is done by the great team that we have over there,
headed up by Paul.
You can meet him in the recent Trash Taste video
that we just did.
It's an excellent video, you should watch that.
Check out our new Shibuya offices.
Oh yeah, I haven't even seen them yet,
I wanna check it out.
Yeah, and during my time on 14,
I've been responsible for stuff like
changing a god from a single aspect to dual aspect
so I could use the name Thal for Falls Balls.
Yeah.
Falls Balls.
I love how that's like your main claim to fame.
That's my main, I mean, other like translation.
Whatever.
That's my technical achievements on force.
Rolls off the tongue.
And of course, all of the bad puns, which my team, you know, they, they continue to
embrace to this day.
So the bad puns, yes.
It's all about the puns.
It's all about the groans, right?
Like this.
Right?
Yes.
Yes. I also may be responsible for Rianje's stodgy linguistic quirks.
Back in the day, I was convinced he was going to die.
Dalamud was going to fall and he would no longer be with us.
But now he's in every African cut scene.
Yeah. So a decision you made in 2009 has lived to haunt us.
It's on. Also, there's the curious case of
of Starbird and Larbird. So any of you unfamiliar with this, you can type sukojifox into Google
and you can learn all about it. And I'm also responsive for a good deal of the lyrics which
appear in Square Enix games. So yeah, that's kind of like the main focus of our panel here, right?
So I'm excited to dive into it. But before joining Square Enix, were you involved in
the music, the industry, or were you like, you know, at home, you know, some of the am and out.
I was a band nerd in high school, I was in the marching band, drum line.
My brother is actually a professional DJ that does international breakdancing tournaments.
DJ bless one! Oh, major drop. But yeah, other than that, like, my work in music has pretty much
been limited to Square Enix. Yeah. So, so far, I've had the honor, absolute honor to work on.
And of course Final Fantasy XIV, but also Final Fantasy XI, Distant Worlds was the first song
that I worked on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That one's awesome.
And of course Final Fantasy XVI, all the songs in there, We Have My Star, Makes You
Cry Every Time.
My Star, yes.
Oh my God.
I also worked on Foam Stars.
Foam Stars.
That is okay.
I didn't...
This is a no that you...
And it turns out that the director of Foam Stars on the project, his name is Ricky Saito,
he is a hardcore warrior of light and a huge primalist fan.
He comes to the primalist concerts on his own diet, he doesn't ask for free tickets.
And so one day, he's like, I'm making this new game, Koji, I would love it if you wrote
the lyrics for the theme song, I'm like, yeah, let's do it.
And then he liked the theme song, he's like, hey, can you write all the other
songs and I ended up doing 18 songs for Foam Stars and it was like he let me do
whatever I wanted it was like all these things like Koji just do what you want
you can write whatever you want and so there are songs about bubbles there's
a song about taking a shower there's lucky is this lucky can't say it's
Serial song about legally indistinct lately indistinct
Marshmallow breakfast flavored breakfast. Yeah, there is
There's a song about partying in the club
There's one about taking a vacation to Burkina Faso, of course
You probably shouldn't do right now because it's pretty dangerous. Okay. Yeah, TGI Friday. There's an inspirational song that features malt liquor
malt liquor
I'm the king of the world world first non-stop like the suds on my 40 always rising to the top in the know now or never
Never venture never win. Let's believe in yourself
Before you can begin
He probably said that
He probably so you're to a malt liquor first of all. I mean that honestly
Kind of a bop
It sounds kind of a motivational kind of like you know, I got you covered that motivational board
Like the suds on my 40 always rising to the top to the top. Yes. Okay. Wow after foam stars
I always have to say this every single fan festival. I did some work for coded commanders
There's one person one person code is commanders. If anyone cheers, I don't believe you
I also recently got to do the ring introductions for Kenny Omega
I work at Socan and Jason Charles Miller.
Holy crap, that was amazing.
And then, of course, the most important project of my career, Mario Hoops.
And that was a much louder cheer than I was expecting for just one quick question.
Is that the actual logo of Mario Hoops 3 on 3?
It is a logo.
that won't get us sued by Nintendo.
Hopefully.
As you heard, we had the Switch 2 version coming out,
so we have to kind of be careful on this.
But anyway, anyway, it was on this project
that my wonderfully wacky relationship with Soken would begin.
Ah, Mario.
Together at last.
What a project to start with.
Yes.
So it was probably around 2006.
I had already kind of worked with Soken
Mario who's having I they asked me to write the battle lines for the three
Square Enix characters so you can play as all the the Nintendo characters but at
the end you can unlock like the ninja and the black mage and the white mage so
they wanted me to write like the battle lines like magic from yeah and then
they're like oh we don't have any money on this project can you voice the
ninja and the black mage so I got to voice the ninja and the black mage on
on Mario Hoops three on three.
And I thought that was it.
But then like a week or so later,
I get this mail from Soken and he's like,
oh Koji, can you come back in the studio?
We're making the music for it now.
And we're having someone sing like Mario.
And I want you to check the pronunciation of Mario.
I'm like, do you need me to check the pronunciation?
Mario?
But okay, I'll go in.
That's the kind of perfectionist that Soken is.
So I went to the studio and he's like, yeah,
Mario, that's good, three on three, that's good.
And I'm ready to go back to my booth and like,
Soken's like, wait a minute, while you're here, Koji,
can you like do a rap for the song?
And I'm like, okay, like give me a couple days
and I'll come up with a rap and it's like,
no, I want you to do it now.
Like now, like get in the studio.
And so like five minutes later, I was in the studio
and we're like, and Mario's going downtown,
he's going downtown.
And then that got put in the game.
So that's how Soken works.
Yeah, apparently, I mean, we always hear Soken complaining about, you know, he's super busy
and, you know, he's always remixing and changing things to the last minute.
I guess it started.
I mean, even as far back as Mario Hoops 3 on 3.
That's how it is.
So everyone, I'm sure, probably wants to hear this.
You have to have.
So I have brought a clip of me singing on Mario Hoops 3 on 3.
So play that clip.
Oh.
Oh, was that it?
Again, I'm not going to risk a cease and desist, so that's all I can play of the song.
But if you'd like to hear more, I'm sure everyone will find a way by purchasing Mario
Hoops 3 on 3 and playing through the game and getting to the end credits.
Just so you can hear the rap.
Because there are no other ways to hear that song.
No.
You probably can't hear them again Nintendo. We love you. Thank you. Thank you Nintendo. Yes. Thank you. All right
So after Mario hoops three on three there I joined the final fantasy 14 team
I got to work with William Watson on the theme answers. Yeah, absolutely amazing answers
and then
You know, we we had a
Rough launch let's say a rough a rough. I'm not familiar
And then Yoshida-san comes in to write the ship.
And who would you know joins the team at the same time, Soken.
And then he takes the torch from Rui Matsun.
And then he starts making his magic.
And then all of a sudden, again, I get this mail in my inbox.
It's like, hey, Koji, I'm writing this epic raid song.
And I remember your lyrical prowess from Mario 3 on 3.
So would you write the lyrics for this raid?
And that raid would end up turning out to be.
Good King, Mogamog.
Awesome.
And so, of course, you know, Soken asked to do it.
And he gave me more than five minutes this time.
That's nice.
I worked with the writers.
We created something awesome and submitted the lyrics.
Again, I thought that was gonna be it.
It's Soken.
So it's never the end.
A couple of days later, he was like, oh, yeah,
guess what?
We don't have budget again.
Can you sing the song, Koji?
And I'm like, okay.
don't worry about it. We'll use the power of science. So again,
it's favorite word. We'll use the power of science to make sure
that your voice is pitched and the effects on it. No one will
know it's you. And so there were five moogles in the song.
Yep. And so I ended up doing four of the voices on one
other, like a female movie we had somebody else do. And
thankfully, yes, good. And so this is what it ended up
sounding like. Play the next clip, please.
You could be too real, but if I wanted to, I would make a wall of miscreants to find this truth.
This is not it.
The sly and sweet guilt tickle your nose, that tickle your beat.
I told the truth is all your fondness here will pour out their rose, take it away!
There it is.
It ended up being well received.
And then so come ARR so Ken's like hey, let's do even more. And so I ended up doing like Titan
I'm writing the lyrics for Ramu Geruda Leviathan then on the heavens where it's like Alexander Ravana and more
I continue helping with these lyrics, but also some of the vocals again so Ken's like don't worry
Don't worry power of science power science. No one will know it's you and then he has this fucking great idea to be like
Oh, hey, let's do them on stage. I'm like them. Don't know it doesn't
No, it's me.
And the rest is history.
So yeah, today is a lyrics panel.
So we're going to talk about the process
that we go through when writing the lyrics.
I don't think anybody's prepared for what's
about to be shown here.
This is crazy.
It's a long and involved process.
It is.
And what I'm going to show you here
is basically kind of a rough outline.
There's a lot of steps, and they're all very detailed.
But I'm going to kind of go over each one a little bit,
I want to talk a lot about writing them in English, but before that and after that, there's a lot of other stuff that goes on, so I want to talk about that first.
So it all starts off with the dev team kind of deciding that they want a new song.
And the first thing they do is the scenario team will come up with this order that they ask, like, okay, we have the work request.
Yeah, that's an order. It's coming from Ishikawa, so it's an order.
Okay.
And then they're like, we have this new content coming up, we want this type of music, here's
like the theme we want, and they send that to sound.
And then from there, the sound team will take that and they'll do their own research
and gameplay to make sure that what they're creating matches the content.
Soken is kind of infamous in the dev team for always submitting his songs really late
in the dev cycle.
And that's not because he's lazy or slow.
I mean, I don't think he's lazy.
He's like the hardest working man in gaming.
I don't think he sleeps most nights.
But the thing is it's late because for him, he likes to make sure that he knows 100% of
the content before he writes the song.
He wants to make sure that the user experience is going to be great.
So he wants the music to feel like it was written for the content rather than having
the music first and then content later.
And because of that, the music requests can come pretty late in the cycle when there's
not much time left.
And then, again, if the dev team has specifically stated that they want lyrics in a song, then
we'll have that.
But usually it's Soken that decides whether he wants to have lyrics in a song or not.
Then from there, it's sent back to the dev team once Soken has created the music and
the instrumental.
It's sent back the scenario team.
They give their feedback, yeah, we like this.
And then once that has been decided, then the writer in charge of the content will
be like, okay, we need lyrics.
So he writes up or she writes up a content doc with some ideas and maybe sample lyrics
in it, and they send that to me or localization.
And then it's around this time that Soken starts looking for a singer.
Sometimes Soken will use me or himself.
Other times it'll be like Jason Charles Miller, Amanda Akin, or maybe a different singer.
The process can take a long time depending on who it is, so we usually start it
about here and they'll be working on it in the background while we're doing all of the other stuff.
As such, a lot of times I don't know who's going to be singing the songs that I'm writing the
lyrics for sometimes, so that's kind of weird. And then once we have that, then the official
request for lyrics comes to the Loke team, and then we begin writing. This is a process in
itself, so I'm going to talk a little bit about this more in detail later. After the lyrics
are done then, we do an internal check for like grammar and terminology and spelling
and whatnot, if that's done inside localization. Then we attach a rough Japanese translation of our lyrics
and then send it back to scenario team. And then they check what we've written and then they give us approval.
They also do like content and ethics checks here. Ethics.
So in Japanese we call it like the D&D check, which translates like ethics or morality check,
but this isn't really something hardcore. It's mostly like there's certain Japanese cultural standards.
they have, for example, you know, we're not supposed to be disparaging individuals with
handicaps. I mean, you shouldn't be doing that anyway. But certain terms like blind can kind
of end up being flagged by the Japanese team. And I'll have to come in and say, no, no,
when we say blinded by light, it doesn't mean actual blindness. It's just this. And then,
you know, explaining things like that to make sure that we're on the up and up with that.
That makes sense. And then after that, this is usually when we fix the title. And a lot
of times it'll be me saying something like okay the lyrics say forge ahead forge
ahead and it's relaying the core message of moving on and forging ahead so how
about we call the song forge and they're like no no no we're just gonna go with
endwalker okay thanks you're like but you're but it's that for forging the end
okay and Walker sure and then while I don't do this every time a lot of times
I'll create a sample version with me singing to give it to Soken so he knows how I think that the lyrics will fit onto the melody
And if we need to tweak it anywhere in rare instances, he has just taken that file and used it in the game
Without telling me so like I usually do this on my phone because it's just supposed to be a sample
So this happened with white stone block. So I'm like, I was just like, okay, here's the lyrics
Then I sent the file and so and then like two days later it's like we're done
I'm like aren't we gonna record it's like no you're good Koji I already got it like
So my iPhone recorded version of that is what plays in the game. Thanks Ok and power of science
I wouldn't try it harder. Yeah, if I had known I would have put some more
Into it right and then so after that so again
We'll again look at the music this sample that I've given to him and then he'll maybe ask me to tweak things back
If it doesn't fit the the rhythm like he had in his mind. I mean then once sound is approved the lyrics
It's a matter of waiting until recording. I usually have a little bit of time here where I can go back and brush up the lyrics
Tweaking wordings for you know for better flow
Then sometimes if someone outside the company is singing will create some sheet music for them to use during recording
but Soken really doesn't like sheet music a lot,
so it's a lot of times he doesn't create this,
and it's just like, listen to it, you'll get it.
Like, okay, you'll figure it out.
Interesting.
And then finally we go in to record.
A lot of times this is done in Square Enix
in-house studio in Shinjuku.
Sometimes we do it at remote studios in Tokyo.
Other times we get artists who are like really far away,
they'll record in studios near where they are
and then they'll send the files to us
and then they'll do all the mixing on their end
And those mixing is done, again, in the studio in Japan.
And then the data is implemented into the game.
And finally, YoshiP does his final check.
And most of the time, this is like, oh, yeah, that was great.
No problem.
But there have been a few times where
he has demanded last-minute changes,
because he's YoshiP. He's going
to demand those last-minute changes.
The most notorious one was, I think, back in the day,
Leviathan, was originally sung, had female vocals
Leviathan and it was all done. It was great. The file was ready. It's like literally one day before
implementing the data and and Yoshi is like, no, it should be male vocals. And we're like, oh, and
so ended up being so Ken had to sing it because he literally only had one day to do it. And so now
so Ken's vocals are the enemy. It's a great version. Yeah, exactly. But the original version
was also kind of great. And I think they actually put it on one of the older albums as a bonus
track. So you can actually hear the verse. So if you haven't heard it yet, it's amazing.
It's a completely different kind of feel to it, but that happens.
Thanks, Yoshipee.
And then once Yoshipee has signed off on the song, the song is fixed.
And of course, as soon as the song is fixed, I start finding all these things I want to
change instant regrets.
But it's too late.
It happens.
Oh, wow.
I want to...
No.
It's live.
People are playing it.
They're already formed.
But I want to change that.
It's on social.
It's done.
Yes. Now that you know that entire process, I kind of want to go back and take a closer
look at the actual writing of the lyrics. So this is kind of my involvement in this.
That all starts with what I talked about, that instrumental guide. We get the instrumental
guide first, and sound team usually so can prepares this for us. We start with an instrumental
version of the track, probably about 80 to 90 percent complete, and he has the
melody included, which I'm supposed to use for reference to writing the lyrics.
The song will still receive like constant updates,
he'll change instruments and tweak structure,
but usually at this point the melody is like 100%.
It's like you're good to go, you're going in.
And then I listen to that,
and then I base the lyrics off of that.
So for example, this is a sample of what I received,
the file that I received for the song
that would eventually become unbending steel.
So the Ravana theme.
This is what he sent me.
So play that clip, please.
So, yeah, as you heard there, there was that piano melody.
That is the melody that's going to be the vocal melody, so I'm supposed to take that.
I hear that and then base my lyrics off of that.
That makes sense, but I don't remember there being any kind of piano or...
Well, I mean there isn't a piano part in it and the problem is though is that song if you listen to it
It sounds like it has a piano. It could have a piano in it anyway familiar
Right and so the problem is is that I would get songs with this piano melody and assume it was the melody
But then we get something like this song so play the next step
Okay, so yes, it's a piano.
So the Ravonna one I got is a piano, right?
Right.
That's why I get this one.
It's a piano, right?
Right.
And I'm like, oh, so that's the melody.
And I write lyrics for that melody.
And I wrote a shitload of lyrics.
A lot of lyrics.
I see that.
And you know, I was ready for this to be the lyrics.
Play the flip again!
Okay, you can stop the clip!
You're gonna make him too excited!
So, yeah. And I was like, I did it. And of course, I sent it to Sokeny.
It's like, no, no, that's not, that's not, that's not the melody. Sorry.
And then the next day, he sends me the actual melody and I'm like, oh, okay.
And so all of this is literally never made it into the song because Soken and his piano.
But if you look at these lyrics in locus at the, towards the end of the song,
There's that part that's like falling back right into the cyst.
That was basically based off, you had this first part that's talking about coming back
and falling back and this would, that end part would play off of this.
And then this got cut and then this remained and sat here.
Maybe someday, like during a primalist concert, I'm just going to start singing this.
It's your fault, Soken, for giving me that piano melody.
I wrote it to follow what you gave me.
But after this, the next song I told him, Soken, stop using piano for the melody because
I don't want to spend all... this is during Heaven's Word when I'm working until midnight
every night doing... and he's like, here's the song, and then I spend a whole half
day and it's like, oh, we're not using that.
By the way, it's like, that's not going to be used.
You're like, okay.
So yeah.
So just quick, this is maybe just an aside, but we're talking about Locus, right?
Yeah.
So the song for Alexander.
Alexander, yeah.
Okay, and I just happened to notice that the file name on the snow pad says Bismarck.
Oh, shit.
Yeah.
Matt, look over there.
Was there someone over?
You didn't say anything.
That's weird.
No one has taken screen caps.
Okay.
I think it's good.
Interesting.
So now that we got all of the guide track thing settled. Here's what a guide track sounds like now. So play the next clip
So, yeah, that was from Not Afraid from the Arcadian.
Yeah, I don't think you're, I guess your piano problem is solved.
You're not going to, those screeches, I don't think you're going to mistake for a melody
anymore. So now this is what we get. So what I do with this is once I get this instrumental and I
know the melody, the first thing that I do is I start off by listening to this like a hundred times
and then once I've burned that melody's rhythm into my soul, I then jot down basically whatever
words kind of come to mind. It's the you know don't think feel. I just let the words come to
me and that's things that like fit the cadence of what already exists there. This has nothing
to do with like meaning or theme or consistency. I just kind of write down, it's basically nonsense.
Yeah. But nonsense that spits the melody that I feel. Okay. Like regular speech has like
musical kind of rhythm. Like a cadence and accent and rhythm. And so I like to feel that and then
write down the first thing that comes to my mind to start as my foundation. So when I heard that,
this is kind of what I came up with so oh fanny may frightened of candles light
them up night lights by light of day yeah she'll be all right find the son
get some so yeah obviously none of that's getting in what are you say I mean I
mean it could have worked for it honestly possibly but yeah but if you look at the
final version of the lyrics, you can kind of see, you know, what I'm doing.
On that first pass, I'm finding like rhyme schemes, finding vowels that I want to focus
on.
So like, run them up, feet are stuck, just my look.
I lost my cheese on the bus.
It's like, why should I buy the lies, compromise, right from mine?
It's you getting those internal rhymes, patterns, a line on the ice, a fine four and bison.
is the night a blood moon is rising you can see the foundation there and so in a
nutshell I'm kind of exetting this rhythmic phonetic foundation upon which
I like to work for me this is like a really important step I'm certainly not
suggesting everyone do this but I find that like when I'm handed a melody
rather than coming up with something myself I already have a fixed melody so
the thing is I have to follow this melody this is Soken's vision so I try
to find English patterns and a feeling that's going to fit that, so I don't have to change
that melody.
Okay.
And this helps my brain get ready for certain sounds, certain rhythms.
So yeah, once I've done that, then we got the instrumental guide.
Next we're provided with this lyric concept that comes from the scenario team.
So back in 2.0 and 3.0, I never got one of these.
Basically Soken's like, we're writing a song for Alexander, Koji, write lyrics.
And I would just write lyrics and not really get permission from anyone.
But recently, you know, things have changed.
The scenario team is very much more involved and I like to think it's not because they
don't trust me, but sometimes I think it's because they don't trust me.
Maybe because they've learned over time how you work.
You let Coach go and he's going to write songs like...
In Bison and Fannie Mae.
In Bison and Fannie Mae.
Okay.
But yeah, so the document we get is usually like Uber detailed word file that, you
contains pictures and lots of talk about game content, characters involved, battle mechanics,
and the themes that they want us to explore in the song. It can sometimes even contain sample
Japanese lyrics so like they don't want us to translate but necessarily they want these ideas
in certain lines and the themes. Yep. And so what you see up here is like the actual document
that the writer in charge of the Arcadian content, Kimura-san, he prepared for the
sugar riot battle theme and this would become the song back to the drawing board. And as
As you can see, basically, this lays the foundation
for what I'm supposed to include in the lyrics.
So things like, you know, the world is a canvas.
Color is a central theme.
Sugar Riot is like rebellious, she's imaginative,
but she's kind of scatterbrained, nonsensical.
But there's like rhyme to the reason.
Like with the word association that's here,
like, you know, going from red to hot,
then deserts are hot and deserts have cacti.
And this kind of ended up in that red face,
red-handed, painted hand.
She paints the town red, blue skies, skies the limit.
Kind of taking those things where she's, you know,
moving from one word to the other.
That was a theme.
So I made sure that that got in the lyrics as well.
Yeah.
And so once I have the rhythmical foundation locked down
and the lyrical concept fresh in my head,
the next step is research.
And that can, you know,
sometimes it just means playing the quest.
Sometimes it means reading the dialogue or looking at the dev docking at the trial, doing spattles.
But a lot of times it will involve research on subjects that I'm not familiar with.
So like for the Arcadian, Deep Dives into like pro wrestling, I had to do a lot of research on surfing, which was a lot of fun.
And then of course there's Sinister, or Vamp Fittal's theme.
And the scenario writer, again, same Kimura-san, he made it crystal clear in his document
that the theme behind this character was BDSM.
So, of course, I go to the internet to study it out.
Starting, I went to go to Wikipedia.
Okay, okay, thank you.
And so, first of all, holy crap.
Thank you.
I've regained some stuff that could prove
inappropriate for some of our people here today.
Oh, wait, oh, dude, hold on, hold on, hold on.
There's a little bit growing here.
Okay, that's better, that's better.
Okay.
The end of all was too much information.
Yeah. No one will ever know.
No one will ever know what kind of...
Yes.
Sorry.
Please.
Yeah.
I'm just thankful that UA went to Wikipedia for this.
That was the first step.
That was the first step.
And again, while I appreciate the detail into which Wikipedia describes the subject,
I could use some of a heads up before going there.
If you don't believe me, check out that page.
Don't check out that page.
I mean, you can go there, I mean, you talk shit, I mean, it's okay, I mean, for all adults,
no, right?
No, don't do that.
I went to that page to check this, and I am going to get a call from HR.
I swear.
But again, ultimately, like, again, this is about, I wanted to do something that was
provocative, because that's what he wanted.
But I also wanted to be respectful, you know, to the BDSM community.
So I didn't want to come from a place of stereotypes, I wanted to do my research.
That is good.
I did ample research.
So much research and I went down that rabbit hole, maybe not a good choice of words, the
so ample, very ample.
Again, like you said, this was one time I would work in the office doing this and literally
like I had so many judgmental scowls when people walked by my booth, although there's
a couple guys that were like, it's work, it's work, I'm like, it's work, Koji.
It's so much work.
You know, we have a guest coming to this panel, by the way.
But yeah.
And so while most of the time, we
are given a concept document, like the one I showed before.
Other times, like I said, the writer
will give us actual sample lines that they'd
like to see incorporated into the lyrics.
And this adds an additional layer of challenge,
because now we're bound by another factor,
beyond just theme and rhythm.
We're bound by this line that's in Japanese.
And this can get really crazy due to how
Japanese and English are really different languages and I'm not going to get into the
differences because that would be like another like 20-hour panel.
But depending on the request, I either end up needing way more or a lot less when it comes
to like syllables or notes in the melody.
So this is what I received from Ishikawa-san for the first two lines of the song in the
Ever Cold trailer that we dropped yesterday.
So these are like the first two lines she sends us this and so basically like it
as it translates to, I hear a voice and slowly open my eyes. Where am I and how long have I been?
The problem was Soken's melody was fairly short. So let's play that next clip.
And that was it. There's no way I'm going to get all of that into 12.
Just get to second here voice slowly open my eyes where I'm
And so that's not going to work
So what I ended up having to do I hadn't make the decision to focus on the first line
And so I took that first line and then the rest of the lines I kind of distribute that theme throughout
So this is what ended up being so a whisper in the night
I open up my eyes, which again covers that first line kind of perfectly
But it completely ignores the next line because there's no room for it
But again, I ended up taking that and putting it somewhere else in the song
but on the other hand later in the song the opposite happened so we had these
two fairly simple lines in the Japanese now had to fit into this so play the next
that. Okay, so yeah, a lot more to fit a lot lessened. So what I had to do next was take
what she had there, and then flesh it out. And so that became this. And so out to the horizon,
and it's all white, became word around us, swallowed in white, locked in winter, lost to the eyes.
So I'm basically taking that, the white and spreading it out into this. And then the next line,
I march on as I'm buried in the snow is storm building, snow falling fast,
growing deeper, hiding our path. So you're getting that theme, it's just kind of been
stretched out a little bit to fit the melody. So ultimately it kind of ends up about,
it ends up being about finding this balance between relaying the intent of the writer
and then coming up with something that feels natural and so can melody,
also rhyming and alliterating and you know making sense, not sucking.
So it has to not suck too. Yeah, that's kind of amazing.
So a lot of liberties are taken and sometimes you know
we have to go off in different directions, but that's why the scenario team
approves these things before we get fixed. I translate all of this
back into Japanese. Yeah. Give it to Ishikawa-Sanshi, checks all of the
lines and then she'll give suggestions, oh maybe you could do this
here, maybe we can change this here. And then they approve it and we move forward. So that's kind
of how that works. From that point on, then it's basically sitting in front of a screen for hours,
kind of trying to will my brain into coming up with a cool rhyme for orange and nothing
rhymes with orange as we know. I've learned that nothing rhymes with orange. But this also
kind of happens to be the time when I'm doing my best to sneak in clever references
or various bits and bobs of pop culture because this is an FF, God damn it, and what is an FF
without obscure pop culture references? Nothing! So, of course, you know, all of the references
can't be like, they have to be 100% relevant to the content. We can't just have random
references to Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, can we? Nonetheless. Unless. So let me show
you some examples of some of the references I've put in songs in the past. I kind of
to snuck them in. Really didn't tell anybody. Some people have noticed, other people haven't.
I'm glad the dev team never noticed because they probably would have said no. They're going to know
now. They're going to know now, but it's too late. Song's out there. We'll start with Scream. This
is pretty basic in Scream. We know that it's fairly well known that a lot of lines take inspiration
from Alice in Wonderland. Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the
Looking Glass. Stuff like this, these lines kind of made it into the game in
different forms. I think there's a lot of comments about that when it was released. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, I think people picked up on it pretty quickly, but not just the actual Lewis Carroll's work,
but I also took stuff from other Alice in Wonderland references as well, and it's,
you know, the old PC game American McGee's Alice from back in like 2000. I actually, yeah,
I loved that game back in the day, and so I looked to see if there are any cool lines,
And there was a bunch of cool lines, so I tried to reference that as well.
And then also, the short-lived 2006 TV drama, Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, I actually pulled
from there as well, because again, I wanted to give it that sense.
So again, taking stuff, popular stuff, kind of rearranging it, fitting it in.
Making it fit into the game.
And that happens in a lot of songs.
Next up, we have What Angel Wakes Me, the Titania theme.
For this song, I drew a lot from Shakespeare's
A Midsummer Night's Dream.
The fairy queen Titania plays a big role in that play.
Philamel with melody, sing in our sweet lullaby, lullaby,
lullaby, lullaby, lullaby.
I'll sit down.
Yeah.
That was beautiful.
It's free use now.
Yeah, it's, I'm not gonna get public domain now.
Public domain, now, nice.
But I think you've modified it enough.
So yeah, that was that.
Next up, like, ride the rhythm.
So this is, you know, it's a funky piece that
takes you back to the heart of the 70s.
I'm thinking, what kind of 70s references are you getting
in there?
And like, you know, it's disco.
So staying alive.
You've got to get some staying alive in there.
John Travolta.
But also, you're fighting the frog.
So the frog of the 70s, Kermit.
And so, you know, you have these in the lines from the game,
but if you look close, like city breaking,
people shaking so, whether you're a brother,
whether you're a mother, you're staying alive,
staying alive, feet, but you can never stay alive.
So that's there.
But then, why are there so many songs about rainbows?
So much time, but thinking about rainbows.
I tried to get those references in there, you know?
So doing stuff like this, having a little fun with this.
Next up, like shadow bringers.
So this is, everybody knows this one.
So you know what the one brings shadow,
two toned echoes, three score, wasted four.
So I'm gonna do one, two, three, four in there.
But did you know later in the song
there's a longer version of this, like this part.
But if you look closely, I did the same thing here
but I went all the way up to eight.
So one, two, this riddle.
three, four, five, sing, heaven, state.
I'm sorry.
Some of those work better than others.
The thing is, I was so proud of this, I think, and people were like, oh my god, that's the most brilliant lyric.
No one has noticed.
Jason noticed and he sings it!
That just shows you how good you are at you know your phone. Okay. How do you not get behind most is?
Like that's that was really hard to try to come up with one that rhymed with five, but anyway
And finally white stone black so
After this song was released. I remember reading online
You know a ton of people were speculating that like oh the white stone black
What is the white stone? Oh the white stone is the heart of Sabeek and
And they were convinced that the white stone,
even though the content is completely different,
they're like, no, the white stone black is the heart
of Savique, and they listed up their reasons in detail
on the interwebs.
There was pages of people commenting and theorizing.
And so the thing is though, when writing it,
I was kind of merely trying to reference the idiom.
There's kind of an obscure idiom,
to mark something with a white stone,
which means to kind of regard something as fortunate.
It comes from ancient Rome,
where people would like mark their calendars
with some white chalk.
If you mark dates that were Memorial happy events.
So if you mark something with a white stone,
it's a good, good fortune.
Everyone knows that.
Yeah, I know.
But I took the white stone and then I made a white stone black
because I wanted to take the good omen to a foul omen,
the ill omen there.
That was the intent at the time of writing.
But after reading this speculative post,
I was reminded that yes indeed,
I also meant the heart of Sabique.
Why wouldn't I do that?
You are all correct.
100%. Thank you for helping me remember that White Stone Black was the heart of
Sabeek. It's now canon. See that's the kind of community kind of give and take, you know?
Exactly, working together. So again at this point it's been approximately four
to five days since I received that guide and I've the concept and I've
probably finished my first pass of the lyrics, sent them off to approval by
scenario in sound teams. Yeah, that's four to five days. Yeah. I mean, if I'm lucky, I
get four to five days. I mean, that's really, that's pretty good. I think I mentioned to
be four back on equilibrium, the Sophia theme. I remember being given a guide on a Wednesday
and told, we're going to be recording on Friday. So I literally had like half a day
to get it done so we could send it to the singer. But most of the time I'd have
about a week, maybe two weeks tops to get the lyrics done. And again, it's while
doing other stuff as well. I can't really spend the whole day on it. If I have
any extra time after they're done. Like I mentioned, once the song has been submitted, before recording
I'll have like about a week to polish. And so, yeah, when I'm on the train or when I'm
in bed, I'll have all these ideas and things that I want to change. And so this is kind
of one of the examples. This is from Wayback Dragon song lyrics. And this is kind of
how they evolved over the last week. So the submitted, when I submitted the first
time, I had something like this here. And so I started out with something that
was kind of using more of an archaic voice,
very super poetic, children of the land answer this,
why dost thou yarn for emptiness?
And then from there, I was thinking, okay,
maybe we should like tone it down a little bit,
go in something a little bit more simple.
We wanted to add more repetition for that why question.
So tell me why spurn faith and see the pastor race.
Tell me why break faith?
Why see the pastor race?
Because again, it's Hydlyn kind of pleading to you.
Why are you doing this?
And so adding that repetition kind of powers it up in that sense.
And then from there, it was a matter of, okay, I'm going to remove all the archaicness because
it's hard to sing and it's kind of clunky.
Let's make it smooth.
And then also we have at the end where you see we took plunging into the abyss and
made it to seeking solace in the abyss.
And this is because when sung, the S sound is a little bit more soft, whereas the plunging
is a little bit more, it's that plosive sound that's kind of in your face.
And again, this is a goddess singing, so we wanted it to be softer.
So making those kind of changes over the last week, tweaking it a little bit until you get
something that feels polished.
And then from there, we go into recording.
After lyrics have done, you know, the checks are approved, we go into recording.
And a lot of times, like I said, we'll record in the Square Enix studio in Shinjuku.
I'll usually attend when I'm there, whether I'm singing or not, I'll be there just
to make sure that the lyrics are being...
Yeah, kind of overseeing, making things...
Yeah, Soken is usually there.
This is an old picture.
back when Soken was still doing engineering work. He now has his minions to do this. But
this is not in the game. He has his team that does all this now. And then sometimes you will
have some singers come in for parts and sing, but a lot of times again we don't have time
or we don't have the budget. Usually we don't have the time to do them. And so a lot of
the backing vocals will get like members of localization or members of the sound team
will just come in. And so like in Sinister, you have those guys that are like, hell
That's like, a bunch of dude bros from the Loke department.
That's lots of fun.
That's lots of fun.
I mean, honestly, a lot of times I've seen a lot of the Loke folks are willing to help
lend a voice, I guess.
As long as, you know, you don't have to see their faces, so they're lucky.
I'm the one that, you know.
So it kind of makes me, brings up a good question.
So when you're actually writing these songs, do you know if Soken is going to eventually
turn this into a primal song like the primals are going to perform this or sing
instead of concert because I'm sure it would be a little bit different depending right?
Yeah I mean a lot of times we don't know because again it comes back to House
Soak and does the songs he doesn't write them for the primals he writes them for
the game because it's supposed to be about that game experience first okay
and then a lot of times he'll hear them in the game and be like this would be great for
the primals and so that decision is usually made after the fact it's after it's already done
the songs in the game I mean every now and then there might be one or two songs or it's
like okay we want the primals to do this and some of the music will be done by the primals as well
but a lot of times they're made first for the game and then he makes that decision later.
This is kind of what happened with Ride the Rhythm so that game that song was not
going to be done by primals it was just going to be like this it's not a very primal z song
yeah if you think about it it's very older songs compared yeah but ultimately he heard it in
game was like oh do we got to do this on stage and it's freaking amazing on stage yeah
I wonder if we're going to play tonight.
I wonder.
There's green on those things, right?
There is green on those light sticks out there, yes.
So, yeah, I guess regardless of whether you know or not going into it,
you guys have had a chance to really kind of work with famous and talented people over the years.
Indeed.
Yes.
Indeed.
So I've prepared a visual album of some of the artists
we've featured on Final Fantasy XIV soundtrack.
People have been surprised, I think.
Due to time constraints, I wasn't able to get permission
to use official photos.
OK.
And because our CEO has been keen on incorporating
like AI tools into our daily work,
I decided to create an AI approximation
of the famous artists that we've worked with on the primals.
And I did this too much success.
And by much success, I mean no success.
So we have Jason Charles Miller, Amanda Akin,
Christina Stanzer, Sam Carter of the Architects,
Susan Calloway, Aquino, Tom Morello there in the middle.
Yes.
I wanted to give a special shout out though
to like Paula Gerholt, Warrior of Lights
and one of my fellow translators at Square Enix.
Nice.
She has sung on tons of tracks
like Beauty's Wicked Wiles, Be My Honey,
What Angel Wakes Me.
She's actually here as a fan.
She just wanted to come because she loves 14.
You might find her somewhere.
I also have to mention
former college death metal band bass vocalist
turned localization coordinator, Ayumi Murata.
She has sung on Oblivion, Equilibrium and Sinister.
So again, family affair.
Yeah, bass vocalist.
It's so crazy because I work with her.
I worked with her really closely from FanFest.
We worked to get the new MetaM lines
for the Dancing Green event.
She's just so nice.
I was just like, yeah, sure.
And then she's like, scream.
It's so awesome to see her perform too.
Yes.
And again, there's no, nobody's been a diva.
Nobody's been a diva outside me.
I mean, I like my green M&Ms and my rider.
Yeah.
But I'm surprised that there's been no divas to be honest.
Absolutely none.
I think the weirdest thing to happen,
I mean, this isn't, I mean, it's not even that weird,
but Akino, who sang Scream,
when she came into the studio to sing Scream,
she came in with her mom,
this wonderful woman,
cute, tiny, like beautiful, 60 year old,
60-ish something lady, and,
but then, you know, it's Scream.
So the first thing we do is like,
so Koji, can you explain the intent
behind these lines, flinst and flayed,
How does it feel and a pseudo suicide?
Don't choke on your pride.
Now can you explain this?
And so I have to explain these lines to you
while her mother is kind of sitting there.
So you're making my daughter a thing about flensing
and flaying.
And so, yeah, it was all good, wonderful, beautiful people.
They understood in the end, but please,
anyone that works with the primals in the future,
don't bring your mom to the studio.
Yes, oh, God, could you imagine a star you're having?
Yeah, like, you know, the BDSM song, stuff to mom.
Just leave them home maybe next time.
She was really cool.
I mean, there was no problem.
So it was just kind of like, I get there, I'm like,
you're the one who's, oh my God, nervous, right?
She was cool with it.
But I mean, you know, working with, as you all see,
these spot-on impressions of these different actors
and singers that you've worked with,
but is there anyone that you've wanted to work with,
you know, that you haven't had a chance to?
I mean, I don't know.
The geek in me kind of would freak out
if I could work with Weird Owl.
And no, contrary to comments on YouTube,
the latest Arcadian song, The Mirror,
is not sung by Weird Owl.
Okay.
Some people have been like, is that Weird Owl?
Oh my God.
It's not.
That's actually Ricardo,
one of our local music coordinators,
doing his best Sum 41, Blink 182 impression.
Yes.
Get an excellent job.
Yes.
That was a lot of fun.
That song, I listen to that song on repeat
when it came out because I was just hitting all the feels.
I'd also like, I would be awesome to work with like
Tenacious D and Jack Black because too.
Yeah. Right?
Right?
But like, even like collabs with more like
FF 14 adjacent creators would be cool.
I mean, a little while back I got to be on stage
with Husky by the Geek and Alex Mollard.
That was fucking amazing.
It would be really awesome to do something
with like, I don't know, say Iron Mouse.
It's interesting that you talk about that because I think we might be able to make that
happen if we can summon her to the stage, Koji, perhaps as like a primal.
Maybe you could bring her out here.
Oh my God.
Can we welcome to the stage Iron Mouse?
Come on out, our mouse!
Hello!
Yay!
Hey, come on out.
Come on out.
Oh, I'm not on your camera, can you see me?
Oh, I'll go get her.
Hold on, you guys stay here.
Now, I'll be right back.
Sorry, I forgot how this works.
Okay, let me...
Yeah, come on, bring it out!
I'm bringing I'm bringing it. Wow really heavy actually
No, no, all right help me walk up to the stage
This is the first for me this wheeling is extremely stressful
I gotta give Iron Mask a hug.
Give me a hug!
Oh my god.
I'm so glad we can bring you out here and have you join us on this stage.
No, I'm honored to be here.
Honestly, this is like a dream come true. I'm shaking.
You have a ton of fans and audiences, a ton of pink.
pink there's a ton of people standing already ready for you awesome well for
those of you don't know let's let's let's talk a little bit about our mouse
I'm us let's see if we can see a little some stats about our mouse yes so a few
important notes for those who don't know you are the demon queen of hell
right yes yes true okay good and but I ironically also wore your light yes I
have that reception in hell oh yeah of course you get like high speeds speed
internet yeah yeah we fix we fix the internet okay I'm glad somebody did I
mean last thing you want what about the ping from hell is not good yeah how is
that. Oh, it's not too bad. It's a little high, but you know, it's doable. Okay, okay.
Because I play games. That's, yeah. I, you are a big gamer. And as people may not know,
you are a huge FF 14 player and you've been playing for quite a long time. Is that
right? Yes, a long, long time. A lot of people are like, whoa, I didn't know you
played, you know, it's a little, it was a little bit of a secret of mine, but
I love Fire and Fantasy 14 so much.
It's kept me company for many, many days in hell while I was lonely.
Well, that's awesome.
I think it's kept a lot of us comfort and when we're in our own hells, all right?
Yes.
But it says here, you also like singing.
I've heard you like singing.
Yes.
It's my favorite thing to do.
Nice.
It also says here that you like rolling 99 on a loot.
Who does it?
Oh, who does it?
Good.
Good.
I'm a bit of a loot gobbling.
Okay.
As long as you admit it, that's the first step to, you know, solving that problem.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No.
I'm aware.
I admit you have a problem.
But it also says in capital letters, might I ask, that you love spriggins.
I love spriggins so much.
They're my favorite little guy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, are we going to steal a Spriggan later?
Yeah.
I'll put this over here as close to you as I can.
Oh, my god.
It's so cute.
We'll send this to you later.
I would be a wonder if I steal the Spriggan later
and I take it home with me.
You don't have to steal it.
We will gladly offer it to you.
Oh, my god.
Yay.
Thank you so much.
I'll hold it here for now so it doesn't fall off,
because otherwise it's just going to.
It's just like the rock is just so heavy.
It's the biggest rock for the best little guy.
I know.
I heard that it's like one of your favorite mounts and it's like one of the ones that
you use the most.
It's the only one that I ever use.
Other than like the big fat chocoball.
Yes.
Good.
Oh yeah.
Good call.
Okay.
We will save this for you.
Don't worry.
Thank you.
in hell, unfortunately, Little Spriggan, but some of your dislikes here, I see mornings.
Oh yeah, of course. Number one, hated. Yeah, the worst thing that you could ever have to
deal with in hell, apparently. Also, long queue times. Yes, I'm a bit of an impatient person.
I try to be patient, but it's hard, you know.
I'm a go-getter, I could be on the go all the time.
So waiting is just not my thing.
It's not the vibe.
No, it's not the vibe.
So just think next time you're in game,
if someone's like rushing you along in a dungeon,
it could be Iron Mouse, because she's got other stuff to do.
She's got to go fast.
She's got to go fast.
And then, of course, we all dislike, I think, slow internet.
But they fix that in hell.
Oh, yeah.
Yes, we fixed it, so it's fine. So come give it some time.
Well, thank you for the invite. She just told me to go to hell.
Yeah. Okay. It's what we've always wanted to tell you, Kofi.
Yay. So great. Oh, gosh, this is going...
Oh, but I want to ask you a few other questions about FF14. I'd love if you could talk about
some of your favorites. You told us your favorite mount. You told us your favorite little
guys or the spriggins but what are some of the your favorite songs like yes what are the songs that
you're jamming out to when you're playing it's so funny because i just i was just talking to my
chat about uh that i really like back to the drawing board and you guys were talking about it today
thank you that one is so fun and it's so cool too that we got a chance to see today like
literally how the song is created from scratch like you get the references and then koji
has a whole tangent about orange and the color orange. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I have a lot of
other songs that I really like like sinister and return to oblivion. People weren't crazy when we
mentioned sinister. Sinister is like one of my feelings. So thank you for talking about it today.
I'm very surprised that you did so much research. It was nothing. I mean, I will do some more
research tonight. Oh, I go to bed as well. I'm gonna move closer to Iron
Mouse. Yeah, I mean, we all love Sinister. Is there any other songs you
You want to mention before me?
Oh, well I did mention Return to Oblivion, which is such a beautiful song.
Yes.
Return to Oblivion.
Actually, at Kochi, I believe you wrote the lyrics for that song.
I did write the lyrics for it.
I do not remember writing the lyrics for it, but I was told that it was me.
It was a very busy period of my life back then.
like that. It happens sometimes where like Soken would be like write a song and
they'll just kind of be in the moment and I'll do it and it'll be done and I'll
move on to the next thing. Sure. And yeah, Return to Oblivion is one of those
that I do not recall. I may have, there may be some beers involved.
I forget I do things all the time too. It's good to know.
So you're a good company, you artists. Okay, so I'm, Mouse do you, do you think,
What do you think? Do you want to ask Koji about his favorite songs?
Yeah, what about you, Koji? What are some of your favorite songs?
Yeah, a lot. I think maybe my first would be...
Oh yeah.
This, I've been asked, this is my all-time favorite. I mean, it's got like cool plays of words,
genre-wise it's really close to what a lot of what I listen to privately mm-hmm
this kind of music hardcore metal core that's me set her up and literally say
my name come on man that's a fucking cool line I mean I may have been binging a
little bit of breaking bad when I wrote there but I mean God also measure of
Farish, AKA the Garley and Territorial Anthem
for Gerebanian adjacent city-states and whatever.
I mean, there's something inherently cool about an anthem.
I mean, they're complex and simple, timely and enduring,
powerful.
I mean, there's a reason why everyone gets goosebumps
and hoots and hollers at sports balls games
because anthems are epic.
And Sokan wrote the freaking epic song there.
And so it would be awesome someday.
So like if they played this at like 70,000 people
in front of a football game,
I mean, I'm not sure why they'd do that.
Yeah, the context.
I mean, give like 70,000 people to be on majestic mountains.
That would be epic.
That would be epic.
And then, of course, there is a studio.
I like, I mean, this one simply because it's pure emo.
I mean, come on, like, in monochrome melodies,
our tears are painted in red.
I mean, 16-year-old me would like weep black,
mascara tears.
If he knew that he would grow up to write that,
he'd be like, holy shit, Koji, you're the coolest.
But yeah, seriously, though, I think with To The Edge,
it's like one of those songs that people have come up to me
and basically told me, in certain time parts of their lives,
they have these hard times and they're
going through hard times and they played the song
and it helped them get through those hard times.
Or they would play this at their wedding.
And it's like times like that, that like, you know,
I'm sitting behind a screen for eight hours a day
doing this thinking, you know,
is my work getting out there?
Are people actually reading this?
And then to have people say, this changed my life, man.
I mean, that's why we do this.
And it's so much of an honor to be a part
of everybody's lives like this and have people here
and, you know, thank you.
So yes, for those of you planning to get married soon,
might I recommend the Garlean National Anthem
play a druid beyond my singing.
I will. Oh gosh, don't don't don't encourage him. I guess he could use your next eternal bonding to
But what about you Matt? What is your what are your favorite lyrics in in Final Fantasy 14?
Do you know
Those aren't lyrics they are lyrics
That's like I literally every time I go to that area I wait until morning comes around for it to start playing
just like enjoy it.
Is there any other stuff?
Okay, I think one of my favorites actually, and this is for real this time, is the Stormblood boss theme.
So every time you're in a Stormblood.com.
Triumph.
Yes.
And I think I can sing a little bit of it.
Storm of blood, blood, blood, blood, talking about that blood.
Blood is everywhere.
Why is there so much blood?
Oh my God, there's blood.
Those aren't the lyrics, but okay.
I'm literally, I'm not joking.
Every time I'm in a storm blood dungeon and triumph
I sing that in my discord and my friends get really upset at me.
I would imagine.
Okay, but yeah.
But yeah, I mean, otherwise, let's talk about, we've talked about some of our favorite songs.
What about, what's like the most difficult song that you've worked on?
Okay, well, since you ask.
Now, I'm not here to pile on smile.
I like the song a lot.
I think that not only did Akino and the gospel choir,
that we got to see in the backing vocals,
they did an amazing job.
As for its place in Dawn Trail, well,
I think there's going to be something different for everyone.
So yeah, there's no right or wrong answers here.
But when talking about the lyrics specifically,
it was definitely a challenge.
First off, it's got gospel Broadway musical is not
a genre I'm overly familiar with.
I like the metal core.
Really, I put them together.
And so, yeah, the song has a very, the greatest showman vibe to it.
So I need to do a lot of listening to those types of songs to kind of get in that right, right mindset.
Next, I'm not really used to writing happy lyrics.
Everything in 14 is about loss or sadness or BDFM.
So I had to get in the right mindset for a happy song.
So like I had to go to one of those cat cafes in Akihabara and like eat strawberry parfaits with maids
while cuddling a tabby.
Wait, I don't know. Wait, the maids?
Did you go to a maid cafe?
I can't cuddle the maids. That's extra. I can cuddle the cats.
Holy research!
Beautiful!
Yeah. Sokin came up with this like song that has not one melody and not two melodies.
They have like three kind of interweaving melodies and they all needed lyrics that kind of
worked off of each other but not clashing phonetically or anything.
so that was very difficult to do as well. Also, Soken was incorporating late motifs into his songs,
like he takes bits from his older songs and incorporates them into other songs. So what
I try to do when writing lyrics is take lyrics from older songs and incorporate those in. So
I have to do that as well. And then, of course, this is all while following Ishikawa-san's
lyrics. And the thing is, this is the ending, so she got really involved with,
like, OK, I need you to take this and this here,
and this needs to come here.
So I had all of these asks.
And it was a lot of work.
I think this is the one I spent the most time on.
I think I did two weeks off and on with the lyrics on this.
And even recording took like three days to record.
Usually we record in one day, because usually only one part
will go in and record for about five or six hours
and it's done.
But this took like three plus days,
because there were so many parts
we had to get all together.
And so it was painful in that sense.
But in the end, I still came out with a smile on my face.
Oh.
You get it?
No, I get it.
Because it's a song called Smile.
Yeah.
You like that?
Iron Mouse gets it.
I get it.
You get it?
Smile.
Smile.
Anyway.
Anyway.
Anyway.
Anyway.
So, yes.
Okay.
Smile, man.
Smile.
Now, as you probably heard from my rendition of Triumph, there's sometimes it's a little
difficult to, you know, understand the lyrics for songs.
So, you know, it's really helpful when we release the songs and but the song lyrics,
but why does it take so long to release the lyrics for songs?
So yeah, that's a really good question.
I understand immensely that, you know,
people want to sing along right away
and they want to see if they're like lower secrets
hidden in the words.
But a lot of times because how this song
has been mixed in game,
Soken tends to bury the vocals deep in the mix
when he puts it in the game.
So it's sometimes really hard to hear what's being sung.
Yeah.
I'm sure a lot of us kind of wonder like,
why is it so difficult to hear the lyrics?
Because, you know, we all love the songs
and we want to sing along.
I mean, I'm singing along anyway, but even if I don't know the lyrics,
there's just a lot of blood. Okay.
But yeah, why does he, why does he kind of bury it?
As you say, like down into the song itself,
there's actually kind of a message behind this madness.
I've talked to Soken about this because again, I, people,
a lot of people ask me why are the lyrics so buried in the mix?
Can't you make them more prominent?
And what Soken has said is that I'm like a regular song that you hear on
the radio. When you hear the music in Final Fantasy XIV in a battle, you end up hearing
it on loop. And you're hearing it several times in one battle. And then, if you're doing
the battle many times in a day, you're hearing it even more. And then if you're trying to
grind for your tome stones, you're hearing it many times in a week. And so it can
get kind of, you know, off-putting, possibly. It depends on how many times you hear it,
It doesn't matter how successful you are in the raise as well.
It can lead to bad memories and frustration sometimes.
And so what Soken does is that he doesn't want the lyrics to sound out.
He wants the battle to be the main thing you're concentrating on.
So he lowers the lyrics in the vocal mix so they don't sound out as much.
And then what he told me is that for the official soundtrack,
he'll remix all the songs to bring the lyrics back into the forefront
in that center channel so that you can hear that better.
So it's actually a different mix in the OST than it is.
in the game.
Oh, that makes sense.
But because of that, what can happen is that before we release the official lyrics later,
some colorful interpretations of the lyrics can happen.
And so, for example, we have, again, the most famous one that everyone knows.
Can we play the track?
Yeah, yeah, that's not what I'm saying.
Yes, it is.
There is no way you'll ever convince any of us in this room that this-
I mean, yeah, I mean, big fat tacos.
It sounds like something I would write, definitely.
But that's not what it's-
I like it.
Yeah.
Yes, thank you. That's how I'm saying big fat tacos. It's I guess
Next time we do an orchestra concert. I'll get the choir to sing big fat. Oh my god. That would be so awesome
No one outside of like the north american community probably would understand what's happening
I kind of regretting trying to explain to like a japanese
Say big fat tacos here and then it's like hi hi
Okay, how about this one, you know, this is from...
That's what I said? Let's take a listen.
So, they got riding, right?
That is, um...
That's what it is.
That is...
I mean, Shadowbringers.
The Shadowbrink, one brings Shadow, one brings Horse.
One brings Horse, two brings Horse, versus two brings Horse.
Horse.
It'll always be Horse to me.
Now, see, that's the problem.
Once you read it, that's all you're going to hear.
So it's like...
It's true.
Okay, what about this next one, man?
This one's easy.
This is tiny.
I glee thirsty for wool.
Oh, that's it.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
Unfortunately, I do hear it.
And are you thirsty for wool?
Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of our players are probably thirsty for a wall.
I believe resists me no more.
Come on.
The thing is, this is not my fault.
This is actually done by our this is Tom, one of the other low
commembers, and so I can't take credit for this one.
But because they're not my lyrics, I don't care.
So yes, I believe thirsty for wool.
Sorry, Tom. Sorry, Tom, you've been overrided.
That's the new canon.
All right. Last one.
Yeah, this one, man.
All right, let's listen.
I'm
None of this was correct. No, you're telling me breakfast. I just got just oh my god
You're ruining people's like cannons in their head that you this is it now. I actually like this better than my lyrics
Why didn't I think of this next time you fight ultimate thorn and this is right?
It's gonna be going through your head a little baby iron mouse
Has there any any lyrics that you have misheard maybe you thought it was something else until you saw the lyric sheet?
Oh, it's this oh
Oh my god well
Well, I have to say, I was very surprised about Sinister because I heard some things
that were different and I'm like, whoa.
I mean, the regular lyrics are kind of as well.
Yeah, they are the regular lyrics are kind of, you know, but I was I was very shocked
and I was like, oh, so it didn't say that it said this instead.
Okay, that makes no sense.
Oh my God.
So the thing is, this doesn't actually just happen in English as well.
So for example, with Titan under the weight,
Buffalo mozzarella, Buffalo mozzarella, bow down over a dweller.
So yes, in English, they're not just this, like there's so many different versions.
I bet you can ask everyone.
Everyone has a different version.
Yes, I guarantee that no one but hearing bow down over dweller in that.
Yes.
But it also is misheard in other languages as well.
So I'll like be in Japan.
time I went to the fan fest in China and they're like oh my god Bowden of
Odrela is like this in Chinese and I went to Spain and like and so it's
actually stuff in others as well everyone hears it incorrectly no one
hears it correctly. Dude Spanish?
Okay, alright. So let's listen and find out how you think so let's play this.
I mean, come on, Titan just wants you to bow down.
I feel like-
Doesn't want you to do his laundry, doesn't want you to give him a banana, just bow down.
For Titan.
For Titan.
I feel like we learned, you know, earlier in the presentation, you talked about how
you have to shorten things to make them fit.
It seems like this was before that happened, and you really kind of just forced it to fit, huh?
Okay. Anyway, anyway, so this kind of all...
This brings us back to, again, all of this confusion could be avoided if we just released
the lyric sooner, right? So why don't we? I asked the dev team this several times, but
I've never really gotten a straight answer. Every person I ask tells me something different.
What I can glean, it's that, one, the team is busy.
It's usually at the end of the patch cycle,
so they're really busy and they don't have time
to get them ready or whatever to do the dev blog
that they go up on.
Another one is that sometimes they're like,
we'll enjoy it when the players speculate
and bring up the weird lyrics
because user engagement, I guess.
I totally know.
Yeah, that's how we...
One thing I heard from YoshiP is he likes to delay it
because there's usually a lot of spoilers in the lyrics.
So he wants to make sure everyone has a chance
to play the content before
so that there are no spoilers getting out.
I mean, yeah.
Storm of Blood, Blood of Blood.
Those are real spoilers.
There's gonna be blood.
There will be blood.
In the expansion called Storm Blood, yeah.
It could be that just Ichikawa-san hates me.
I hope not because I love you.
I love you, Ichikawa-san.
Please don't hate me.
But the thing is, it's probably like all of the above.
Like this is basically a delay is more of a feature than a bug, so yeah, there's lots
of reasons, lots of reasons why this happens.
So let me get this straight.
You start off writing nonsense lyrics as you yourself.
As you saw, I was not afraid, the nonsense lyrics.
And bison, tax fraud or something, I don't remember.
So you have nonsense lyrics and you spend the most time turning into actual, proper
Proper lyrics are like, you know, it makes sense if it follows what, you know, writer's intention, so much meaning, yes, hind fight, hindsight, yeah, yeah, but by the time that it's finally released, it's the kind of everyone hears it as nonsense.
Yes.
Again, yes.
So I guess the question is when we release the proper lyrics, the nonsense lyrics is already kind of.
You're just saying I should just do the first steps and then stop. Yeah, it feels like it.
I mean, yeah, but the thing is there's one solution and that would just be to get them to release the lyrics
Earlier, right kind of like I did on that previous slide slide that everyone has screen capped
And then we can spread yes
So we finally officially released the lyrics for those four orcadian songs
So everybody make sure you check the VOD and go back and transcribe them and post them to Reddit.
And so we can get new official lyrics videos put upon YouTube ASAP.
Yay!
But no, but you mentioned Arcadian.
Like Arcadian has been so much fun to work.
I know like Iron Mouse, Arcadian music has been amazing, hasn't it?
Yeah.
I mean, it's been a lot of fun to work on.
And so I want to talk a little bit before we end.
I kind of want to talk about the Arcadian series and because it's been such an enjoyment to work on of all the raids that we've had in all of the expansions in 14, it's been the most songs with lyrics so far.
So of all of the songs, 10 of them, of the 16, 10 of them, 10 of the boss songs have had lyrics and of those 10, I got to work on the lyrics for six of them with other members of localization doing the rest of them.
And then, of course, Caleb, Shomo for Everything Burns.
For Everything Burns, yeah.
Amazing.
Woo!
But yeah, let me talk a little bit about some of the working on the songs from there.
Sure.
We'll start with Give It All.
Here, one of my biggest regrets moments.
For recording, Christy Kostanza couldn't come to Tokyo because she was on tour,
I think, in Europe at the time.
So basically, she recorded from Germany and then sent the files over in between like
actual concert dates, go home after a concert.
She'd record the lines and then send them in.
So I have no visual proof that Christy Casanza did them.
So kind of like the moon landing.
I can't prove that it happened, but we're just going to say
that Christy Casanza did them.
That was freaking amazing.
But I sent the lines, and then she sent back her first take.
And I'm like, yeah, this is really great.
But then I had an epiphany.
So you have the line here, the music,
Swallow and Crowd is chanting, and for the moment,
fear is an afterthought, it's gone, it's gone, because you know, the fear is gone and all gone and she's ready to go.
But then I'm like, no. How about if we did it like this, that the fear is an afterthought, but it's not.
It's not. I'm not an afterthought. It's like sad. It's talking about how, you know, she is she's not gone.
She's still right here facing her own fears. I thought this would work so much better. It's like that.
So I'm like, yeah, can we get it?
And she's like, no, it's done.
Like, oh, oh, oh.
And then one time we said, had Amanda sing this on stage?
And I'm like, Amanda, can you change that lyric?
She's like, OK, I can do it for her.
And she's like, and then she forgot and sang the original
words.
Oh.
I don't blame her, though.
It was on me telling her like five minutes.
Five minutes before you change this line.
Yeah, I'm familiar with how you have asked for changes
right before going out on stage.
regrets the regrets um next up uh yes the regrets um next up uh write the rhythm so
with this again like i mentioned before we weren't asked to do the lyrics for the in-game version
so actually what you hear in-game is not me it's not soken it's actually the composer of the song
imamurasan was doing random english-like words basically i asked him what the words were
He's like, oh, I just went and looked at it at like some Daft Punk lyrics and just copied them.
But then Soken's like, I said, Soken's like, oh, we should play this. And like,
then we can't sing those lyrics. We actually have to come up with lyrics. And so basically we had
kind of lyrics that were there and people had already heard them. We have to come up with
actual lyrics. So now I had to come up with lyrics that kind of sounded like the original ones,
but we're not the original ones.
Because actually lyrics are stylish.
And so the thing was like, okay,
I'm gonna listen to what he's saying,
and I'm gonna try to get something as close as possible.
So I listened to what he was saying, and this is what I heard him saying.
He was like, hey, day down the putt,
pantheon set the bet,
lay down, start it up,
make me go check the bet.
You can hear it, listen, listen.
Listen, listen.
That's definitely what it says.
That literally is such a joke.
That's from a Daft Punk song.
That's a dead note.
For legal reasons, that is a joke.
Yes.
There are different lyrics in that.
But yeah, then after we did, right, the rhythm
back to the drawing board. So I talked a little bit about this in the concept.
Iron Mouse, thank you for also loving back the drawing. It was a fun song to write.
But it was supposed to be only male lyrics in it. So it's only supposed to be me singing it.
Basically, it was supposed to be Sugar Riot's, one of Sugar Riot's fans was singing the song
about Sugar Riot herself. But I thought it might be cool to have Sugar Riot appear in
the song as well. At the end, Queen Latifah will come out and do her little four bars
or whatever and go back. So we got female lyrics in right at the end. There's that part where you
get sugar riot comes out, girls what are we made of, and she's doing that little part. So the problem
was when we're doing it on stage we didn't have any female vocalists on stage and I'd been singing
the whole time. So I thought it might be confusing for people in the audience to all of a sudden
hear the female vocals but see no one on stage singing. So I thought it would be good to
to have visuals during the live performance to notify to everyone that this is the part
where Sugar writes.
Yeah, okay.
And so I created a sample video of what I thought this part should be like, that to play.
And I was going to give this to the team and say, play a video like this.
And so this is the video that I made for them to play during the concert.
Can you play the video?
The
Needless to say, it was not approved by the company for use in the live performances, but I spent
all of ten minutes making that, so I wanted to show it here today.
I don't even think that took 10 minutes, to be honest.
At least, you know, I'm glad that the smile image is out of my head, and now that is in
my head.
It'll haunt you for all day.
That is now my sleep problem.
Literally, when I asked, you know, the, I prompted co-pilot Koon to, like, you know,
can you, like, make a Lollafel?
That's what it came up with.
So, the power of AI folks knows what a Lollafel looks like.
Oh, man.
up, we have Not Afraid. Yeah. And it was an interesting footnote to this song was that
those satanic growl voices.
Yeah, Not Afraid. That's the one with the F-bomb in it too.
Yes, yes. It's character appropriate F-bomb. Okay.
It fits the lore. So it is approved. It's got the beep in there for the kids.
But yeah, that.
Meanwhile, sinister as you know.
I'm just kidding, whatever.
They have the growls, or as they say in Japan,
death voice.
That's what they call it, like the growls in the screams,
death voice.
And so the death voice was a lot of fun in that song.
But it wasn't me.
What?
It wasn't you?
I would imagine it would have been you because you're
the guy.
The death voice, and not afraid, was Yoshi Pete.
What?
Don't believe me.
Listen, listen. You can hear.
This is okay.
Why am I suffering?
Why are you suffering, Yoshi-P?
You need to take a break.
Is that really Yoshi-P?
I don't...
You don't have to believe me.
It's true.
Okay, so why am I...
suffering. Why am I suffering? I am lost. I am lost. Can we hear your best, best death
voice of why am I suffering? Oh, yeah. What do you think? That was spot on. That was
edgeless. I guess if your GP is not available, we have the next death voice. Yeah, follow
me. I can do a death speech anytime. The death voice. Perfect. All right. And so,
Moving on to 7-4, next up, we had Sinister, so again, I don't want to talk too much about it
because I don't want to get in trouble with HR. But one thing I can talk about is that
that beginning part at the end, you have that epic chorus. That chorus at the beginning
isn't just random ooze and oze, it's an actual chorus, and there are actually lyrics to that.
So those lyrics are in Latin because Latin is a lot of kinkier. I was thinking,
what's the kinkiest language? Oh, it's got to be Latin. So we have the lyrics here.
So, like, otherwise, all hail the lady of punishment and torment, all hail the lady of pleasure, all hail the queen, hail vamp fatal, but Latin, so way more sexy.
Yeah. I really appreciate that you brought the blurred image back.
I mean, you know, you can't talk about vamp fatal without...
Yes.
Okay.
And then the final song that I worked on for the Arcadian series was The Mirror, of course.
So, we used those twin vocals to give it that real, some 41 type of feel, and the twin vocals
because you have the extremes, the surfer dude bros, red hot and deep blue.
And I was going to sing one, and then Ricardo, the other localization member, was going to
sing the other, but it was literally not until the day of recording, we didn't know
which part we were going to sing.
Basically, the composer wanted to decide it that day.
Oh my God.
So because he didn't know so there's that rap that's in it. It's like yo deep blue ain't live in this or live in on the
So this is basically red hot singing to deep blue
I knew that I was gonna be rapping, but I didn't know which part I was gonna sing
Yeah, so I had to write two reps one that was sung by red hot and one that was sung by deep blue
And then they decided which one they wanted me to sing so because I ended up being red hot
This is the one that went in but there actually is a
I saw one from Deep Blue singing to Red Hot,
and that was this where he's, you know,
yo, Red Hot, and he's kind of being a dick in these lyrics.
I mean, you know, come on, man.
Bro, you gotta buck up.
Gotta buck up, man, up, stand up.
So I like the ones that were chosen,
but that kind of happened where you end up writing these
and I didn't know which ones,
so we had to have the second one.
But yeah.
that we actually now we got to see an unreleased.
Unreleased.
We didn't even take those lines because it's like we can't do it.
So yeah.
So I mean, okay, so that was all super interesting and I don't know, it's just, you know, I'm
trying to think maybe this doesn't sound that hard, like you kind of, you know, you
go, no offense, no offense at all, no offense taken, you know.
Some taken, but okay.
I just mean, you know, random references.
You're at RhymeZone.com.
I never said I was at RhymeZone.com.
BDSM.
And, you know, I feel like we could probably do that.
You think you can do it?
Yeah.
You think you could do it?
Well, let's write some lyrics then, man.
Right here, right now.
How about we do some crowd participation
and write some lyrics right here?
I want you to help me write some lyrics.
Right now.
right now. So, from tacos to tenders, tenders, escape fame. We have escape of ticking tenders
fame. Right at the beginning we have this line, a drifting tender. There's the drifting tenders.
Thank you. Oh, tenders come right here is right. So we have this, we have this line,
and then later in the song plays the second version of it with the ancient echoes,
to HITAKOS. And then it's played a third time. But the third time is just a repeat of the first
time. So originally, when I got from Soken the melody, it only had first time and second time.
There was no third time. So I only wrote two versions. But then Soken's like, I want to make
the song longer. But I don't want to talk to Koji. So I'm just going to copy and paste the first
one. And then it got copied and pasted. Now if he'd asked me, I'd be like, no, let's do three.
let's finish the arc, the tender's arc with something, and he didn't do that. So for the longest time,
I've hated the fact that this is just copied and pasted. I think we need new lyrics here,
and I want you guys to help me with some new lyrics. So we can't do all of these since we don't
have much time. So I'm thinking that those first four lines we keep the same. But these two lines
here, the storm heads gather and illusions scattered. I want to get ideas from the audience
to officially make some new lyrics for this part here so we can just get rid of the old
and make some new. Okay. So I think we have some people with mics today. Yes, we do have some.
So what we're going to do, we're going to do each line. If anybody has a good idea,
raise your hand, we'll get somebody to come, get that idea, then we'll all vote on it.
We'll get Iron Mouth to help voting on it as well. We'll choose the best line and then
we're going to make those the real lyrics. But first, if we're going to do this right,
we have to sit down some ground rules. We can't just have some phrases. I don't want people going
Starbird, Llybird, I'm right here with you. Comprehension, scattered. Fuck you, Koji Fogg.
No. I feel like we just wrote it right now. That's quite the bop.
No. The lyrics need to work both in a general and omega sense. It has to pertain to omega,
but also kind of feel like it's natural with what is there, you know, the cosmos, the sea shanty.
Like you can see this is a cosmic sea shanty. You've got the come ride heroes ride away with a tide.
So you have this sea shanty imagery, the sea being the sea of stars, the universe, omega being
the tender, the small boat that goes along with the galley. He's drifting away from where
he's supposed to be. That type of imagery. So it has to fit that. Good luck. So yeah,
Again, we've got the mics there.
Let's listen to the guide, because that's all you do.
Listen to the guide, get that in your head, and then we'll start taking.
So let's play the clip.
I'm right here.
Okay.
We're good.
We're good.
All right.
Hands up.
Let's do this.
All right.
We have my seat.
I see how we have a few staff members out there.
Hands up. Let's do this. All right. We have I see hands. We have a few staff members
Yeah, staff members out there
The hands I'm not gonna call you got the staff members with the mic
Yeah, so someone walks up to you with a microphone and puts it in front of you then probably with us. I hope
So let's see if I
Know my team is out there
I'll see I think I have someone perhaps may haps
Oh, it's me? Me first? Okay. Okay, first line, Transforming Matter.
Transforming Matter. Okay. That is a good suggestion. I like it. I like it.
Why do you seem surprised that that was? I literally thought someone was going to say Star...
Okay, I have an idea. Starboard. I literally told you not to say Starboard.
Transforming Matter. Okay, that's one. Okay, can we get another suggestion?
I've written this down. Transforming Matter.
What else do we have, I think.
This is still the first line.
OK, we're still getting a few ideas for the first line.
So Danielle has a mic somewhere to see of stars of people.
I hear her in my ear.
Talk right into the mic.
Oh, uh, right into the mic.
Uh, for which one?
We're still, we're still taking some ideas for the first, the first line.
Oh, the first line.
Casting away.
Casting away, casting away.
Come right here, Rose.
Right.
Okay.
Okay.
That's all right.
That's good.
Okay.
Let's get a couple more.
And the next person with the mic, you guys, you guys go ahead and say,
I have someone and then I have someone I hear you right here. Okay. Okay. I'm thinking I'm thinking like
through stars like water come right here rose right here. Four stars like water. Through stars like
water. Through stars like water. That's pretty sexy. Through stars like water. Okay. I have a
a rhyme as well. Okay, that's good. All right, next one. I'm on. Okay, I had one. Give me a session.
All right, Sarah, you chose that one. I was going to say the coils are charged.
Like you see the coils on the side of a mega and electrically just going through the whole
robots so okay the coils are but I would do the coils are charged thank you thank you for taking
charged okay okay the coils are charged and then let's do one more and then we'll vote on the ones
that we have okay one more so far flung embedded far flung embedded far right here's right far flung
embattered. So farflung comma embattered, that's actually really cool. Farflung embattered.
Okay, farflung. I like my chicken tenders. Embattered because you batter the chicken tenders.
Yes, batter them. And fry them. Okay, okay. I don't think that's the embattered that we're
working on. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Okay, so let's, before we do the second line,
let's vote on the first one so we know what we have to rhyme with for the second line.
Okay, okay. Good idea. Okay, so we have transforming matter.
Then we have casting away.
Then we have through stars like water.
Then we have the coils are charged in.
And what is this for my handering so bad for, for flung.
No, and for our flung, far flung.
Yes, far. I need to write this better.
Far. I can't even read it myself.
Far flung, far flung and battered.
Okay. So I'm going to go through each one.
I want you to cheer and we'll choose the one
with the most cheers.
Iron Mouse, you cheer too, okay?
We don't know which one you like the best as well.
Yes, sure.
All right, first off, Transforming Matter.
Okay.
Then next off, a Casting Away.
Okay, okay.
Got a fan.
You're suggested that.
All right.
I appreciate that.
Through stars like water.
Sexy.
All right.
The coils are charged!
Okay, okay, I like that one with the charge thing.
And then, here we go, far flung and battered.
It's because it fits with the chicken tenders being battered.
I think, I like to think it's also because it's really far flung and battered.
Okay, far flung and battered is the one.
And so, now we're going to do the second line,
And we're gonna have to rhyme with battered like shattered like we have so anything that rhymes with battered
Let's do that. All right. Let's start going. We'll do some of these and finish the lyrics. Okay
It's good. We got a good first line far flung and battered whoever has the mic just speak up. I've got one
All right, how's going the hole is splintered away with the tie but the hole is shattered away with the tie
Okay, far flung and battered the haul is shattered. That's really good. Okay. The haul is shattered
How about a broken standard
That like fits with the ship industry the ship's gonna have a flag it's gonna have its own standard the broken standard
Nice, I'll brokering a broken center of the a broken up the broken standard
I have one.
Oh, sorry.
We'll choose on our side.
Okay.
Go ahead.
Standard.
Nice.
Okay.
All right.
I have one.
It's kind of similar to the last one, but Heroes Shattered.
Heroes Shattered.
So we have the Hall is Shattered, but we also have Heroes Shattered.
Okay.
Heroes Shattered.
That's nice.
We have another.
Because basically Omega's going to shatter heroes.
Heroes Shattered.
Nice.
Okay, shattered is a good rhyme with embattered. I agree. Okay. Let's get a couple more. It just doesn't matter. Just doesn't matter
Nice
Way with the tide
And I think it really flows well. It doesn't matter the way with the time. Oh
Okay, and one more that's that's four. So let's do one more. I
Don't have a mic in front of you. I'm sorry
Hello. Hi. The past is sundered. The past is a ride of a life. The past is sundered away
with the tide. Okay, so just so we know, we have to rhyme with the embattered. So we only
need the one line. The past is scattered. The past is scattered. Okay, the past is
scattered. The past is scattered. Nice. Okay. The past is scattered. Okay. So here we go.
We have our five. We're going to choose these. I'm sorry for those who didn't get to.
There's a lot of people.
I know there's a lot of people. We don't have them at the time.
We really appreciate it.
If this is like fun, we'll definitely do it at the next breakfast as well. All right.
So we have the first line. Again, far flung and battered. Come right here. It was
ride and then this next line the hall is shattered the broken or a broken standard
heroes shattered just doesn't matter and the past is scattered so let's vote first off the hall is
Shattered
Okay, okay
Next up a broken standard
All right
You got another oh, that's your favorite. I must nice
Then another shattered but this one instead of being the haul is shattered now. It's heroes shattered
Okay, okay, and then just doesn't matter
And then finally, the past is scattered.
I think we have our winner, the broken standard.
So here we go, we have it all done.
So a drifting tender come right here is right, her galleon scattered away with the tide.
Far flung and battered come right here is right, a broken standard away with the tide.
We have it.
This is awesome.
So good.
so good thank you guys so much thank you so much and if only there is a time we
could sing this like if there is a concert something
if only the finals had a concert in a couple hours
in which we could sing it huh so what i'm gonna do
what i'm gonna do i haven't asked soken yet he's probably gonna get
get pissed off. But I'm gonna go backstage after this and say, we changed the lyrics.
Can we do it this way during the concert tonight? And if I give him some money and he says okay,
the money is the important part. Then we're gonna do this tonight. So what I'm gonna
try to do is if he gives me the okay tonight at the concert, I'm gonna be go up there
and go like this. And I want you all to sing along. I'm gonna get it up on the
the screen, barflung embattered, come ride here,
let's ride a broken standard away with the tide.
Let's do this.
Let's make it happen.
We're gonna make it happen, right?
Awesome.
Yes, thank you so much.
Thank you so much for that concert tonight.
I mean, the thing is though,
that concert's like three hours away.
Yeah, it's far, far away.
I want music now.
Oh, yeah, some music now.
if there is only someone on the stage
that was a trained musician,
willing to sing some Final Fantasy 14 songs for us
here in Anaheim.
Gee, I wonder who that is.
Wait a minute, Iron Mouse, are you saying
you'd sing us some songs today?
You know what, I'm already here, so why not?
Yeah, you're already here, so why not?
That's what, yeah, that sounds great.
See, it would be my absolute greatest honor
to be able to sing for you guys today.
Awesome.
Yes.
Okay.
I think everyone in the crowd is super hyped.
So I guess you'll probably need some time to,
you'll probably need some time to get ready.
Maybe you need a change, get into a-
Yeah, just a quick little change and I'll be right back.
Okay, awesome.
All right.
All right, I am also seeing a little bit.
Seeing a little bit.
Right, I'll see you guys in a little bit.
Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.
Let's do this.
Okay.
So I think that's it. I think we're done.
I think so. I mean, we have convinced her successfully that we will get a performance,
so that's awesome. So while we get over here and let people clear the stage,
you got this concert coming up. Yes.
And I got to get, I got to get down there because I want to watch.
I want to watch too. I'm going to, as soon as I see the three.
I need to be down here. I need to be down there with everybody.
As soon as we start, I'm going to run down.
I'm not going to. You're ready.
You're in person.
So everybody, how was the panel? It was kind of long, but was it fun?
Yes, like I could talk for days about, I think, I noticed before I've worked on more than 70 songs
for Final Fantasy 14. So it would be really cool, you know, if maybe I could
like get this book, maybe like a CD with all 70 songs on it and then like write,
get the lyrics, like write about the stuff about how writing lyrics and then you can give all your
insight to like how you did return to Libya.
If we made a book like that, or maybe like a CD like that,
we had all the songs with lyrics and had like the lyrics.
Would you guys want to?
Yeah.
OK.
So maybe I can convince Yoshi P to do something.
That's kind of been my dream for a while.
And so I'm going to ask Yoshi P if we can do that.
I mean, everybody here seems excited.
Yeah.
So let's see if we can do it.
Let's see if we can do it.
Like the lyrics, you know, lyrics song
on the Fendancy 14, that would be really cool.
That would be real.
OK.
I think that's it.
I think that's it.
You're all good?
Yes.
You made it through the entire panel.
I made the entire thing.
And so, yeah, I made it through the entire panel without doing a single shameless plug.
Without doing a single shameless plug.
Spinal Fantasy XVI Logos, the lore book that's now on sale for $44.99.
You can buy it on the eStore or Amazon.com.
Anywhere books are sold.
Everywhere books are sold.
Because again, I wouldn't want to do that shameless plug at all.
Because this is a 14 panel, and I'm not going to supposed to talk about 16, but if you have
an extra 44.99 lying around, it is a wonderful book.
It is a great book.
I was excited to read it, so we'll give you this time.
But we do have Iron Mouse.
I'm going to get off the stage, and I'm going to come down there.
Yes, I'm so hyped.
Yes, super hyped.
Let's go.
Let's do this.
See you down there.
We'll be down there with you.
I can't believe I'm here, and I can't believe I'm doing this.
This is an absolute dream come true.
Oh no, no, no, no! I'm I am Vile's, your friend, Steven Queen, and a fellow Final Fantasy 14 enjoyer!
I picked up some of my most favorite tracks with Square Enix to bring you a very, very special performance today from my favorite place, the Cool Sponster!
Yay!
Can you move?
Oh my god, I'm so excited!
Okay, I'm ready and I'm going to give it my all.
Okay, okay, okay, okay, I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready, whoa!
The night I sleep is red blue with rain
As I walk in the dark, dark sea
It lightens me, the sky is streaking
The colors in my heart, the fate is gone
They're gone, they're gone, all gone
A girl walks to the stars and hears the dream
Of a world she'd never thought could see
I stand so in my dream, I'm staring at
I realize the girl is gone
She's gone! She's gone! I'm gone!
I never meant to leave you to the thought I had it all in the soul
I thought I'd fade it to my will for a right
And now I'm the price you buy
I've been missing you scouting down tonight
I'm out of time learning to stop
Come in with my life for this month
And by your light I'll cast
The rain of my life
The knowing that no time
That I know would light
Let you decide
Cause of the things that's what it takes
I'll close the door to the passing side
And turn on the tether in the dark
And try to shine
And try what I will to find
Don't go in the back
Don't go in that hole, there ain't no memory there
No, you don't go in that, don't go in that
Don't come in that from the edge
Looking my eyes, I know you understand
I'm everything
Even my mind, my brain, don't go in that
I know you look like a, a little like my, my heart
Still nothing, ready to fight till the one last step
It's a lie, making a stride
But you're a fraud, and you're not a good leader
To me
For this moment, fear's never a thought
It's gone, it's gone, all gone
I look out to the crowd and there I see
I look out to the girls on me
Turned into the sky, I'm writing back
I'll lose my detail, it's all on
It's all, it's all, it's all
I don't belong to make it to the top
I had it all before, so I thought
Trade it tomorrow for a life
And bound the price to I'm caught
You're sinking back in your tonight
I'm out of time, no need for time
I'll live my life before it's lost
And I'll rule my own past
See me, I'm going back, I'm going back
I'm going back, no one's right
Let you inside, I'll survive
You've got plenty of things to do
I know so, don't cast me aside
Take my battery, baby
I can try, I can try, I can try, but I will survive
No going back, no going back
Oh never, no never again, no
No going back, no going back
No coming back from the end, no more
Are you scared please?
I'm scared, how do you scare me?
In this universe, sister, would you know it?
I'll make it better, come from the other side
To the other end, to the other end
I know a few of your sides
Watching your finger on the ground
But I will take what I'm running out
But I can't go anywhere
Don't let me die
And I'll tear you up and stare you out
And I will never surrender
And before I surrender
Now watch me go
And claim a goal
Throwing hard, going solid, and the limit's here
Before our consention was thought I may get clear
When you're knocked by my top, what you got in mind?
A little more, I'll give you more, cause what's yours is mine
Drone's in the zone tonight, who won't touch me on the beam?
With the cheeks just flat, so don't mess with me
Look at them squeal under my heel, twigs are just in turn
I don't care no safe word
Look down that magazine
All eyes on me
I'm Sinister, under your skin
In recent leather
Sinister, don't you know I am
I'll make it better
Cause I'm used to the sound when you're singing
You're at your ruin, I'm your legend
You make your freedom, put in your favor
But I am at home, I am your call
Here on my own, on top of this terrible throne
I reach for the stars, why are they all so far?
Until I climb, and leave what's up behind
Sunday at five!
What I want, what I want, what I want, what I want, what I want to find!
I
WONTING AIYEEE
WONTING AIYEE
DOING IT AGAIN
To us who see us, we're slaving
I see this claim, it untame me
Eyes wide with tears
Carousel in my ears
Smoke and faded
The blood of my lady
To open fire
May God is able to take
Where may God take
Turn the light on, you'll never get out of this eternal light
Oh, turn the light on, the pointy-hot guy
Turn the light on, the soul of the poor
Oh, baby, oh, baby
I'm going to barge over the fear to embrace me
A voice from the past, leaving there is no end
No, I'm straight to my feet, I'm still doing
We've been so dead, I'm dead and I'm dead
Welcome into the snow, it won't overtake me
A voice from the past that goes out like a drummer
No more goodbyes, no more my heart
It's still making a open mind, one more time
I
Reason resigned, life isn't designed
Springs promise when sun is on earth
When winters waning down on us
Visions and wives, the theory in flight
Clear as diamond, your fragile eyes
My heart is racing
When the light of the day
On the streets of L'Oreal
I'm a light, I'm a light
I'm a light, I'm a light
I'm never with a rest
You turn the light on
Turn the light on
The thing will never see
I turn the light on
Turn the light on
The storm of the day
I am dying of waiting
My hope in my eyes was lost
I am dying of waiting
My hope in my eyes was lost
Thank you so, so, so, so, so much!
I just love Final Fantasy XIV.
I love it so much!
Okay, now I'm gonna go and take a break
and enjoy the rest of the convention,
and I hope you guys have a great time
and enjoy the rest of the convention too!
Thank you guys! I love you guys!
High five!
Oh
I
The sounds are coming from all around.
I'm using my body-immersed sound.
It's so good.
I'm hearing it from different angles.
It's actually pretty cool.
if I like very specific components of the audio design.
I love it!
Both the Source and the Reflections are hunting a replaceable life, I would protect them
if I could. But if doing so means ushering in complete annihilation, then what can we possibly do?
This star is tolerant to life.
It holds no grudges, and neither rages nor weeps for being thundered.
You've no recourse but to call it before my true power.
May have the time has come for another journey across the sun.
No amount of devastation and death can compel it to stop the wheels of creation from turning.
So many seeds of life have already been lost.
Countless perish as nature runs its course.
Yet in spite of this, people continue to believe that the moral will come.
But it will not, for nothing lies beyond the solstice, and no one will be left alive.
No one.
Did you think you'd won?
Guess I'll have to spice things up!
Oh
I
The
sounds are coming from all around.
I'm using my body-immersed sound.
It's so good.
I'm hearing it from different angles.
It's actually pretty cool.
If I like very specific components of the audio design.
I love it.
Both the source and the reflections are home to irreplaceable life.
I would protect them all if I could.
But if doing so means ushering in complete annihilation,
then what can we possibly do?
The
A star is tolerant to life.
It holds no grudges.
And neither rages nor weeps for being sundered.
He has now recourse but a cower before my true power!
May have the time has come for another journey across the salt.
No amount of devastation and death can compel it to stop the wheels of creation from turning.
The so many seeds of life have already been lost.
Countless perish as nature lones its course, yet in spite of this, people continue to believe that the normal will come.
But it will not, for nothing lies beyond the solstice, and no one will be left alive.
No one.
Did you think you'd won?
Guess I'll have to spice things up!
MUSIC
FAST-UP MUSIC
FAST-UP MUSIC
FAST-UP MUSIC
I
Well, welcome, everyone.
to a slash random Q&A with Yoshida.
As you can see, we have a giant dice with us.
So throughout the last day, we waited until the keynote was finished so that you guys had
all the latest information on what's coming in the future of Final Fantasy 14.
And then we had you guys submit questions via form.
we have collated those questions into three different categories and we're going to be having
Ishida-san will be choosing them via this random dice. So we can't be blamed for, oh it shows the
easy questions, it shows the hard questions. We solved that problem here. So are you ready
ready to get started?
Yes.
All right.
All right.
Let's go ahead and bring up our question scoreboard.
So how this will work is we have three different categories.
One is normal, maybe normal.
And then maybe a little bit harder, the second one.
Paul.
everyone is maybe ultimate.
Oh, ultimate.
Ultimate.
Yeah.
Service.
Yeah.
Challenge.
Normal.
Right.
Correct.
So, as you can see up there, we have two sides of the dice will correspond to the different
categories.
So, we'll have Yoshida carefully roll the dice very safely, and then depending on which
He rolls on. We'll take that first question and we'll go through the whole list. So you're ready to get started.
Yeah.
All right.
Three, three, oh, oh.
Oh, it is a red!
Red!
Oh, wait, wait, wait!
No!
Oh, no, no, no!
So red!
You couldn't just keep...
Even with this extra kick, it still landed on two.
Yeah.
No, it was red.
Either way, red.
Okay, come on.
Come on, alright!
Oh...
Here we go!
So...
You are a man and a woman in Aura.
Why are you so different from the other men?
You are...
Give us Giant Dragon Ladies!
Giant Dragon Ladies!
I mean, this is simply but it's just a matter of genetics.
Yeah, I see.
No, you weren't looking for that kind of answer, huh?
And we framed it as a Q and A, but are you sure this isn't like requests to Yoshida?
He is right now.
It is a Q and A.
So answers are what we're after.
But the answer is, the DNA is different from the bone structure.
I mean, yeah, then the actual answer is, it's because they're genetically different
in how their bones are structured and how their muscles are on their bodies.
But you know, the audience reaction is like, no.
Well, I understand that you want to use more of a more mature Dragon Lady.
But then I do understand that there is a desire for more, let's say, more
has she built, I guess, or like more muscular dragon ladies?
It's ultimate. Yeah, it's definitely in that category. It's ultimate for sure. I know.
Okay, ready for this. Okay, all right, let's go. Let's go on to our next question. Let's go back.
All right one down three three and four so you want three and four, huh, okay?
Yeah
I don't know if that's legal, like you know, yeah
I'm smart
All right, so we landed on three very fairly
So our first question in that category is...
Why not?
It's that easy!
Yay! No question!
Next!
What is your favorite go-to glamour for your character?
And what would your character wear all the time?
I play Final Fantasy XIV outside of work in private, and so if I give you my actual honest answer,
what would I find out my character would be?
secret secret
Then let's put it this way. The character wears all the time. I think I've worn the
Minfilias out. Yeah, but if you've seen you should have some co-character in our live streams
I think that that's more in a lot of the times
I think people, yeah.
It was so easy.
Well, it was an easy one, right?
Yes.
Okay.
Well, then let's go on to our next question.
Let's go back to the board.
All right.
All right.
You want a one or a six, right?
To be fair.
Oh.
Oh.
Yes.
Yes.
Get another one.
I like when you say happy, everyone else is upset about it.
Oh no, you were right man, they are upset.
Oh, okay, this is a good question.
So did you know that Magic the Gathering was making a wandering minstrel card?
And would you sign one?
So...
I'm the master of Japanese magic, Zaki Azaring.
And holding...
One?
If you can't get a sign,
we have to answer the question.
Oh, so many people with their wandering minstrels.
Do we have a pen?
Oh!
Okay, we will answer that question.
Let's look at it. Let's get a sharpie out here sometime. Oh wow.
Will it take the ink pens to slip a little bit, but will the micron pen work?
Oh, thank you. Let's see what we got.
We have a pen that writes really well on Magic the Gathering cards.
I have a girlfriend, or a Stephanie.
One moment.
You have to get the perfect pen for it, so please hold.
Please hold.
Please look forward to it.
Please look forward to it.
Oh, that's cool.
Nice.
From a fan?
First of all, we have a collaboration with Magic The Gathering, and we received a lot of hot offers.
Going back to the Magic The Gathering and Final Fantasy collaboration, we are aware of it,
and there was somebody on the Wizards of the Coast team that has a really strong passion for Final Fantasy,
And so they approached us with the idea.
And so, of course, with Magic the Gathering
being such a long-standing card game,
they have perfected their balancing
and the difficulty of the gameplay itself.
And so when we were discussing about which characters
to have featured or what kind of cards
that we wanted to have, I was thinking
that maybe the Final Fantasy side
shouldn't put in too much of our input into it
because it might trouble them
when they were thinking about the game play.
So, Artwork is written by a lot of artists from Square Enix,
and we checked the design of 14th and 16th
of the main characters.
And so, of course, we have various artists
within our company.
And so, for the Square Enix side, especially under me,
I asked them, we would like to look at if there are characters that are featured from Final Fantasy 14 or 16.
We want to have the main or primary characters.
And of course, there are Final Fantasy XIV players on the Wizards of the Coast team, and I'm sure the quality that they would produce would be really good, and so I didn't anticipate for any sort of curveballs.
And so I was waiting for the release and when it once came out and I was looking at the social channels
I saw comments that said Yoshida a card your card has your character has been featured
And when the illustrations of these magic the gathering collab what?
Shiranakattase, I had no idea
The main character
I checked it, so I said,
There's no main character!
I'm just kidding!
I mean, we were talking about how we wanted primary characters or main characters,
and we did look at those, but I didn't realize wandering mixed-up was one of those choices.
I'm really surprised.
Very, very surprised by that.
Okay, the whole panel, there's so many watering cards in the audience.
Take care.
This will be a signing panel if we do every single one.
But thank you guys.
All right, maybe we'll get lucky and there'll be another question about signing things.
All right, we're ready.
3, either 1, 3, or 4, oh come on!
No! No! No!
Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!
Alright, we got a red 5!
That's ultimate!
That is another ultimate?
Is this...
Is this ultimate for me to read Japanese?
Uh oh.
What? This is Japanese.
Great question.
Okay, so I'll translate it back into English, I guess.
So, I believe the question reads,
What does Yoshida-san think about the black mage in the evolved mode, the new evolved black mage?
So good. So nice.
So good. So nice.
I talked about it yesterday.
I talked about it on the internet.
So I mentioned this yesterday. We do have the 21 jobs that are being put into that Evolve mode.
And I had an opportunity to check it for the first time in a state where you can control it.
So I've done a preliminary sort of controls check.
Of course, we will be using the contents further in the future
to adjust the number of actions and actions.
We will continue to do that for 9 months.
The development is going very smoothly.
We are also doing the second check of the blockmage.
And so from here, we would look at the different jobs
and utilize them in different content or battles
and look at the different actions that are in the skill set,
look at the numbers, and make adjustments from there,
and we will continue to refine it over the next nine months.
But, yeah, I think development is progressing smoothly,
and again, I was able to get a feel of the sort of preliminary controls.
Of course, there are some parts that are feedback-based, but I would like to continue with Mr. Prime.
Black Manger, you said that you want to touch Black Manger the most.
And of course I've provided some feedback and then we're continuously refining it and Mr. Prime are Hikaru Tamaki.
He especially, he especially told me that Yoshida-san, you play Black Mage a lot.
So you got to test it many times to make sure that, and check, and we'll make adjustments
on the Black Mage.
And when I go back to Japan, I will have another round of checks to do.
So we're going to strive to make it even better and even more interesting.
All right, we're still missing one and six.
I'm a Korean.
Oh yeah.
I feel like this is cheating.
Okay, okay.
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
They are going down the...
This has got to be rigged.
Cheating, cheating.
They already are ready for you.
Alright, so the question is, could we ever see race-specific battle stances like in Final Fantasy XI?
This is a battle stance, you know?
It's a Kamai stance.
When they pose as if they're going into battle, right?
When you switch stance...
It's a Kamai stance, you know?
Battle stance.
So like, you know, when the...
Yeah, but...
It's a job...
It's a job of a family, right?
And race specific, right?
Eh, but...
Like a race...
But, you know...
It's ultimate.
It's a weapon...
Yeah, you need to have a weapon in mind, right?
But that would mean not just race, but we also have to consider what weapon they're holding, right?
In battle stance, right?
That said, per race,
Well, I think this is also close to Emote, so I think it's possible to customize it.
Well, I think it's likely to be able to perform in a place where you can customize the action skin a little bit yesterday.
That said, with the different sort of animation per the races, each individual races,
I think it's close to what we do with the emotes and so perhaps, yeah, it is a matter of customizing that,
which brings to mind what I mentioned about in the upcoming expansion.
You will have character animation skin where you can sort of customize the look.
So that might be an avenue you can explore in terms of making a race specific or what you're trying to go for.
For example, when you're doing a TV animation, everyone is the same.
Everyone is the same.
So for example, when you teleport, the character animation for it is the same, no matter what character you're just going to float.
From 13 years, I'm sure people have gotten kind of used to or almost tired of looking at it.
And perhaps I'm sure people would like to get a different look to something else.
And so, because we are developing such a system where you can sort of choose a different animation for some motions, I think it might be more realistic to see requests like these becoming fulfilled.
Okay. Thank you very much.
All right, let's go back to the board.
Gosh, we only have three more Ultimate left.
Wow!
Don't look at... I didn't... I didn't... It's a dice!
It's a dice!
You're rolling it!
This is another red one.
That's a lot earlier than...
That is very strange.
This is gotta be some kind of sheep.
I'm in trouble.
Ahhhh.
No.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Hold on.
What's going on, hold on, hold on, is this really a question?
There's a question mark.
Question mark!
Request plus question mark.
No, it's just a question!
No question!
That's a good question.
I got it.
I got it.
First of all, from the conclusion, I understand that we have already done it once seriously, but we haven't done it yet.
We have done it again on Graphics Update, so we will do our best to compete with the technical artists and the top models in Japan.
We promise to do this at this point.
to consider this but now that we've done our graphical update I'm gonna go back
once more and talk to the top of the technical artists and then the character
modelers and see we're going to discuss it. I will promise you that.
So I want to say one thing, your butt...
the butt large. So say you had a sword sheath on your side. You had a cave hanging behind
your back. And if the butt is larger than it's supposed to be, it's going to stick out.
You're going to see some flipping.
What is everyone saying?
Oh, Xenos. Xenos?
Xenos?
Xenos?
Xenos.
Xenos is done, right?
Yeah, I understand.
I'm just relaying. I didn't vouch.
I'm losing.
I understand.
I'm dying.
I'm dying.
I'm wiped.
No.
Okay.
I'll stop dragging my feet.
I'll try to talk about it.
I'll discuss it with my team once again.
Well, the good news is you only have two ultimate left, so I mean, at this point, it's smooth sailing.
Ultimate is scary!
You made ultimate, I mean...
Yeah!
Our very first flag!
You seem very triumphant.
Alright, let's take a look at our very first...
Okay.
Aww!
Everyone's...
Your fondest memory of working on 14 at any time during development.
2012 through 2026.
Thank you for the dates!
This might actually be in the blue category, the easy category, the normal, but the answer to this is the very first fan festival, the one we did in Las Vegas in 2014.
And the reason why is...
And the reason why is...
Well, 1.0 is in a very difficult state.
We all work together to create an RLM ribbon.
And in the meantime, many players around the world
have supported it and released some ARR.
And my next goal is to release an expansion.
One more thing is to open a fan-face, and globally.
I thought it was a way to express my gratitude to the players,
so I had the goal at the time.
First of all, I can finally achieve that.
Because I will announce the Heaven's Word there,
it is a great memory to be able to realize that.
So the reason why is that with the original launch, and that being a very rocky start,
we worked so hard and worked together to create a Realm Reborn, and even throughout that process
the players around the world provided their support and we were able to get to releasing
a Realm Reborn.
And so my goals immediately after that was to work towards being able to release an expansion
for Final Fantasy XIV and plus do a festival of sorts, a festival for the fans and do it
in a global scale and convey my thanks to the players for sticking with us.
And that was kind of like my goal after Around We're Born.
And it came true with being able to announce Heaven's Word.
Actually, I'm curious now, who here did attend the 2014 Las Vegas FanFest?
Thank you.
Oh, thank you.
Well, it's finally the opening.
The teaser trailer of Heaven's Word is coming out.
It's the first time I've ever had a stage performance.
The teaser trailer will be released after the show is over.
I was waiting for that timing.
And so when we got to Fan Festival, and then we were going to play the teaser trailer for Heaven's Word as our sort of opener,
and I was waiting on the stage sleeve to do my very first keynote.
And once the trailer finished playing, I heard this loud applause and cheer, and it was just so much that I suddenly became nervous.
I can't forget the moment when I was invited to the show.
It's one of my most memorable moments.
And so, although I'm nervous, I have to go on stage
because keynote, and then once I stepped out,
that cheer that I heard after the opening trailer,
it spanned into three times the loudness when I got on stage.
And I was blown away.
I was here to thank the cut the players, but then I just received so much power from that
And I cannot forget that even to this day
I was nervous
I was very nervous and I tried to do my best in trying to speak through my keynote.
So I go and introduce different elements of this new expansion that we're going to be releasing
and explain, explain, explain.
So I got through, okay, I was able to express everything that I needed to do and had planned for.
And then we segwayed into the opening ceremonies and then we did our greetings and, okay, I fulfilled my role and I go back.
And as soon as I got off of the stage, I wanted to check the reactions on the social channel,
so I went on to check.
And a lot of the comments said, wait, that's it?
That was so short.
It's end?
What?
Did it end?
Did it end?
When I checked, it was supposed to be an hour and a half to do this keynote.
this keynote. So 90 minute keynote turned out to be 65 minutes.
So until then I didn't really keep time.
But since then, time-keeping is really important, so I've been thinking about it.
Since then, I've been thinking about where to spend my time, and where to do ad-libs.
Since then, I've been very mindful about keeping with the allotted time,
I'm making sure that I am kind of pacing myself,
making sure that there's a good allocation of what I'm going
to speak if I need to improvise and do stuff like that and be a
little bit more mindful when I build my outline to speak.
Last but not least, we had a discussion with Evercold's teaser trailer for the first time,
and we were able to get the full version of the teaser of the teaser.
But one last thing, when we revealed the teaser for EverCold, and I stepped onto the stage
for keynote this year, the cheers, the cheer that I heard from everybody here, I think was
still loud as this time around.
Yes.
Thank you guys.
Okay.
All right.
Okay.
Alright.
Ehhhh!
Oh.
Oh!
Oh.
Ah!
Hey.
Another one.
You only have the same eyes!
We're keeping, we keep getting the same eyes.
Yeah, that's right.
That's another one.
We only get the same food.
We keep getting the same...
That's strange. That's weird.
So the question is, will we ever get crabs and aquariums?
I love fish, but would love to see jellies and crabs.
Oh, ho ho ho.
How do you get the sweet soul meat?
Of course, I like fish, but I want to put crabs and crabs in it.
I think it's easy.
Understood.
Okay.
Yeah, this should be easy.
Yeah, easy, easy.
So easy.
I guess that's a yes.
I guess that's a yes.
I said it's easy, but they're like that's not easy.
No, it's just that I'm not good at making fun of them.
Is it jellyfish, right?
If they're translucent?
Maybe it's that translucent challenge, but maybe.
Maybe so easy.
Hey, we'll take it maybe so easy.
No way!
Okay guys, he's on to us. Turn it off.
Alright, can you make long hair options please?
Like long enough to wear it is made lower back, upper hair.
No way!
Okay guys, he's on to us. Turn it off.
Alright, can you make long hair options please?
long enough to where it is made lower back upper butt question mark
I'm missing a question mark but they forgot the question mark but it's a question
no question it was it was too long so we had to it was all we had to delete it
this is not to go to hell
oh my god you're making that up aren't you
Can you make long hair, long hair, long hair, options, please like long enough to where is, maybe, where is, maybe?
For example, I want a super-long rule that fits the area of the stars, the top of the stars.
Oh, sorry, it's not a question.
Can you make it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wait, wait, wait.
Saki wa oshiri.
Now we want long hair.
I mean, it's similar to what I said earlier, all of you warriors of light would have your
sword sheath at your side or maybe you have a scythe on your back.
you have long hair that might get accidentally you know it's danger it's
I mean I I have to take care of our players here yeah yeah you have to
take care
Zeno's gets everything!
That's not fair to bring up Zeno's!
Long hair tends to kind of flow and so it moves.
So say you take a combat action, and your hair would naturally have to move with you.
That is very tough to animate.
So I mean, if you want hair with no bones and rigging and it's just flat, right, that
doesn't move.
Sure.
Yeah, it will literally be so stiff.
And I'm sure that's not what you're expecting.
Just because I'm wearing Nike shoes, I can't just do it.
I got it, I got it.
Okay, okay, I hear you.
I hear you.
I will ask the team about butt, sliders, and hair.
Don't talk, Zenos. Please.
Don't bring up Zenos.
Yeah, please.
I hate Zenos.
Only one left. I mean, what are the odds?
Safe. Safe.
No, what do you mean safe?
It's not ultimate.
Alright, let's see.
How does the team decide what new jobs should be added to the game?
Just in case those who are watching in Japan, I'm going to translate it into Japanese.
How do you decide when the new job will be added to the 14?
It will be a little long, but is that okay?
The answer to this question is going to be a bit long, is that okay?
So before we select the specific job that'll be introduced into the new game, we look at
the new expansion, sorry.
We look at the roles and decide on what we want to introduce in a new expansion.
And of course, when we look at the player data and information that we have on hand,
We do see that the DPS role typically has the most players in terms of what they mean.
As such, recently whenever we think about a new expansion and introducing the two jobs,
we would like for one to be accepted or like well received and enjoyed by as many players
as possible.
And so we've recently been always including one DPS rolled job.
Of course, it might change down the line, but then that's what's been our process in the recent years.
how much healer is used, and how much tank should be used,
how much healer should be used, and how much DPS should be used.
That's the first thing I'll decide.
And looking at the other job and determining whether it's going to be a tank, healer, or DPS role
is dependent on how many players or what the status of,
I guess, the players and which tanks are being used and how many people are playing it,
or be it a healer and try to look at them, what's out there currently,
and check to see if we need to add, say, another tank or another healer,
or are we okay with going with two DPSs for the two new jobs?
And once we have the roles decided,
we'll have to start with the battle system team.
I think there are five of us now.
There were three of us until recently,
but we've finally reached five.
We're going to do a contest with a team
that has the Prime team.
A job-idea contest.
And once we have the roles decided, then we look to the battle system team.
I believe there are five members in that team.
It used to be three people, but we had more people join, including Mr. Prime.
And then we hold a bit of a competition or a contest where they can pitch ideas for a new job.
And so the team looks at the ideas that were pitched during that time and decide which one would have the potential to be the most fun or most interesting.
And for example, when we implemented the Pictomancer,
it was a job that was released in the FFF processing series,
but I think it was also used in the idea contest
to create an interesting job with Pictomancer,
and that's what we used.
And for example, Pictomancer, when we were looking at this,
Of course, it is based on an existing Final Fantasy job,
but during that sort of idea competition, idea contest,
the person not only suggested the picked-a-mancer job,
but they had a concept that they pitched to the team
of how they can make this fun and interesting.
And this time, in the case of EverCold, there are 5 tanks coming out, and 3 Rengis and DPS are coming to the final.
Well, they're coming to the final, so I'll go in and discuss with them and go with this.
I decided that there was no such job in the FF series until now.
I decided that there was no such job in the FF series until now.
So, what I've decided to do first is to focus on the game experience, whether it's interesting or not.
to kind of refine the idea even further.
And looking at the gameplay or like how the job feels
when you control it was different than that
of what we had in our Final Fantasy series thus far.
And so we decided it's going to be a 14 original job.
So I guess the process of selecting jobs
kind of depends on like what kind of experience
we want to deliver.
How do we make it fun and interesting?
Well, if you keep talking about this, you might end up talking about the new job, so I'll stop.
But if I keep talking, I might spill something about the new job, so I'm going to stop there.
That said, there is one thing that I am a little torn on.
Final Fantasy XIV, you see, every job has a different weapon.
So with Final Fantasy 14, each job has different weapons, right?
And every time we run into this conundrum of, well, what kind of weapon do we want to have this job?
I would love some ideas on what kind of weapons we might want to see in-game.
Hold on, hold on, hold on.
Crossbow, okay.
Hammer, hammer, hammer, hammer.
Punch?
Punching?
That's Monk though.
Oh.
A gun in a sword?
A sword in a...
Oh.
A morning star.
Like a morning star.
Oh.
That.
That.
Yo-yo!
Yo-yo!
Yo-yo!
Yo-yo is easy to make.
I mean, yo-yo would be easy to make.
I see.
Yes, yes.
What is that?
What is that?
A whip?
No, I know that.
It's hard to make a whip.
I'm really challenging to animate.
So we heard a lot of different ideas come up and we actually heard one that pertains to the new job.
But I will not say which one it is.
K!
No! Red!
At least it's the last one.
It's the last one!
It's the last one. It's the last one.
We still have plenty of time. Don't worry, Joe.
There's still plenty of time left.
So the question is, with the new Glamour updates announced, are there any plans to add additional
glamour plates.
This time, there was a lot of updates about Mirapuri, and
because of that, there are plans to increase the number of plates.
I know, I'm sure that begs that question.
I'm sure you would think of that.
of that. Because you have now an even wider option to a variety to glimmer into. Of course
everybody would want more plates. I understand. It's such a process though. I know. I know.
I know. I know.
So, as you're aware, you can change instantly with Glamour plates.
So warriors of light, I know how messy our inventory can get.
And these plates are also considered your inventory items.
And with this upcoming expansion, you'll be able to match with other, do matchmaking with across the region now.
with that data of inventory plus climber plates, you'll be connected across the different worlds
within your region. I really don't want to increase that load.
So I mean, I hear lovely words of encouragement, you can do it, and we believe in you, but
the people who will actually be working on the system to accommodate for that is the server
team.
But the server team is now working on the matchmaking cross-region.
Once they finish that work, and of course the top or the leader of the server team is
of course a very passionate 14 player. So maybe when he's in a really good mood after
we've done all that work, I might approach him, okay maybe we can start considering additional
things.
Please.
Please.
Well, well, well, but, well, but...
That's it, that's it.
Well, he's definitely watching.
But I'm sure he sees it too, so he does see it.
Yeah.
So this question I guess it is labeled under ultimate, but it's not an ultimate for Yoshida.
It's more for that leader of the server team.
I'm going to go back to Japan and bring that up.
He's kind of good.
Yeah, what happened when we roll a red?
Yeah.
We'll just, we'll just reroll.
I said turn it off guys, we got all the ultimates done.
You've gotta be cheating. Yeah.
How come? How come?
This is strange.
Goodbye.
Oh, oh, where did it look?
Black please.
Oh, oh, thank you.
Oh, oh.
Alright, the question is, what are the real names of the Arcadian fighters that weren't given any, like, the tyrant?
Can you tell us about the title of the title of the island that you can't give it to?
I see.
First of all, if you write it down, you can't teach it in this place.
So the answer to this question is that I'm unable to answer this here.
Why?
The reason why?
In the future, Final Fantasy XIV will be an anniversary in August, right?
There will be a lot of episodes and stories to be released there,
but we are planning to include the members of the Arcadion, so please look forward to it.
And the reason why is because with Final Fantasy 14, you know, we have a rising anniversary in August and we will be revealing, I guess, episodes, so to speak, and the fighters in Arcadian will be part of that feature.
The fact that someone from Arcadion can draw a few people is new information, but...
Matt, try to draw a little bit.
Two or five.
Heck everybody!
There! There! Blue!
there oh yeah we got a four okay which sign of the seventh dawn do you have
the greatest personal affinity towards Yoshida-san
What are the members of Akatsuki that you think of as a member of the team?
Of course, everyone thinks about it.
And since we've been trying to grow up to this point,
basically everyone has a strong memory.
I mean, with the members of the Scions, we put a lot of thought into writing them and then trying to grow them through the narrative, and so in that aspect, I love them all.
That said, if I had to pick just one...
Let's see.
The reason why is...
And when I was going to take on Final Fantasy XIV as my project and publicly announced that
I believe it was December 10th of 2010.
And so at the end of the year, we were going to have a giant meteor,
drop and kind of the climate he would hit and the plot of that story that the
meteor project I wrote the plot for that that's what I'm looking for
And so when we were thinking about that, the plot, I had to create this character that
would suddenly appear or like randomly appear in the towns and he would say something that
almost sounds like a prophecy of sorts and confuse people and have that sort of mysterious
or like a weird sort of vibe to him.
And we didn't have the bandwidth to create a fully brand new character model.
So we had an Elezen with a beard and have a hood over his head and have some glasses
or goggles to obfuscate his face.
And okay, that looks shady and weird enough, right?
This is Uri Enji.
But!
But!
That's why we were able to win the story of the past.
I'm a character like this.
What kind of character is this?
Because of that, I feel that through that sort of harsh path that he had to go through in the story,
he was able to sort of win that personality or like, this is the character that I'm going to become.
This is going to be what I'm going to become.
So we started off with this weird looking guy who would say weird things in very hard
to understand language.
As you go through the story and you see more and more of his sort of what he goes through,
He actually admits that I have a hard time expressing what I'm feeling inside and to be
able to verbalize it.
You see that he matures as an adult and by going through these different things that
he emotionally experiences over the narrative and being able to finally verbalize that
I think seeing that growth, I think, is really fulfilling, like, as somebody who was responsible
for bringing Oriangé to life, I'm really glad that we were able to depict that.
So, for example, when Oriangé talks with Rien and Shadowbringer,
and when he meets Moonbrina in Endwalker,
he's crying while adjusting the cutscene.
He's been trying so hard to adjust it, but he never checked it.
And so, for example, when Oriangé talks with Rean and Shadowbringers and also in Endwalker when he meets Moonbrutus' parents and has to kind of face them after what had happened.
And every time I would work on the cutscene and to do my checks, like I was crying.
And whenever it came true for review, I would cry every time.
Well, even now, I'm just going to cry because I'm talking to him.
But that's about it.
Well, his journey is still going on, and I'm still looking forward to it, and I don't know much about it.
I'm really happy to have a friend who can tell me that he's going to be able to understand some of the things I don't know about.
I hope he can grow up and take the journey with you all.
I mean, just talking about it is getting me a little teary, but Oryanje's story will continue.
He may still be kind of not unintelligible, I guess.
I think he's become a little more modernized.
But I mean, you will continue to see him grow, and he will continue on this journey.
So I hope everybody continues to watch over him.
I think it's the last one, right?
Let's go back. Let's see. I think we're on the last hard one.
I'm starting to feel a little nervous.
Oh, oh, oh, I'm in this first role.
Yay!
Good luck!
Yay!
Yay!
Oh, no, black!
Sorry, Tony, black!
Why?
I just called!
It did stop!
I got a little too excited!
RNG gives and takes.
Alright, I miss my job mentors.
Any chance we can get job quests back?
Well, Jobquay?
What is it called?
It's called a role quest.
Jobquay?
Yes.
So, it's a job mentor.
Yes, yes.
So, it's a jobquay character.
Yes, yes.
Can you give us a chance to see your character?
Yes.
Especially, I want to see my...
My...
I want to see my...
I want to see my...
That's right.
Wait, wait, wait.
Question?
Yeah, that's a question.
See it?
Oh, back.
Yeah.
So, with jobs, I was able to get more jobs, and before, I used to make job actions by clearing job quests,
but it was difficult to balance them.
When the job results were fixed, it was difficult to change,
and it was difficult to change the level of income, so I decided to stop.
So, with job quests, first and foremost, the number of jobs that we have available now has become a lot, and so if we were to associate learning new actions through individual job quests would make it more difficult for balancing purposes, and so we'd have to consider about, okay, so at what level does one acquire certain job-specific actions?
And with the staggeringly large number of, or like the amount at which, at the rate at which,
the number of people who are in the job is increasing, the number of people who are in the job is increasing.
And with the staggeringly large number of or like the amount of which at the rate at which we increase the number of jobs that are available also makes it difficult for us to write stories for the individual jobs as well and to continue doing so it would be nigh impossible.
And so that's why we've kind of concluded the individual job quest.
and this is the reason why we've kind of like ended it there.
Well, that said, that said, the part that wasn't a question,
it is true that we've received
There's plenty of feedback that are similar to this, like they want to see Gorge again.
I want to create a timing that will take some time to come up with something.
I can't say when, but it's a high chance that I'll be able to do it.
I'd be happy if you could wait for that.
That said, the scenario team are very much aware of these characters that people want to revisit or see again, and so we may not be able to do it every time, so I don't want to get anybody's hopes up.
But I mean, even the team was asking me,
perhaps we can revisit some of these characters
that we've met in these job requests
and kind of write about what happened afterwards.
And if there is time to write for those characters.
And so I'm hoping that little by little we'll try to see
if there is an opportunity to revisit those characters.
All right, well with that I think we are just about out of time so let's give a round of
applause to Yoshida for answering our questions.
Let's give a huge round of applause to the dice.
I don't know.
Don't do it.
Don't do it.
Jump up, jump up, jump around.
What the hell?
No, it's red again.
Now it's going to bounce around.
Really quickly, before we leave...
Oh god.
What have you done?
Before we leave for the day,
This is the end of our broadcast stream for live stream.
So...
I see, I see.
Oh God.
Oh God.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
This is the end of the broadcast stream for those watching at home so we do want to give
you a huge thank you for tuning in and joining us here at the Fan Festival 2026 in Anaheim so
thank you everyone for watching.
But, you can still join us with the primals.
So feel free to grab that page stream and join us because it's going to be an amazing
show.
Yes.
Look forward to it.
All right.
All right, we'll see you all later. Get ready to rock!
I
I
and
and
and
and
and
Music
Music
Music
Music
Music
I've had enough of the modern times Calling to the flame, bleeding body
Soldiers of pain by the time Watching for what left behind
I
I'm gonna be so lonely
I'm gonna be so lonely
I need some money
I'm gonna close it
And now we're going
We're going to burn
I'm gonna burn some of this
And we're gonna burn
So good luck
I'm gonna burn
I'm gonna burn more
I'm gonna burn this very day
I
I can't believe it's you, I can't believe it's you
I'm so old and old, I'm so old
I'm so old, I'm so old
My name's not on it, it's me, baby, I'm so old
With you, the picture, me, did I just let it go?
I'm not your baby girl, but I can be smart
No, let your slipper sink me and I'll drive you wild
My heart is pure as this, and these kids don't cry
My throes are wildflowers, they do boil up
I'll be the bestest one at a scene
Turn it way down
I'm like a little super old
I'm straight on the street
I'll be your little brother
I'll be one
I'm not gonna lie
It can never be enough
I'll be your little brother
I'll be your little brother
You can go crazy
I'll be your little brother
I'll be your little brother
I'll be your little brother
Oh, son
Again
I'll be the super brother
Oh
We're so useless, you're a scoundrel.
My friends are wildflowers, they can't work on us.
And my folks are police, we have to lie.
Come take me home.
Darling, life is a lie.
In the very place of the police,
we are the people.
In the night, we are the people.
I am a small, awesome, up-doors.
But I want to see my main thing tonight.
I
I
I
I
I
I
To turn the tables, the sky is not quite
There are ones inside and there are ones there
But all we can do is lie, lie to me
And when I'm with you, can't you not hear me?
I'm in the middle of a little bit of a dream
I'm falling in love with you, but I'm so close to you
I'm just trying to make you fall in love with me
I'm just trying to make you fall in love with me
I'm just trying to make you fall in love with me
So many times I have to tell you I was born to learn to remember
Gonna learn to enjoy my freedom as I climb down
To learn to be nice and clean and be kind to someone else
So many times I have to tell you I was born to learn to be nice and clean and be kind to someone else
I
I want to be like you
I want to be like you
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
I
Our children can't live
Deep inside my head
I can't walk
So I'm going to sleep
Sleep in the dream
To the bottom of my heart
To the bottom of my heart
And I will come and I will see my dream come true
In the light of the day
So I'll be the first to know
What I've been doing
And what you've done
So I'll be the first to know
What I've been doing
And what you've done
So I'll be the first to know
What I've been doing
I can't believe it.
You're my only one,
my only one.
I'm your only one.
This time,
I'll set you free.
But I can't believe it.
I'm your only one.
I can't believe it.
I can't believe it.
I can't believe it.
I'm your only one.
Take the gun
With the spines of your sanity
Die
Because you were like a king that died
In time
You can't survive in your eyes
Before your eyes focus in the future
So I know I can, I can, I can
So I know you can't compare to me
You can't believe me, I can
So I know I can, I can
So I know I can
So I know I can
It's all ours in the world
Thanks for all you've got I know what it's gonna be
And now I'm gonna cry, cry, cry, cry
To the death of the devil
To the death of the devil
To the death of the devil
To the death of the devil
To the death of the devil
You can't be like me, all day, all day
You can't be like me
Already standing.
We need to stand.
We have the right to do what we're doing.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.