Final Fantasy 14 devs wanted to get the Pixel Remaster games playable in the MMO

Final Fantasy 14's devs tried to get the Pixel Remaster games playable in the MMO, but found it to be impossible.

Speaking at a roundtable interview at FanFest last week, as attended by GamesRadar+, director Naoki Yoshida revealed a pretty fascinating new detail. It turns out the Final Fantasy 14 developers have been experiment with getting old Final Fantasy games playable in the MMO for well over a year.

"And with like, the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster series coming out, we thought that wouldn't it be cool if we can play that in the Gold Saucer?" Yoshida revealed. However, the feature wasn't to be, as Square Enix's developers quickly realized the new remasters were running on "middleware."

"So because it's running on middleware, if you want to implement that into 14, you'd have to build another system that can play back the middleware inside the game. So it's like you're building a system of a game to play a system of a game. It's just this weird configuration," the game director explained.

Square Enix isn't entirely done with the idea, though. Yoshida joked that if there's a "super programmer" out there who thinks they're up to the mammoth task, Square Enix would happily accept their job application. The director's joking around, but he's still in love with Final Fantasy 14 as a "theme park" for the series, with references to other games dotted around for players to uncover.

One such reference is a new race in the upcoming Dawntrail expansion, which act as a huge throwback to Final Fantasy 10. No, we're still not getting Blitzball in Final Fantasy 14, so this new race will have to make do as the chief throwback to the classic RPG, for now at least.

Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail arrives next year in summer 2024, heralding the start of the next big adventure for the Scions of the Seventh Dawn.