Final Fantasy 14's beloved writer has stepped back from writing duties

Final Fantasy 14's lead writer has stepped back into a more managerial role after the Endwalker expansion.

Final Fantasy 14's FanFest in Las Vegas just wrapped up, and during the festivities was a panel from famed game writer Natsuko Ishikawa, reflecting on her career throughout the MMO. The presentation from Ishikawa revealed that after Endwalker launched, the writer transitioned into managing and editing the game's writing team instead of directly writing the main scenario.

This means Ishikawa, beloved for her writing on both the Shadowbringers and Endwalker expansions, isn't technically writing Final Fantasy 14's story anymore. This might be sad news to fans of Ishikawa's work (and there are many out there), but at least the former writer is still working on the game in an editorial role.

The panel also revealed Endwalker has more words than War and Peace, in case you were wondering. To be fair to the post below, it's not as if Ishikawa single-handedly wrote all 244,649 words in the expansion purely by herself - there'll be a writing team of at least several developers working on the writing over the course of several years.

Elsewhere in the festivities, Square Enix revealed the Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail expansion, which is scheduled to launch in summer 2023. The developer also revealed that Final Fantasy 14 patch 6.5 will be released in two parts: the first in October, and the second in January 2024. We finally know when the MMO will start gearing up for its next big outing.

The Final Fantasy 14 free trial is also including Stormblood, which means we'll have to update that famed copypasta text.