Final Fantasy XIV Director and Producer Naoki Yoshida spoke to Sony about the Endwalker expansion for its PlayStation Blog. Multiple elements came up related to new content. The FFXIV Reaper class, one of the two debuting in this expansion, came up. In addition to explaining how it uses a scythe and voidsent avatars to attack, Yoshida explained how these avatars can be used in battle. One method will involve a player becoming a “host” for a voidsent.
Yoshida explained the voidsent will be used in two ways by a FFXIV Reaper. One is to have it attack on its own. However, players will also “host” it in some way. Here’s what he said.
The major difference between Reaper and the other melee DPS jobs is its use of voidsent “avatars,” which came up during our brainstorm sessions as we discussed the grim reaper idea. The player will not just attack using the avatar, but in the end, you can serve as the host for the avatar, in order to unleash more attacks.
Yoshida explained how the FFXIV Reaper class came to be. It all started with the idea of having a scythe weapon. Then, things fell into place.
Many players around the world, especially those from the West, had been requesting the addition of a job that uses a large, two-handed scythe—we used the idea of a two-handed scythe weapon as a base, and started brainstorming ideas for new jobs from there. I asked several game designers who are involved in the creation of new jobs to take some liberties and submit their ideas—we discussed those ideas to make our decision.
One idea that came up was to utilize not only the player’s own aether, but to combine it with a different source of aether to fight in battle. It was from there that we came up with the idea of a grim reaper from the scythe aspect, and from there it was a fairly straightforward process to settle on the reaper’s current form. A scythe and the grim reaper. It’s unexpectedly straightforward.
Final Fantasy XIV is available for the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC. Its Endwalker expansion will appear on November 23, 2021.
