Earlier this month, Platinum Games held a closed beta for their upcoming action RPG, The Fall of Babylon. For the most part, feedback from testing looked pretty good, although some players noticed something familiar – the game reuses armor and emblems from Final Fantasy XIV. Producer Yosuke Saito says that’s because Square Enix lent them to Platinum, allowing developers to add more devices than originally planned.
“To the point: yes, Babylon’s Fall contains device data and emoji borrowed from Final Fantasy XIV,” he said in a blog post.
“When I gave a presentation about Babylon’s Fall at a company meeting, Final Fantasy XIV producer and director Naoki Yoshida were also present and asked for his help, I replied, ‘Yes, please! ‘ This is how the plan came to fruition. We then carefully deployed the data while working closely with the Final Fantasy XIV team.”
Ultimately, Saito says this has allowed Platinum to add a wider range of gear and emojis. He also notes that the reason it was so obvious in the beta is that a lot of the stuff FFXIV borrowed was converted to mid-tier gear (the kind that levelers would play in). Babylon’s Fall is said to also have a lot of “unique” things of its own.
Yoshi-P also concurs with his own statement about all of this, saying:
“I’m a huge fan of online games myself, a gamer and a developer. That’s why I couldn’t be happier if Babylon’s Fall succeeds and revives online games. of Japan while also increasing the number of players in the genre, so I said, “Let’s use FFXIV assets too. We have so many, it would be a shame to limit them to FFXIV,” and that’s how it all started.”
As far as the explanation goes, this is a pretty good one. If you have good assets, why not share them? I’m sure it took a long time to put together so many different skins and emotes, it seems like effective game design to lend things like this to other developers.
“We apologize for any concerns this has caused,” added Saito. “We’re working hard on the game’s development to not let players down and appreciate your continued support.”
Babylon’s Fall is expected to arrive on PC and PlayStations next year. Ed and Katharine shook hands, and while they love to fight, they have a few concerns about grinding.
“Questions remain around progression and whether there will be rich ways to improve,” they wrote. “But overall, I’d say we had a pretty good time. Then a thumbs-up from us, and fingers crossed the developers successfully spun. this crunchy battle core into a more dungeon crawler.”
