Final Fantasy 16 producer Naoki Yoshida worked on a new Bloodborne-style Square Enix IP.
Recently, speculation surrounding the release of Final Fantasy 16 has drawn some attention to the game’s producer Naoki Yoshida. Yoshida is a popular figure at Square Enix thanks to his successful Producer Letter event for Final Fantasy 14. Final Fantasy 16 and Final Fantasy 14, however, are not Yoshida’s only projects from Square Enix. Details were recently discovered regarding a canceled game Yoshida developed that is described as similar to Bloodborne.
This news has actually been around for a long time, but few people have paid much attention to it, as it was originally written in the book Yoshida Uncensored in Japanese that was released many years ago. It took too long for it to be discovered by the international community, with ResetEra user Dreamboum sharing a fan-translated version of the book in which Yoshida and the Square Enix developers talked about the failure. failure of an IP like Bloodborne. This Square Enix game Bloodborne was developed before FromSoftware’s Bloodborne game was released, much to the surprise of all.
Yoshida’s Bloodborne is no ordinary RPG, but he says it’s a “quite tough” action game. That’s a rare direction for a Square Enix game. Furthermore, Square Enix’s game has a gothic style that includes many of the same weapons and guns as Bloodborne. Yoshida said that the first time he saw Bloodborne, he couldn’t help but wonder, “How does this look familiar?”
While there are some surprising similarities between the two projects, Square Enix’s action game is also very different in other respects. The biggest difference is that Yoshida’s project is a game that focuses on multiplayer. It was intended to be a game experience like Evolve or Dead by Daylight, with a team of four players going up against a single strong enemy. It also has some sci-fi elements, although it could be argued that Bloodborne is also geared towards the sci-fi horror genre.
Square Enix’s project was eventually canceled. Yoshida didn’t explain why, but said that if it hadn’t been cancelled, he’d probably still be working on it at the moment. From the way Yoshida puts it, we can at least speculate that this looks like a challenging project. Looking back, there are many games that have tried to replicate both the 4v1 gameplay and the experience style of Dark Souls and have failed. Square Enix seems to have experience, so it decided to stop the project early.
While it’s disappointing that Bloodborne gamers won’t get the chance to experience the similar Square Enix title produced by Yoshida, it also leads to another rather positive outcome. Not only Yoshida, but also Final Fantasy 16’s game director has worked on Square Enix’s Bloodborne before, along with other developers. Final Fantasy 16 has a dark style with soulslike gameplay that would never have been possible without this canceled previous game.
See also: Outriders make no profit in 2021