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acquired-stardust · 23 days ago

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Special Feature: Vana'diel - Digital Archaeology in 2025 and the Soul of Adventure (Final Fantasy XI, 2002)

Acquired Stardust is back after a long hiatus from writing with this special feature! Want to know what we've been up to over the holidays? Click through to read Ash's long story about uncovering a living fossil and checking off a bucket list item together with Larsa through their adventures in Final Fantasy XI's Vana'diel!

The love of and desire for 'adventure', even vicariously, is something that has been etched into the very soul of humanity from the earliest stages of our history - the oldest surviving literary narrative, Sumer's Epic of Gilgamesh, is over four thousand years old. From the time written language came into being we have dreamed of stories of great heroes roaming the land, contending with crisis and gods in equal measure.

The subject of today's feature is a series that itself often hearkens back to the Epic of Gilgamesh with abundant references throughout its now 16 mainline entries and countless spinoffs, and to really understand it in context is difficult given just how much the world has changed since the release of Final Fantasy XI in 2002 (arriving in America two years later). So different in fact it almost sounds like another world itself.

The early aughts were an incredible time to grow up, and it's one of the times in my life I've personally felt a sense of adventure most strongly. As a child of the first generation to grow up with easy access to computers in the home it felt like a time of infinite possibilities. Large numbers of emergent technologies and innovations had begun to rapidly change youth culture as well as erode the old order of isolated regional cultures. The rollout of broadband 'high speed' internet in 2001 to my area was a huge deal, finally breaking upstate New York out of dial-up internet limitations now unimaginable. Video games and the hardware on which they ran got infinitely more complex. Media from Japan continued its controlled flow into the west as anime like Dragon Ball Z left its indelible mark on my generation.

Somewhere in this confluence of rapidly expanding technology and rapidly shrinking cultural borders I found myself coming of age. Growing up in upstate New York with Knox's Headquarters quite literally in my backyard gave me an early love of history, but growing up a 'latchkey kid' afforded me control of my own time - I could do what I wanted when I wanted to do it all with minimal, if any, supervision. I was able to throw myself into whatever pursuit I wanted to without anyone looking over my shoulder, to decide for myself what I was interested in and who I was to become. The opportunity to find myself on my own is one I'm eternally grateful for, and to have done it in a time before far-right pipelines were anywhere near as omnipresent as they are now was a real blessing.

How this shaped up was, unsurprisingly, that I played a lot of primarily Japanese video games and watched a lot of anime. But in the early aughts there was still a comparatively very slow trickle of those things available in the west, and I was drawn primarily to two outlets that could expand my awareness of them. One was Cartoon Network's [Adult Swim] brand which would become a huge cultural player in itself and is perhaps a story for another time. The other was twice-defunct television channel G4, focused largely around video game programming such as documentaries in its series Icons and even airing thematically structured compilations of trailers, cutscenes and gameplay with Cinematech.

My love for history really blossomed in this period into complete obsession with hobbies. History was in my backyard, but it was also everywhere and In every little thing. And there were so many more 'little things' than I had ever previously known. The world was far bigger than I had ever imagined. There was always something new to see, each with its own universe of things to know about it. It was like surfing an incredible alternative cultural wave, topping the peak alongside countless other misfit kids of the Bush years. It's an experience unlike many others I've had in my life, and an incredibly special time that I will never forget. It created innumerable core memories, sometimes even from the slightest of things. One such core memory leads us directly to today's article.

The day itself was not unlike any other. I'd arrived home from school to an empty apartment and sat myself in front of the TV to spend my time on what I really wanted to be studying. As the aforementioned program Cinematech aired a rerun of one of its regular episodes I was caught off guard by a commercial for the then-upcoming Final Fantasy XI. It was a quick 30-second spot, but utterly arresting to someone who had up until that point (and indeed to this day) been completely obsessed with Final Fantasy. The game itself looked like one of the coolest things I'd ever seen, but the narration and logo noting that the game was 'online' blew my mind at the time. While certainly not the first Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, it was the first one I'd personally encountered and the prospect of being able to interact with other Final Fantasy fans within the specific context of a Final Fantasy game rather than discussion of it was extremely tantalizing.

But there were a lot of questions to be asked. What was an online game? How did an online adapter work and how much did it cost? You'd have to pay a monthly subscription to play it? And what exactly was an HDD, anyway? Rather than deal with the hassle of answering these questions (which were likely to be met with a swift and completely understandable 'no' when the inevitable monetary costs were discussed) I drifted away into other areas of my hobbies. But the core memory of seeing this game for the first time had stayed with me all these years, and Final Fantasy XI had become something of a white whale to me. A game I'd always wanted to experience but never had the time or extra money for. An opportunity I missed out on, a time and place I should have been in. Part of that great cultural wave I should've surfed.

Larsa and I discussed getting into the game almost every year we've known each other (note: that's a long time) and always ultimately decided against it as we were already busy enough. That all changed in the later days of 2024 when we finally took the plunge and bought the game on Steam, a bundle containing all of the expansions for the game as well as a free 30 day subscription.

There are no two ways about it, Final Fantasy XI is extremely antiquated. In fact it's a game so old that it was released before Squaresoft even became Square-Enix. Setup of the game's PlayOnline launcher, notoriously referred to as 'the first boss of the game', is a pain and can alone filter out many looking to experience the game proper and we admittedly ran into a snag or two that at first did not look good for our future with it. But managing to make it through the initial hurdles was rewarded almost immediately precisely because the game is so antiquated. The PlayOnline launcher is a living fossil reminiscent of an earlier, intermediary intersection of culture and technology - a less connected world without social media or smartphones. Built-in mail services, profiles with information sections like hobbies, 129 pages of selectable avatars many of which from then-contemporary Square games such as Threads of Fate (1999), Ehrgeiz (1998) and Brave Fencer Musashi (1998) as well as other Final Fantasy games. It presents a shared language and collective frame of reference for culture of the era with the inclusion of some of those games that are now functionally extinct.

The PlayOnline launcher feels like walking the hallowed halls of not just a museum, but a genuine slice of time rather than a recreation or kayfabed reenactment. It feels like walking through a time portal directly to the transitional period between web 1.0 and 2.0. Absolutely remarkable to the point that I felt speechless fiddling around in its menus, its ability to remain untouched by modernization is nothing short of astounding. They say that you can never truly get your childhood back but the PlayOnline launcher feels like it manages to genuinely capture the way the world, and indeed the way we, were at the time. Like returning home after two-plus decades away only to discover everything is exactly the same as you left it.

There's a real sense of peace, wonder and belonging unlike much I've ever felt before. It was like spotting land from ocean and I was simply overcome with emotion. Overcome with the sudden acute awareness of loss, and having managed to regain some of what was lost. Overcome with the feeling of many people, each with their own lives and complex as my own, having tread these same halls over the course of what was now decades. Fiddling around with the launcher was genuinely one of the most surreal and vivid experiences of my life. And the absolute whirlwind of nostalgia wasn't through with me yet, the opening scene of the game featuring the iconic Uematsu-composed Prelude and narration by the actor who first made me want to get into the arts in Michael McConnohie. The game's English cast in general features many actors who defined that generation of voice acting and adds to the overall feeling of being a moment trapped in time.

Players are able to create one singular character (with the option to purchase more character creation slots for an additional fee), selecting from different playable races with their own distinct physical features, stat advantages and disadvantages. Character creation is rather limited by current standards, with each playable race having two 'genders', each having a number of preset faces and hairstyles. You are able to alter your character's height, but that is all the player can do in terms of customization beyond selecting preset faces and hairstyles, which are themselves tied to each other. The playable races are by and large the same initial races available in Final Fantasy XIV, though I find the Mithra preferable to XIV's Miqo'te as they're a bit more bestial and less anime catgirl. Much of the aesthetic is also rather similar to XIV, with plenty of recurring gear visuals recycled into XIV (along with plenty of monsters), though some of the cloth armor is more elaborate and creative as opposed to XIV's deluge of generic healer robes you will be inundated with. After creating your character you select one of three nations to hail from, each with their own storyline that ultimately converges by the time the final battle of the base game rolls around.

Larsa and I (playing Mithra and Tarutaru, respectively) embarked on Windurst's story, and the antiquated nature of the game is felt pretty much immediately. There are no quest markers and very little information about where to go or what to do, or even how. You will be thrown right into the deep end and expected to find your own way and make your own adventure. Maps are invaluable items able to be purchased by players for most of the game's expansive and sometimes rather empty areas, otherwise they will be flying blind. which can be very troublesome but helps the overall feeling of an adventure. It helps you connect more with the world and learn where things are. Roughly the first thirty hours of gameplay was spent exclusively on leveling our characters, figuring out the battle system and exploring, without nearly a single story scene due to focusing on experiencing the game naturally rather than following one of countless sometimes variously outdated guide.

On that front, the gameplay is certainly of a very slow pace for better or worse. Battles are menu-based like classic Final Fantasy games as opposed to the more modern action game style, and players' main form of damage in combat will be through auto attacks against creatures that for the first time appear in the world rather than as separate random encounters one loads into. These auto attacks can be quite quick (with some of the quicker classes being able to land more than one blow per attack) although some weapons will attack significantly slower. Actions taken during battle charge a TP meter that the player will be able to spend on 'weaponskills', damaging named attacks with their own built-in typing that can react to and resonate with other weaponskills resulting in an even more damaging 'skillchain', itself being further able to be paired with a magic spell for a 'magic burst' that applies even more escalating damage.

Figuring this system out is fun and can considerably speed up combat, and is another area in which the game encourages experimentation, rewarding those willing to invest time in tinkering with the game's six basic jobs (the player is able to freely swap to any of these basic jobs, and later the many advanced jobs as they are unlocked, in their housing) and multitude of available weapon types. Jobs are additionally able to be expanded through combination, assigning another unlocked job as a sub job that grants you access to that job's abilities, stats and gear in addition to those of your main job.

The pace of the game being rather slow works in its favor in regards to how its multitude of mechanics function together. It feels like every single action and event matters. Status effects such as poisoning, silencing and blinding can now turn the tide of battle one way or another. MP, which the player uses primarily to cast spells, recovers extremely slowly and so their use of it must be carefully managed lest they be forced to literally sit down for minutes at a time to rest and recover. Items such as potions and ethers are incredibly valuable as a consequence of this. There is genuinely so much room for skill expression, planning and executing battles and it's very refreshing compared to many modern games.

The system itself, while deep and rewarding of knowledge, also has lots of little touches that help keep the experience from being excruciating. One example is the cursor memory effect that allows you to quickly recast spells and abilities as needed. Just as well in the years since release the game has seen the additon of the Trust system, an array of collectable NPC summons that scale to the player's level and fill multiple roles in the party that helps mitigate the declining playerbase and the large variance in levels and progress between the players that do still play.

These Trusts are able to be summoned at nearly any time and resummoned after falling in battle on a short timer, and they really help the experience of progressing through the game a ton. Speaking of timers and the overall pace of the game, it seems to be a recurring and somewhat intrusive element of the experience that you will likely have an opinion on one way or the other. On the one hand it makes actions matter tremendously, and on the other it can sometimes feel like every action including map traversal is stretched in hopes of milking players for subscription money.

Time gates themselves are not terribly uncommon to run into, with the quest that unlocks the samurai job featuring a several-hour real world wait associated with it that is wholly unnecessary. Final Fantasy XI is very much unafraid to make you spend your time with things like RNG drops for quests and conditional monster spawns. Some of this design philosophy also crept its way into the original version of Final Fantasy XIV, the notorious 1.0 that nearly spelled financial doom for Square Enix after a turbulent period.

The base game's story scenes are few and far between, with a certain level of gravitas to the fade-to-black that comes with a cutscene due in part to that infrequency but just as much with how purposefully they are interspersed. The story itself is, at least at first, a bit simplistic and reminiscent of a rather vanilla Dungeons and Dragons campaign. Which works in the game's favor quite well as a platform for authentic and spontaneous adventure.

To that point, each job has roles to play in a party and depending on the situation you may find yourself in need of another player to help you through a particular challenge. While the majority of this can be mitigated through Trusts or clever uses of items such as Prism Powder to sneak by aggressive monsters, it is entirely possible for you to be stuck at various points if you don't already meet the qualifications or have another player on hand able to help you.

This was a particularly fascinating element of the experience to me and highlighted some of the ways in which culture has changed. While it is true that this is yet another way in which the experience can be stretched out, it hearkens back to some of the origins of the series in its obsession with Dungeons and Dragons. There are ample opportunities for 'hero moments', not all of which will be yours and yours alone. These days if we're holding the controller we want to feel like the hero at all times, but Final Fantasy XI is not afraid to give different people in your party the chance to shine at different times which very much feels in line with the tabletop roleplaying experience.

As a consequence of things taking so long it creates a real, genuine feeling of thankfulness for the players having their hero moments. The gratitude can really help forge some bonds among players which isn't necessarily something we collectively like doing anymore. Much of the design of the game facilitates a great sandbox for authentic adventure and is almost entirely player driven outside of the main story quest.

The sound design is also quite strong, with a strong team of composers including series veteran Nobuo Uematsu handling the game's staggering workload. There's a lot of standout songs, such as "Heavens Tower", but even those without direct experience with the game might be familiar with the Uematsu-composed "Ronfaure" which has been a fixture of live performances associated with the series at large for virtually as long as there have been such concerts. Plenty of nostalgic nods to previous games aurally help the game feel more connected to its predecessors as well, such as certain classifications of armor sounding identically to Final Fantasy IX party member Adelbert Steiner's armor when running.

The graphics variously hold up quite well. Character designs are largely strong (with many feeling right at home in this era of Square game) and much of the clothing design is pretty good as well, not featuring (to my knowledge) as many of the deviations that Final Fantasy XIV does with, for example, its recent 'streetwear' additions to the game. It's a rather cohesive aesthetic that looks somewhat like a cross between Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy XII. Geometry can be a bit blocky and skyboxes can be a bit splotchy, but there is still plenty in the way of beautiful vistas and cool sights to see even if they're roughly what a PS2 was capable of rendering (sometimes with great dips in frame rate on that system).

When launching the game it warns you to not play to the detriment of your real life, and when launching for the first time I assumed that a funny little quirk of when it was released and the relative unfamiliarity the world had with MMOs in a time before Blizzard's genre-defining World of Warcraft. This is not the case, and if the gameplay grabs you it is extremely easy to play for huge amounts of time without noticing it. We did not heed this warning and making our way through the base game took roughly 98 hours, mostly taking up just about all of our free time.

The game is also great about allowing the player to make lateral progress, which is to say grinding up various jobs to combine with each other, and not feeling like you've wasted your time despite making no forward progress through the game. It is shockingly addictive if the gameplay appeals to you. Final Fantasy XIV, clearly a spiritual successor of sorts to Final Fantasy XI, indeed recycles quite a bit of its predecessor but impressively many of the elements that do get rolled into XIV don't all necessarily feel like they've made their original incarnations' irrelevant.

One particular highlight of the experience was the usage of a ferry that shuttles players between two locations in the world. Said boat's arrival must be waited for in real time, boarded and then rode for a trip that takes several minutes in real time. This ferry trip is not privately instanced and can see you bumping shoulders with other players also looking to make the trek aboard the ship. It was just one of many examples of the game design going to great lengths to encourage organic, player-driven sandboxy adventures where you're able to socialize rather easily.

Both games have tons to offer and there is plenty of reason to dip your toes into Final Fantasy XI to experience an incredible slice of history, all the more now with the Rhapsodies of Vana'diel storyline helping catch newer players up and Final Fantasy XIV featuring a crossover raid series with Final Fantasy XI. It is an incredibly large experience not meant to be pursued to 100% completion, so I urge you to pick your path carefully and divert only for what interests you, primarily for unlocking jobs to progress through the main story with. You will encounter plenty of outdated and dubious information on the internet for the game, with plenty of discussion dating back to 2007 being the last time things of a relevant nature were discussed in an easily findable way.

Vana'diel likely hasn't seen the last of Larsa and I, and I'm sure we'll resubscribe at some point to continue our adventure. Perhaps after reading some impressions of the experience in the current day you might decide take the plunge yourself. Rest assured, even now after all this time adventure indeed still courses through the veins of Vana'diel. And after all, hasn't adventure been what humanity has been chasing since time immemorial?

-- Ash

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