Wark Digest #252 - The Wing of War Has Folded

Welcome back to the Wark Digest, your weekly newsletter of new developments and historical insights from the Final Fantasy universe. I’m Chris, aka Hoogathy, and this week it’s a mix of something old and something new: a Notorious trial has finally been cleared in Vana’Diel, while battles may expand in Shibuya soon.

This week’s newsletter is 1808 words, a 8-minute read.

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Expanding the Duel

We’re now a couple weeks into Dissidia Duellum Final Fantasy‘s era, with the playerbase beginning to solidify and find its groove. With the launch out of the way, producer Naoya Matsumoto spoke to Siliconera about the game’s prospects, and

What they’re saying:

• The game’s vertical orientation was chosen for two reasons:

  • “We prioritized controls that allow for casual, one-handed play on smartphones“

  • “We’ve also placed a strong emphasis on community features. One of our key concepts is to create a space where Final Fantasy fans from different parts of the world, regardless of age, gender, or region, can gather and connect […] When we considered providing an experience that is easy to use on a daily basis, similar to social media platforms like Facebook and X, we felt that a vertical screen would be more natural and stress-free to use”

  • Therefore “we chose the vertical screen so that players can comfortably enjoy not only the gameplay but also the communication aspects of the game”

• Contrary to what some may assume, the tighter portrait orientation does not rule out potential ports, as Matsumoto added: “While we cannot provide specific details at this time, we are currently exploring the possibility of a PC version“

• True to its predecessor, Opera Omnia, Duellum’s early roster was chosen to showcase characters other than the main “face” hero of each game, but also for more practical reasons:

  • “We place strong emphasis on role diversity in battle in this title. Our main goal is to give each character a distinct personality and concept so that players can enjoy a unique gameplay experience with each one. […] We wanted to create a title that effectively conveys both the diversity of [Duellum’s] roles and the wide-ranging appeal of characters unique to the FF series”

• Matsumoto doesn’t quite agree that Duellum is a massive change for the series, as Dissidia “has always been a series with competitive elements“ (apart from OO) that “emphasized multiplayer”

• “One of the core concepts for this title is to bring Final Fantasy fans together to form a large, connected community and to further energize the FF brand as a whole. When designing the game with an emphasis on these ‘connections between players,’ the gameplay experience naturally centered around multiplayer“

What we thought:

• I’m personally inclined to agree and disagree here on most points

• The portrait orientation does work naturally for the game, more than you might think from the outside when you see how pinched the screen can look—but managing the camera while steering and holding your phone is not a task for only five digits

• Should Duellum see life on PC (or any other platform, for that matter) Square Enix will almost certainly need to accommodate for the different perspective somehow

  • Would seeing a normal wide perspective of the arena provide an unfair advantage, or would it change nothing? It’s hard to say until they actually build a PC version and put it to the test

  • I’d hazard a guess that it would mainly be a cosmetic change, since players can already track all the action on the minimap, but the visual effect will be liberating in a way

• The in-game community has been a pretty chill experience for the most part; it was a feature that stood out back in the beta, with efficient means to set up social circles around a simple idea (like which game you like, where you’re from, etc), and thankfully it has carried into the main game

  • As for hoping it will unite the larger fan base, well… good luck with that

• The notion that Dissidia has always focused on multiplayer specifically, however, is skewed: people bought it because it combined characters from different games, offered a fighting game engine with RPG elements, and had an interesting story mode, with multiplayer modes being a cherry on top and not the main event

  • Personally, of the people I knew at the time who owned a PSP, 90% of them played Dissidia (some even buying a PSP for it), and it’s also the only PSP game I ever played multiplayer on… but I didn’t buy it for multiplayer

  • There’s a fundamental reason why Dissidia NT didn’t work as a console game while its core did work as an arcade game: people expected a single-player core, and the single-player features felt tacked on to the arcade gameplay and poorly integrated

  • So yes, multiplayer has always been a part of Dissidia, from the optional modes on PSP to the (ill-advised and self-sabotaging) multiplayer focus of NT and even the co-op features of Opera Omnia… but it was not originally the main emphasis, and Dissidia has always worked better when it led with the single-player experience and story

• All that to say… I’m still having fun playing a couple matches of Duellum daily, and it is refreshing to see another younger developer step into Final Fantasy’s spotlight—while it’s drawing all the usual and predicted gacha criticisms, it still seems to be holding ground better than many people expected

What’s next? Matsumoto teases “plenty of story content” down the line with new stories at approximately a monthly pace. Meanwhile the second batch of additional characters, Firion and Balthier, will likely arrive in a week or two, keeping pace with the initial road map they shared before launch.

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The Wing of War Has Folded

Final Fantasy XI can be a brutal, punishing challenge (and not just during the initial account creation step), but a major achievement was finally earned by a brave group of players this week.

What’s going on:

• The Master Trial “Wing of War” was officially cleared for the first time since its release almost two full years ago, in the May 2024 update

• This high-end bout is a notorious monster battlefield that pits players against both Bahamut and Chaos, but requires the bosses to be beaten simultaneously; if one falls first, they’ll fully rejuvenate, and there’s a hard 60-minute deadline

• Players have batted their head against this wall for the past two years unsuccessfully, trying to determine if there’s a “intended mechanic” that the devs included that would open the door to success… and even though the fight has been cleared, the conquering players chalk the win up to luck

  • In short, there’s a recurring point where Bahamut can use either “Invincible” or “Elemental Sforzo,” with Invincible being considered a major nail in the coffin

  • On this particular run, Bahamut didn’t cast Invincible, and though “it took a 50/50 coin flip 4 times in a row” to win, the odds worked in their favour

• To be fair, the FFXI team did warn that it would be one of the hardest encounters in the game… and they weren’t lying

• Even then, players speculate that there was a “stealth nerf” of sorts, meaning to some that the “original” Wing of War was never beaten, only the new, supposedly-nerfed iteration

What we thought:

• The whole affair is somewhat reminiscent of Absolute Virtue, another infamous Notorious Monster in FFXI

  • Absolute Virtue was added in 2005 and never (legitimately) beaten within its own time before power creep made it more attainable

  • A few teams did successfully beat it, but the dev team retroactively deemed their means illegitimate and removed those methods from the game

• Since the conquering party effectively cleared Wing of War due to a series of lucky coin tosses and not some genuine, deliberate strategy to overcome the hurdles, it’s possible that a similar situation could arise here, with the devs invalidating the group’s success and recontextualizing victory… but no such effort has been made yet

  • Maybe it really is as simple as a boss getting tails on four consecutive coin flips while also having the means to whittle both bosses down appropriately within an hour

• The changes eventually made to Absolute Virtue are a lot more drastic than those speculated to have affected the 2024 encounter, so even if there will be an asterisk next to this victory on a technicality, it’s still close enough to be commemorated as a major achievement

• Again, it’s amazing that FFXI not only has so many active players 24 years after its initial launch, but still inspires the kind of love and devotion required to grind out such grueling content; truly, who could’ve seen anything of the sort coming back when everyone was divided over the idea of a mainline Final Fantasy being a MMORPG?

What’s next? Kudos to you, brave adventurers of Vana’diel, for finally putting a two-year old trial to rights. Even if there are moves to officially discredit or diminish the achievement after the fact, it’s still an impressive feat.

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Around the Union

Striking from the shadows, our first video this week is “The Complete Evolution of Ninja!” The Job Evolutions series returns [heralding the impending arrival of the Kickstarter for our third book, coincidentally all about Jobs] with a look at one of the series’ most prestigious classes in Final Fantasy, from being one of the original twelve Jobs to being FFIII’s most potent physical class, to the title of two elusive, optional ninjas, all the way up into Jack Garland’s edgy party in Stranger of Paradise. Which iteration of the Ninja is your favourite? Let us know in the comments!

…and then join us for part 2 of another ongoing series, breaking down the illustrations that define each game’s covers in “Final Fantasy’s Most Iconic Logos Explained!” These are some of the most recognizable icons in Final Fantasy, if not all of RPGs, and we break down their significance and symbolism!

Speaking of all RPGs, lastly, over on Datalog we took a look at “7 Incredibly Hard Super Bosses You Definitely Didn’t Beat First Time!” Other series besides Final Fantasy can come out swinging for the fences with punishing optional bosses—how many of these have you felled?

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Until next time, kupo!