A truly blursed cornerstone of PC gaming is the countless mods that get created for just about any game in existence. Thomas the Tank Engine dragons in Skyrim, Abraham Lincoln in Guitar Hero 3: if someone's twisted mind can conjure the idea up, chances are it's already been uploaded to Nexus Mods.
Well since Square Enix has been chucking the Final Fantasy games on PC, they too have succumbed to the clutches of beautiful and bizarre mods. There's the Final Fantasy 7 Remake with the jacked-up Aerith and Tifa mods with traps I could only dream of having, and one that puts everyone's favourite babygirl Cloud in a crop top. Final Fantasy 14's modding community continues to thrive despite it hovering in some dicey TOS-breaking territory, with Harvey Randall highlighting a particularly neat John Wickesque animation mod for Ninja.
Now that Final Fantasy 16 is about to land on our rigs, I had to ask director Hiroshi Takai if there were any particularly goofy mods he would be down to see in the game. Except, er, I didn't get an answer from Takai. Instead, producer Naoki Yoshida stepped in, all dad-style, seemingly in an attempt to make sure modders don't run riot with Clive and crew.
- Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth director asks modders to avoid making anything 'offensive or inappropriate,' Final Fantasy 7 modding community says 'yeah sure'
- Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's director says 'I respect the modding community' and uses mods himself, though he still thinks we shouldn't use ones that 'detract from the intended game experience'
"If we said 'It'd be great if someone made xyz,' it might come across as a request, so I'll avoid mentioning any specifics here!" Yoshida told PC Gamer. "The only thing I will say is that we definitely don't want to say anything offensive or inappropriate, so please don't make or install anything like that."
I mean, I get it. You certainly don't want to be encouraging folk to be concocting egregious works that can mess with your artistic vision in potentially harmful ways. But also dang Yoshida, not even Torgal the Tank Engine? Crop top Clive? Jacked Jill? Some funny lil' twists to the Eikon designs? That being said, some or all of those things will still definitely be happening, but it would've been neat to hear what Yoshida and Takai make of some of the series' most cursed mods.
Whatever does end up gracing (or terrorising) Nexus Mods and beyond, I'm looking forward to seeing what ways modders inject their own brand of humour into Final Fantasy 16. Just make sure you behave, will ya? I've been waiting over a year for the darn game to hit PC, I don't want Yoshida to turn this car around.
