There was a beloved member of the FFXIV JP community, Maidy, who was famous for blogging about his experience since 1.0 launch. His story even inspired the TV series and film, Dad of Light, and he became close friends with Yoshi-P. In 2020, he was diagnosed with cancer. Yoshi-P visited him at the hospital several times, once bringing a gundam model to urge him to get better and build the model for him. Unfortunately, Maidy never got the chance to build the model. Yoshi-P really breaks down here, because he had JUST lost a friend to cancer, and Soken had to go through the ordeal as well, and you can see his heartache and relief that Soken was able to stand there on the stage with them.
I miss skimming Maidy's blog on occasion. He was a real one, only got his dad into the game because he wanted the mount from the recruit a friend campaign.
And fun fact, the Sage job is most likely based on the Gundam model that YoshiP bought for Maidy, which was the Nu Gundam whose funnels inspired the Sage's Nouliths. Perhaps Sage being a Healer role must also have deeper meaning as well...
I'm just gonna drop this tidbit here, since Koji didn't pick up on the Nuance, he was probably shocked himself. At the very end of the speech, when YoshiP bows deeply and says thank you, he says "And I'm so happy that, with the help of Warriors of Light from all around the world, my friend has returned to me. Thank you!" Such a heartfelt moment, I literally bawled my eyes out when this happened.
6:31 Even as this was being streamed, people created PFs for Seat of Sacrifice with 'WELCOME BACK SOKEN-SAN' as the PF messages. The fact that Soken calls out Yoshi-P for supporting him made a lot of us cry, especially since Yoshi-P has repeatedly told the story of how Soken was one of the only ones who initially supported him through the 1.0->2.0 transition.
I remember our server hosting parties over in Costa del Sol to take down the Cancer fate over and over as soon as it spawned. We picked up newbies who came over and got them the title and everything.
I'm usually very skeptical about things like these, but then I considered that one big things in japanese culture is that, displaying emotions in a professional setting, specially this overly, it's generally frowned upon, considered unprofessional, so basically, a no no. The fact that Yoshi has cried on stage a few times (or once during the live letter), and he openly spoke of being glad to have his "best friend back", seems so incredibly genuine.
Not to mention when Yoshi didn't use any honorifics at all when he spoke to him directly. That's not something you'd ever do in a workplace/corporate environment. Hell even when speaking to family members there's still honorifics. So to drop it altogether and to just simply call him by his name you know it's deadly serious and deeply deeply personal.
Neither Soken nor YoshiP used honorifics for each other and my heart cracked a little bit more. You can also tell it wasn’t staged because Ishikawa-san, who is generally reserved, straight up asked Soken about what happened and apologized for the work load.
This was also the first time a lot of the other people on staff and on stage even heard about this from Soken. Also I would not say it's sad. I'd rather call it emotional. The immediate response from the community itself was amazing too after this. Costa del Sol was never so crowded with people camping that giant crab FATE and spelling Sokens name in the sand after with their characters. :D
When Soken made this speech, I balled my eyes out and it renewed my hope that my father could win his own battle with cancer. Much love to everyone out there fighting their battles. Never give up hope in the face of hopelessness. ❤ ✌️
I'm definitely guilty of becoming a sobbing mess when I watched this live 😭 I hope your dad made it through alright and I'm glad this game we all love together has the power to move us to such heights 🥲
Being a musician/composer myself, every single thing Soken said during this resonated with me on such a deeply personal level. A lot of folk wanted to take this moment to wag fingers at SE for having Soken work while he was in the hospital but... like him making music is what was keeping him feeling like he was alive. Like myself, music has been a constant lifeline through many tragedies and moments of darkness I've lived through, and brings this sense of humanity that feels so natural, especially during times where it's so easy to lose that feeling. It's a difficult thing to explain, but it's just so deeply intertwined with the sense of self and identity, and it's such a relief that the people he works with understand how important that is to him. As an aside, bless Soken's sound team for being absolutely incredible. I can only imagine how tense and stressful that time was and even then they managed to come up with some of the most incredible music in any Final Fantasy game ever.
This was possibly the inly time he could have done this since everyone was working from home so unless told otherwise people probably assumed he was working from home. Not sure how upper management would have said no to a man getting chemo and laying around in a hospital otherwise but YoshiP would have known what this meant to Soken so I’m not surprised he went along with this.
Watching this live, sitting with not only my FC in voice chat at some ungodly hour, but with a whole crowd of people yelling and screaming in game in Limsa, was unreal. We were all riding the high of the concert we just watched only to turn around and start bawling.
this talk happened at the end of one of the days of fan fest too. which was end of day JP time. so many people were asleep and woke up to this clip of him having cancer.
It is by far the most played FATE I've ever seen. It helps that it has the story boss fight music instead of the usual FATE boss music, so it makes it that much more epic to kick its ass.
@@itsyaboiherman Yeah! That FATE, along with most other Achievement FATEs, has 'Torn from the Heavens' as its battle music. These are the FATEs that you need a party for.
And then when Soken was fully declared clean of cancer Husky, Alex, and a bunch of content creators made a special tribute video with the 6.0 end zone music
Even after watching this +2 years ago after I comment this it still hits me hard. This and the EW trailer is the reason why I gave FF14 a try and been enjoying to play it ever since.
My little brother was going through cancer treatment for leukemia at the exact same time as Soken, and I had used Shadowbringers as a bit of a coping mechanism, and then endwalker too, and it just made it so personal with soken coming out like this, and forever formed a bias towards this man that I can’t get away from. Both he and my brother beat it, and I look forwards to both of them for years to come.
5.3 and "To the Edge" hit VERY hard, for me, due to the themes and my own personal circumstances in life when it dropped. After the revelations from Soken at that fanfest, having watched it live, suffice it to say that it now hits even harder. Even still, despite having heard it certainly at least hundreds of times by now, it's still about a 50/50 chance that I'll tear up during "To the Edge." And watching Soken give his speech, and seeing how Yoshi had to turn around to keep himself from having a meltdown in front of the cameras and yet you can STILL see his shoulders slump at points and what looks like sobbing, and then when he breaks talking about how glad he is to have his best friend back... it's a whole lot. We've grown to care about these creators almost as much as their creation, and to see them hurting, I think for a lot of us, our hearts hurt right along with them. FFXIV... it will definitely make you feel the entire spectrum of human emotion at one point or another. I believe that's a large part of why the fanbase is so dedicated.
Gotta love a man who can not only beat cancer, but make some killer tracks while doing it. And that's the same guy who made makeshift maracas using a cup noodle cup, toothpicks and mints at the office for the Costa Del Sol track, and the same guy who screamed his lungs out singing Lahee while dual-wielding otamatones. That man is a treasure.
I remember watching this live, was just a absolute deadpan reversal of feelings at the time. We were all collectively riding the high of the Endwalker news and announcements, then Soken takes the stage and we're all waiting for some fun music news... and we get just blindsided by "I spent most of last year in the hospital with cancer" and pretty much everyone I knew who was watching just got a mysterious case of "wet face" in completely silence while he was talking. For most of Soken's speech it was almost just that phase between denial and properly registering feelings and the stream starts picking up the dev teams faces, as many of them were getting the news at the same time as us, Yoshi is barely holding it together, we could just feel Koji doing everything he can to hold it together enough to get the translation out cleanly. And then it hits Ishikawa Natsuko starting to process her reaction while Yoshi tries to regain enough composure to end the show, and she goes through what she was doing while this new revelation just got to her and that empathetic reaction for effectively the "out-of-the-loop" team members who were still doing their day to day interactions with him strike, fanbase's composure basically had a "wipe" there. After many of us got some sleep since this was like 4am PST or something, we all went into that internal conflict of worker's abuse vs. having a purpose vs. wallowing in despair, and just coming to the conclusion that in a certain way, having a purpose was basically the best option in that situation of being almost completely isolated for some of the harshest treatment paths around. Imagining the alternative of spending roughly half a year in a hospital with nothing to do, but think about having cancer and the pain and stress associated with, a purpose filled distraction seems very nice. Even when most of us get the mental image of a person fighting cancer, we still think of coming home between treatments, having friends and/or family around, and then trying to blend that with the hospital filling reality of COVID at the time, and pretty much all the normal positive realities of that fight are stripped away. So hard to really get through cleanly even 2 years later as it is now, not quite the "mysterious wet face" incident it was at the time, but still gives that not great feeling. Sometimes when I see this again I think about how I was all set up to be attending FanFest in November of 2020 when the US one was supposed to take place, and knowing that had it still gone on, Soken would've been in the middle of his fight while I would've been there. A end note speech of very heavy and diverse emotions, the likes of which we will hopefully never have to watch again, but was all the same a defining highlight of the relationship of the development team with each other and with the player base that is unreplaceable.
Back in 2016, I was caught in the coup in Ataturk airport. I asked my office if I could continue to work remotely while I waited for the FAA to clear a plane to take us home. I absolutely needed the distraction, the sense of normalcy, to get me through that traumatic experience. And for me it was only a few days. I totally understand Souken wanting to have something to give him normalcy in the same way. I believe he worked with MCK Fox and Ishikawa to write the lyrics in English, but those emotions shining through are all what Souken was probably feeling at the time. And of course, the result was one of the best tracks of Endwalker.
It was a freight train of an experience to be seeing this live. Since it was the digital fanfest, just about every FFXIV player that was up and awake was watching, and I know I was both watching and logged in getting some chores done. You could see city chats just explode into emotion, everyone surprised and tearful and touched. FFXIV is a game that's not afraid to engage with emotions earnestly, and I think that's in part because the dev team feels the same way. There's love in both directions, there's love put into the work, love given to the fans, and love given back in return.
@@lampdevil I really wish I was playing this game during Shadowbringers, better late than never as the saying goes. It’s been an honor to be a part of FF XIV
It was rough, several of my FC members and I were watching, and as soon as Yoshi-P turned around, you could just feel the energy just drop and it was about to get super heavy
A detail I really love is the use of the ticking clock in this song and the Amurot city theme. The Ancient’s time is coming to the end so the clock “wending down” and “pointing to the edge”. It also resonates with Soken’s story… as he must have felt his own life tick during chemo. Would it point him home or to heaven… well heaven can wait.
Watching this live was a freight train of feels. I was in a daze for quiet awhile. I had to go back later to rewatch it to make sure I didnt just make it up...
As an aside: he's wearing a wig here. His hair hadn't fully grown back yet from the chemo (which you can also see by his eyebrows being so thin). So it really gives you a good idea of the timeline and how much it must have taken out of him to even be there on the stage.
Without a doubt, nothing gets me teary eyed and emotional like "To the Edge" and "Answers". Without fail, they hit like a ton of bricks everytime and it's because this game contains the heart and soul of it's creators. They hold nothing back and pour their everything into it.
And now we add REDACTED to that list and I still go back and listen to these songs even though I know singing along is guaranteed to destroy me but I still do it just the same. The first game to make me cry was Crisis Core, then came FFXIV and now I so much to games and their music and moments 😅🥲
I remember when this aired. I remember pages of PF listing in game, all with the subject matter of "Get Well Soken" or "Get Well Soon Soken" or "Welcome Back Soken." Not only that too. It was all over Twitter and the forums. People sending well wishes, and thank yous, and warm thoughts. It was great to see. Soken is a treasure, and I am glad he's still with us.
When I saw this on the live stream... just a few minutes prior, everyone was partying in Limsa. There were so many people on the plaza, they wouldnt all zoom in. Then the concert was over and the crowd dispersed, and then Soken dropped this on our heads. Needless to say, the crowd returned...
I remember this clearly. My heart in my throat when the word cancer was mentioned. I was crying like a baby fearing the worst and the palpable relief when it was in remission. So proud of Soken ❤
This goes to prove that recovery and fighting looks different for everyone. Some people can work through illness, and others can't. Both are valid decisions, and both decisions should remain respected and supported by superiors. For Yoshida to be able to read Soken, even in isolation, and say, "yeah, if you can do it, let's do it,' and then not tell anyone because of how privacy is seen in Japanese work culture is a mark of a true leader. He cares so much for his team, and in response, the people the team members lead (hopefully) pass it forward to their subordinates. It always, always starts from the top. It makes me so sad, and so angry that so many companies don't realize that. E: I, too, went and looked up the lyrics, and yeah, with the context of both SHB and EW, this song will hit so much more. I can't wait to see you see the parallels.
On a very literal level, the fanfest video helped save my life. This happened in April. At the end of the next June, two years ago, I had a medical crisis related to the cancer that *I* am fighting, and will fight for the rest of my life. I died. And resurrected because I was pre-ordered for Endwalker and I was NOT going to miss that launch and Soken survived his cancer, I could survive too. And I did. I have survived. It wasn't the last of my challenges, and yes, being in a hospital *sucks* but I'm still here and when they announce 7.0 preorders, I'll preorder my copy just as I did for Endwalker, and Shadowbringers before it. Final Fantasy XIV gives me hope.
@@jessicawoodley9577 It should... provided they figure out the issue with Visa Cards by then or let me send it through Amazon Pay the day it's supposed to be delivered. Sometimes I have to just sigh and laugh at things.
Soken's speech is powerful, I love it, but then Yoshi-P's speech breaks my heart every time. the anecdote about Soken striking a "guts pose" and spurring the team on....Soken is Yoshi-P's Haurchefaunt. the camaraderie is impeccable
This was the first FFXIV fanfest I ever watched. I was already impressed by what a good show they managed to produce, despite presenting to an empty venue, and then this happened. It really humanized the dev team for me and brought home why the community feels as positively as they do towards this team.
Regarding To The Edge, not only does it make so much sense when you know where Soken is coming from, but it also *fits so well for the Ascians.* The song is about a group of people fighting to their last breath, despite the fact the world has decided it’s time for them to die. The fight is about a hero going beyond his limits to save the ones he loves, but he’s lost his way and you’re here to put him to rest. So obvious that it’s drawn from his experience with cancer, but also fits right in with the story.
After watching the speech live at like 4am and then getting this in my trial roulette when the fest was over, the clock ticking made me burst in tears.
My oldest sister had Leukaemia and having the support of her family and friends around her helped to keep her going. Unfortunately she has passed, but having the time to spend with her and support her mattered. Hearing Soken's story was so heartbreaking, to be alone in a hospital without the love and support of family nearby was so brave, what an incredible man.
still hits hard - the main reason I even started playing FFXIV was that fan fest announcement. After years of feeling like the games i was playing had a dev team that actively hated its own playerbase - Soken was a breath of fresh air. Been here ever since I started playing one week after this fanfest. I bought a lunar whale too, just to support FFXIV because the devs and staff looked like they gave a shit.
Bear in mind he was also likely doing work on XVI during this time in the hospital. Soken is a treasure, he Koji and YoshiP are practically the faces of CBUIII and I love em to bits.
I had quit WoW cold turkey in September, the year before this Fanfest. I had tried FFXIV back in Battle for Azeroth for a week and fricking hated it because - you know - every hour you spend in another game is a day of progress you lose in WoW. I saw this after WoW fans were crapping all over the Fanfest and checked it out. The love that these devs show for the game and the absolute humility that they showed towards their fan base, and the fact that they were willing to talk about such personal things in such an open forum convinced me to give FFXIV another try. I absolutely, positively love FFXIV. I was only going to play the free trial up to the end of Heavensward and then I was going to move on to other things. But after I hit The Parting Glass...wow. That blew me away. I never cared for any of the NPCs in WoW the way I did for the Scions. This game grabbed me and I realized that this was the MMO that I've been searching for all these years.
I was watching this live, sitting by myself in my living room when this all went down. I remember the tears running down my face as Soken recounted everything. Then hearing the words from the other developers words I was all-out sobbing. This man put 100% toward a game I love, worked through this most difficult experience, and created music that has moved me so much. I'm tearing up just watching it again. 😭
I love YoshiP, Soken and the team because like you said, this isn't stuff done with the corporation in mind. They act human with real empathy. Something that is sorely lacking these days in the people at the top of these businesses. Just look at all the news lately with Blizzard as well as everything with NFTs. The management in those places only see pre recorded scripts and dollar signs. Literally their words are seeing us as "Obstacles to our wallets." The Live Letters he does for the game are also for the most part unscripted. He just sits down in front of a streaming camera and shows us slides of future patch content as well as loading up a develop build of the game. This past Live Letter, at the start we saw YoshiP sitting down and playing on his Switch with the new Zelda game which he then showed the camera. The guy acts like a human with actual emotions and is a gamer just like the rest of us.
This moment is one of those where watching this live hits that much harder. Seeing this right after jamming out to The Primals was a major whammy for us. I had spent most of the night watching Fan Fest 2021 with several of my FC mates chatting in Discord.
I've seen this more than once and still tear up. The caring this team has for each other is amazing. If I could have one professional wish, I would want to create music like Soken. I can't respect him enough. His music has moved me to tears and made FFXIV more meaningful every time I play. He can also cleverly rework a piece in a different style where I say months after....oh my, that is actually this song too. He's a musical genius.
"To the Edge" could have been Soken's Magnum Opus. I'm so glad it wasn't... but it would have been a worthy masterpiece to go out on. Also THIS is why people will kill for Yoshi-P and Soken, the both of them must be protected at all costs.
I remember watching this live, in my new dorm room alone before the first day of my final year of university. I was bawling my eyes out. It was such a special moment for me, watching fan fest after catching up with the MSQ. I truly felt glad to be part of the community and that the devs really loved and cared for this game. I wouldn’t have spent that day any other way.
I remember I woke up the next morning and got to this before going to work. Had an early morning tearjerker, that's for sure. But at the same time it ended with good news but it really was inspiring to see someone so determined to move forward, that not even his disease nor the solitude at the hospital, due to covid, brought him down. Little tidbit, Soken was wearing a wig that day, as his hair hadn't grown back at that time.
We had gathered people together at Mikhettos Ampitheatre to show support by dance/emote in game for the end of this FanFest, then this part hit. A whole lot of gamers crying together for like an hour after the stream ended. So much love for this team. ❤
Honestly. Huge kudos to Koji for maintaining his professionalism. Dude had to relay these heavy messages from close coworkers and manages to do it with a straight face and very little personal emotion.
One of the things that’s important to remember was, at least according to the 1.0 noclip documentary, Soken was on of the first people to actually agree and be onboard with the entire idea of remaking FFXIV into 2.0 in the first place. He’s always been a huge supporter of Yoshi-p so I can’t even imagine how Yoshi p felt when he knew all this time.
So many members of the XIV team are absolute treasures. Yoshi-P of course being the head of it all, and you really can tell he puts his heart and soul into it, and many of the others on his team follow suit.
I was watching the fanfest when that bomb dropped. Having played the patch and the fight quite a few times already and loving it for what it was at the time, hearing about Soken's fight with cancer and how he kept working through it just so this gem could come out, it makes you realize that To The Edge could have possibly been his swan song. So either he pulled through and To The Edge was a testament of him never giving him and pulling through sheer adversity or it was his last message to his friends, family and the players to move on, head held high and persevere. That's the moment, I think, that a lot of people gained an incredible amount of respect to Soken and the dev team, even after the revival of FFXIV with ARR. There's always been a semi-running gag that people would tell Yoshi-P in Liveletters that he looked tired and to take a break and I think now this isn't even a joke; that Fanfest moment alone made it so people became much more concerned about the well-being of the people who provided them with the experiences, adventures and community that FFXIV has. It's also why when Endwalker was announced to be delayed, the fan reactions was more along the lines of "It's alright, take your time, we can wait, we believe in you guys and if you say you need more time, then you really need more time."
ive rewatched this moment with you guys like 4 times now, it never fails to hit me emotionally, such a powerful combination of game lore, meta knowledge, irl events and personal tragedy, its so fucking poetic lol
I watched that live and it hit hard, still does seeing it again, but what hit even harder was how much Soken cares about the game and the players and seeing the love returned from chat was amazing. The FFXIV community, like all game communities, has its trolls and toxic players but that showed me the vast majority are wholesome(ish... Limsa can make you wonder sometimes) and care for the game and devs. I hope and pray that Soken stays healthy for a long time and can reap the rewards he deserves for all he has done for the game and community.
Will forever be something to remember. We were all on discord crying together when we watched this. Soken is a treasure. This man is going to get so many hugs at fan fest
This was so touching. I will admit I didn't love To the Edge the first time I heard it, but got to like it more and more as I listened to it more times. Watching this was really touching. Also love the community response to this and all the "welcome back soken" love shared at the time. Especially Husky by the geek 40 musicians medley for him. Still watch it often.
Seat of sacrifice always hits different whenever you get in roulettes after you watch this speech. Its one of my favourite moments in the entire game now with all the hardship the team and Soken faced it feels like it was crystallised into a beautiful moment that will stick in my mind forever. Even long after i stop playing this game. And the little interactions with the team while yoshi-p is bawling his eyes out shows how much the team care for each other.
This hit me so hard watching this live. We were all riding high from the Endwalker news and all the fun of the fan fest, and this sudden absolute honesty, and pain hit me in the feels. My Mom was in the hospital at that time and I couldn’t visit her because of the pandemic. When Yoshi P was crying and saying that nobody could visit Soken, I lost it. 😢
As someone who is STILL fighting AITL (Angioimmunoblastic T-Cell Lymphoma) this speech means so much to me and watching YoshiP get hit by it just shows how much these people mean to one another. I wish him nothing but a life of remission.
The worst part is that most of the dev team including koji himself didnt even know that soken had cancer until this very event happened, koji had to translate everything completely blind and was struggling to contain himself while being struck with the same realization we were struck by at the same time that soken was this close to being taken away from us and its only because of our love for his music that he didnt give up the fight and won in the end. I can easily imagine an alternate reality where people could have disliked 5.3 and would unknowingly bring soken to a spiraling depression that would seal the fate of his cancer, and im glad that such a fate never came to pass.
I recommend also looking up the "Welcome Back Soken" music medley that a lot of musicians in the FF14 community put together and performed very quickly after this happened. It is really heartwarming to see how much love this community has for its devs and especially Yoshi P and Soken.
Been feeling the feels on this from the other side, because my dad was diagnosed with cancer last year. His treatment has worked, we're just dealing with the side effects now. But yeah...I have twice now gained a higher appreciation of the _weight_ of this song, and how it makes the trial that much more powerful.
I had a similar situation with my wife, her bowels burst from colon cancer and she almost died. If it wasn't for this game and it's community, I don't know if I could have gotten through the darkest 2 years of our lives.
I'm so glad this nice and talented guy came out of such a scary thing okay. I didn't think anyone would be able to carry on Uematsu's legacy, but it's in fine hands with Soken.
I'm 43 years old and my mortality is more and more palpable each day. This announcement hit right in the pit of my stomach and I thought about it for weeks.
And to add context to this, the online Fanfest was such a fun and wild event, especially The Primals concert, and then this was dropped towards at the close. It suddenly flipped the mood and people laughing suddenly ended up crying.
As one of the people who spammed you with this factoid during 5.3, I apologise. I should have realised that so many more of us would be telling you this. But yes, you're right, to have experienced this battle at such a crucial point in the story (and in what wasn't a great time for me personally), and then to have it recontextualised like that, live, was absolutely brutal. Clearly so many people wanted you know about Soken's journey and I'm very glad you got to see this speech as well.
Ms. Ishikawa gave the lyric concept and the lyrics were written by Koji Fox actually, but unlike Ms. Ishikawa, Koji Fox KNEW about SOKEN's condition That being said everything from the instrumentation to the lyrics mirrors the situation so?? Eerily. It is such a strong multilayered piece they did such a good job with it
Watching the Extreme footage in the background of the fight, it only just now occurred to me that the Limit bar isn't just a flashy thing WoL does, *it's YOUR Limit Breaks.* This entire time, Elidibus has proven he can whip out LB's like it's nothing with just brief concentration while it takes you minutes to charge a single bar to use the same ability once. The fact that we can live to stand against that is even more potent with this song. Impossible debilitating odds overcome by friendship.
This. This video is one of the best examples of what separates Final Fantasy from other MMOs. The game has heart. The game has heart because the people making it have heart.
Watch the beginning of the video again, Soken wrote the music, Christopher Koji Fox wrote the lyrics, he writes most of the lyrics to all of the songs in the game.
This song at first thought was a gut punch....no...I was wrong...all of us were wrong because just as you think the rollercoaster is over the first hump...there's two more on the horizon...enjoy keeping your emotions intact during Endwalker fellas....you're going to need it.
I always think of how hard the final patch approval process would have been on Yoshida. His best friend is fighting cancer and he has to watch and sign off on the Elidibus scene. "The rains have ceased, and we have been graced with another beautiful day. But you are not here to see it." I can only imagine he did a lot of work in an office with the door closed and blinds drawn because how could he possibly keep it together? There are certain songs in Endwalker that I wonder if Soken started working on while he was in the hospital as well.
That line from Elidibus was spruced up for the English version. As I understand it he didn't say anything even remotely close to that in the JP audio. He was just lamenting the fact that he isn't the last Ascian to die and the others will be forced to find their own way forward with their mutual goal now unattainable. Not sure why they changed it.
@@providencebreaker1558 Is Yoshida left in the dark on the other localizations? I thought it worked really well in the English version because it's not Elidibus' line, he's repeating what the others had said to him once. The Japanese is essentially just "There's nothing left to it, then. I'm the last one left." The English says the same thing but with a little more poetry. They had once said that to him, but now he says it thinking of them as he's the last of them, they're no longer here.
Heartbreaking though Soken's story is, i can't help noticing that the person who wrote the Rogue and DRK class stories, and the majority of Shadowbringers looks so sweet and innocent.
And then soken created "Do you Know... La-Hee?" and the world understood him as someone who would NEVER stop doing what he likes, be it writing awesome songs or trolling a massive livestream.
That's why ff14 is a "cult" hope the devs keep the magic alive there are too many studios that lost that feeling, in the end games are art not just business
There was a beloved member of the FFXIV JP community, Maidy, who was famous for blogging about his experience since 1.0 launch. His story even inspired the TV series and film, Dad of Light, and he became close friends with Yoshi-P. In 2020, he was diagnosed with cancer. Yoshi-P visited him at the hospital several times, once bringing a gundam model to urge him to get better and build the model for him. Unfortunately, Maidy never got the chance to build the model. Yoshi-P really breaks down here, because he had JUST lost a friend to cancer, and Soken had to go through the ordeal as well, and you can see his heartache and relief that Soken was able to stand there on the stage with them.
yep this too. Yoshi P had a cancer double whammy.
I miss skimming Maidy's blog on occasion. He was a real one, only got his dad into the game because he wanted the mount from the recruit a friend campaign.
And fun fact, the Sage job is most likely based on the Gundam model that YoshiP bought for Maidy, which was the Nu Gundam whose funnels inspired the Sage's Nouliths. Perhaps Sage being a Healer role must also have deeper meaning as well...
Is it coincidence that the lyric "To begin, we must first see the end" made its way into Enwalker too?
Yoshi-P's blog post about Maidy brings me to tears ; - ;
I'm just gonna drop this tidbit here, since Koji didn't pick up on the Nuance, he was probably shocked himself. At the very end of the speech, when YoshiP bows deeply and says thank you, he says "And I'm so happy that, with the help of Warriors of Light from all around the world, my friend has returned to me. Thank you!" Such a heartfelt moment, I literally bawled my eyes out when this happened.
Soken finishing his speech, followed immediately by a wide-shot featuring the dancing moogle and Alpha: for levity's sake.
6:31 Even as this was being streamed, people created PFs for Seat of Sacrifice with 'WELCOME BACK SOKEN-SAN' as the PF messages. The fact that Soken calls out Yoshi-P for supporting him made a lot of us cry, especially since Yoshi-P has repeatedly told the story of how Soken was one of the only ones who initially supported him through the 1.0->2.0 transition.
I remember our server hosting parties over in Costa del Sol to take down the Cancer fate over and over as soon as it spawned. We picked up newbies who came over and got them the title and everything.
I'm usually very skeptical about things like these, but then I considered that one big things in japanese culture is that, displaying emotions in a professional setting, specially this overly, it's generally frowned upon, considered unprofessional, so basically, a no no. The fact that Yoshi has cried on stage a few times (or once during the live letter), and he openly spoke of being glad to have his "best friend back", seems so incredibly genuine.
Not to mention when Yoshi didn't use any honorifics at all when he spoke to him directly. That's not something you'd ever do in a workplace/corporate environment. Hell even when speaking to family members there's still honorifics. So to drop it altogether and to just simply call him by his name you know it's deadly serious and deeply deeply personal.
Neither Soken nor YoshiP used honorifics for each other and my heart cracked a little bit more. You can also tell it wasn’t staged because Ishikawa-san, who is generally reserved, straight up asked Soken about what happened and apologized for the work load.
I can't claim to know the man but when it comes to that stuff he's definitely legit, yeah
This was also the first time a lot of the other people on staff and on stage even heard about this from Soken.
Also I would not say it's sad. I'd rather call it emotional. The immediate response from the community itself was amazing too after this. Costa del Sol was never so crowded with people camping that giant crab FATE and spelling Sokens name in the sand after with their characters. :D
Wait, people were camping "It's not Lupus" That's hilarious.
I know this is an old comment, but it's probably also because the achievement for that FATE is "Full Remission".
@@HanabiraKage I had no idea... This community is so stupidly wholesome at times.
Yoshi-p turning around and crying into his hands, still get me today
When Soken made this speech, I balled my eyes out and it renewed my hope that my father could win his own battle with cancer. Much love to everyone out there fighting their battles. Never give up hope in the face of hopelessness. ❤ ✌️
I'm definitely guilty of becoming a sobbing mess when I watched this live 😭
I hope your dad made it through alright and I'm glad this game we all love together has the power to move us to such heights 🥲
Bawled. When you're crying hard, you're bawling.
Being a musician/composer myself, every single thing Soken said during this resonated with me on such a deeply personal level. A lot of folk wanted to take this moment to wag fingers at SE for having Soken work while he was in the hospital but... like him making music is what was keeping him feeling like he was alive. Like myself, music has been a constant lifeline through many tragedies and moments of darkness I've lived through, and brings this sense of humanity that feels so natural, especially during times where it's so easy to lose that feeling. It's a difficult thing to explain, but it's just so deeply intertwined with the sense of self and identity, and it's such a relief that the people he works with understand how important that is to him.
As an aside, bless Soken's sound team for being absolutely incredible. I can only imagine how tense and stressful that time was and even then they managed to come up with some of the most incredible music in any Final Fantasy game ever.
This was possibly the inly time he could have done this since everyone was working from home so unless told otherwise people probably assumed he was working from home. Not sure how upper management would have said no to a man getting chemo and laying around in a hospital otherwise but YoshiP would have known what this meant to Soken so I’m not surprised he went along with this.
Soken ASKED to continue working too. I’d honor his wishes in a heartbeat
Watching this live, sitting with not only my FC in voice chat at some ungodly hour, but with a whole crowd of people yelling and screaming in game in Limsa, was unreal. We were all riding the high of the concert we just watched only to turn around and start bawling.
It was such a gut punch. I was not okay for the entire day.
What no real life does to someone
@@Blagno4 my brother in christ there was a whole ass pandemic going on, we literally couldn't hang out "in real life" 🙃
this talk happened at the end of one of the days of fan fest too. which was end of day JP time. so many people were asleep and woke up to this clip of him having cancer.
love how players went to a FATE together to collectively beat the boss names cancer for soken after this came out
It is by far the most played FATE I've ever seen. It helps that it has the story boss fight music instead of the usual FATE boss music, so it makes it that much more epic to kick its ass.
really!?
@@itsyaboiherman Yeah! That FATE, along with most other Achievement FATEs, has 'Torn from the Heavens' as its battle music. These are the FATEs that you need a party for.
@@mr.mystere4999 Or not necessarily a party, but they're a big slog if no one else is around.
And then when Soken was fully declared clean of cancer Husky, Alex, and a bunch of content creators made a special tribute video with the 6.0 end zone music
Even after watching this +2 years ago after I comment this it still hits me hard.
This and the EW trailer is the reason why I gave FF14 a try and been enjoying to play it ever since.
My little brother was going through cancer treatment for leukemia at the exact same time as Soken, and I had used Shadowbringers as a bit of a coping mechanism, and then endwalker too, and it just made it so personal with soken coming out like this, and forever formed a bias towards this man that I can’t get away from.
Both he and my brother beat it, and I look forwards to both of them for years to come.
5.3 and "To the Edge" hit VERY hard, for me, due to the themes and my own personal circumstances in life when it dropped. After the revelations from Soken at that fanfest, having watched it live, suffice it to say that it now hits even harder. Even still, despite having heard it certainly at least hundreds of times by now, it's still about a 50/50 chance that I'll tear up during "To the Edge." And watching Soken give his speech, and seeing how Yoshi had to turn around to keep himself from having a meltdown in front of the cameras and yet you can STILL see his shoulders slump at points and what looks like sobbing, and then when he breaks talking about how glad he is to have his best friend back... it's a whole lot. We've grown to care about these creators almost as much as their creation, and to see them hurting, I think for a lot of us, our hearts hurt right along with them. FFXIV... it will definitely make you feel the entire spectrum of human emotion at one point or another. I believe that's a large part of why the fanbase is so dedicated.
Gotta love a man who can not only beat cancer, but make some killer tracks while doing it. And that's the same guy who made makeshift maracas using a cup noodle cup, toothpicks and mints at the office for the Costa Del Sol track, and the same guy who screamed his lungs out singing Lahee while dual-wielding otamatones. That man is a treasure.
I think this speech was the day after the La Hee incident.
Don't forget the box under the piano.
I remember watching this live, was just a absolute deadpan reversal of feelings at the time. We were all collectively riding the high of the Endwalker news and announcements, then Soken takes the stage and we're all waiting for some fun music news... and we get just blindsided by "I spent most of last year in the hospital with cancer" and pretty much everyone I knew who was watching just got a mysterious case of "wet face" in completely silence while he was talking. For most of Soken's speech it was almost just that phase between denial and properly registering feelings and the stream starts picking up the dev teams faces, as many of them were getting the news at the same time as us, Yoshi is barely holding it together, we could just feel Koji doing everything he can to hold it together enough to get the translation out cleanly. And then it hits Ishikawa Natsuko starting to process her reaction while Yoshi tries to regain enough composure to end the show, and she goes through what she was doing while this new revelation just got to her and that empathetic reaction for effectively the "out-of-the-loop" team members who were still doing their day to day interactions with him strike, fanbase's composure basically had a "wipe" there.
After many of us got some sleep since this was like 4am PST or something, we all went into that internal conflict of worker's abuse vs. having a purpose vs. wallowing in despair, and just coming to the conclusion that in a certain way, having a purpose was basically the best option in that situation of being almost completely isolated for some of the harshest treatment paths around. Imagining the alternative of spending roughly half a year in a hospital with nothing to do, but think about having cancer and the pain and stress associated with, a purpose filled distraction seems very nice. Even when most of us get the mental image of a person fighting cancer, we still think of coming home between treatments, having friends and/or family around, and then trying to blend that with the hospital filling reality of COVID at the time, and pretty much all the normal positive realities of that fight are stripped away. So hard to really get through cleanly even 2 years later as it is now, not quite the "mysterious wet face" incident it was at the time, but still gives that not great feeling.
Sometimes when I see this again I think about how I was all set up to be attending FanFest in November of 2020 when the US one was supposed to take place, and knowing that had it still gone on, Soken would've been in the middle of his fight while I would've been there. A end note speech of very heavy and diverse emotions, the likes of which we will hopefully never have to watch again, but was all the same a defining highlight of the relationship of the development team with each other and with the player base that is unreplaceable.
Back in 2016, I was caught in the coup in Ataturk airport. I asked my office if I could continue to work remotely while I waited for the FAA to clear a plane to take us home. I absolutely needed the distraction, the sense of normalcy, to get me through that traumatic experience. And for me it was only a few days.
I totally understand Souken wanting to have something to give him normalcy in the same way. I believe he worked with MCK Fox and Ishikawa to write the lyrics in English, but those emotions shining through are all what Souken was probably feeling at the time. And of course, the result was one of the best tracks of Endwalker.
I can only imagine what it must’ve been like to see this happen live. Soken is such a living Legend if I’ve ever seen one.
It was a freight train of an experience to be seeing this live. Since it was the digital fanfest, just about every FFXIV player that was up and awake was watching, and I know I was both watching and logged in getting some chores done. You could see city chats just explode into emotion, everyone surprised and tearful and touched.
FFXIV is a game that's not afraid to engage with emotions earnestly, and I think that's in part because the dev team feels the same way. There's love in both directions, there's love put into the work, love given to the fans, and love given back in return.
it was 7am in the morning for me when i was watching this live and i was like great how am i supposed to function for the rest of the day now
@@lampdevil I really wish I was playing this game during Shadowbringers, better late than never as the saying goes. It’s been an honor to be a part of FF XIV
it was an experience. when Soken did his reveal i cried my eyes out because this man is one tough cookie.
It was rough, several of my FC members and I were watching, and as soon as Yoshi-P turned around, you could just feel the energy just drop and it was about to get super heavy
A detail I really love is the use of the ticking clock in this song and the Amurot city theme. The Ancient’s time is coming to the end so the clock “wending down” and “pointing to the edge”. It also resonates with Soken’s story… as he must have felt his own life tick during chemo. Would it point him home or to heaven… well heaven can wait.
I'm not gonna lie, I cry a bit every time I get warrior of light in trial roulette, knowing what Soken went through for this song
Watching this live was a freight train of feels. I was in a daze for quiet awhile. I had to go back later to rewatch it to make sure I didnt just make it up...
As an aside: he's wearing a wig here. His hair hadn't fully grown back yet from the chemo (which you can also see by his eyebrows being so thin). So it really gives you a good idea of the timeline and how much it must have taken out of him to even be there on the stage.
Without a doubt, nothing gets me teary eyed and emotional like "To the Edge" and "Answers". Without fail, they hit like a ton of bricks everytime and it's because this game contains the heart and soul of it's creators. They hold nothing back and pour their everything into it.
And now we add REDACTED to that list and I still go back and listen to these songs even though I know singing along is guaranteed to destroy me but I still do it just the same.
The first game to make me cry was Crisis Core, then came FFXIV and now I so much to games and their music and moments 😅🥲
I remember when this aired. I remember pages of PF listing in game, all with the subject matter of "Get Well Soken" or "Get Well Soon Soken" or "Welcome Back Soken." Not only that too. It was all over Twitter and the forums. People sending well wishes, and thank yous, and warm thoughts. It was great to see.
Soken is a treasure, and I am glad he's still with us.
When I saw this on the live stream... just a few minutes prior, everyone was partying in Limsa. There were so many people on the plaza, they wouldnt all zoom in. Then the concert was over and the crowd dispersed, and then Soken dropped this on our heads. Needless to say, the crowd returned...
I remember this clearly. My heart in my throat when the word cancer was mentioned. I was crying like a baby fearing the worst and the palpable relief when it was in remission. So proud of Soken ❤
This goes to prove that recovery and fighting looks different for everyone. Some people can work through illness, and others can't. Both are valid decisions, and both decisions should remain respected and supported by superiors. For Yoshida to be able to read Soken, even in isolation, and say, "yeah, if you can do it, let's do it,' and then not tell anyone because of how privacy is seen in Japanese work culture is a mark of a true leader. He cares so much for his team, and in response, the people the team members lead (hopefully) pass it forward to their subordinates. It always, always starts from the top. It makes me so sad, and so angry that so many companies don't realize that.
E: I, too, went and looked up the lyrics, and yeah, with the context of both SHB and EW, this song will hit so much more. I can't wait to see you see the parallels.
On a very literal level, the fanfest video helped save my life. This happened in April. At the end of the next June, two years ago, I had a medical crisis related to the cancer that *I* am fighting, and will fight for the rest of my life. I died. And resurrected because I was pre-ordered for Endwalker and I was NOT going to miss that launch and Soken survived his cancer, I could survive too. And I did. I have survived. It wasn't the last of my challenges, and yes, being in a hospital *sucks* but I'm still here and when they announce 7.0 preorders, I'll preorder my copy just as I did for Endwalker, and Shadowbringers before it.
Final Fantasy XIV gives me hope.
may your preorder for dawntrail arrive on time
and may you ever walk in the light of the crystal
@@jessicawoodley9577 It should... provided they figure out the issue with Visa Cards by then or let me send it through Amazon Pay the day it's supposed to be delivered. Sometimes I have to just sigh and laugh at things.
Soken's speech is powerful, I love it, but then Yoshi-P's speech breaks my heart every time. the anecdote about Soken striking a "guts pose" and spurring the team on....Soken is Yoshi-P's Haurchefaunt. the camaraderie is impeccable
This was the first FFXIV fanfest I ever watched. I was already impressed by what a good show they managed to produce, despite presenting to an empty venue, and then this happened. It really humanized the dev team for me and brought home why the community feels as positively as they do towards this team.
5:55 i think the music fits as it helps celebrate his victory over Cancer
Regarding To The Edge, not only does it make so much sense when you know where Soken is coming from, but it also *fits so well for the Ascians.*
The song is about a group of people fighting to their last breath, despite the fact the world has decided it’s time for them to die.
The fight is about a hero going beyond his limits to save the ones he loves, but he’s lost his way and you’re here to put him to rest.
So obvious that it’s drawn from his experience with cancer, but also fits right in with the story.
After watching the speech live at like 4am and then getting this in my trial roulette when the fest was over, the clock ticking made me burst in tears.
My oldest sister had Leukaemia and having the support of her family and friends around her helped to keep her going. Unfortunately she has passed, but having the time to spend with her and support her mattered. Hearing Soken's story was so heartbreaking, to be alone in a hospital without the love and support of family nearby was so brave, what an incredible man.
Sokens such a good dude this was a gut punch to watch. At this point i really can't imagine modern Final Fantasy without him.
"A smile better suits a hero." - Soken everyday he gets to do what he loves.
"Transcend your limits, and weather the gathering storm."
Sending out that Tank LB3 never feels the same again.
still hits hard - the main reason I even started playing FFXIV was that fan fest announcement. After years of feeling like the games i was playing had a dev team that actively hated its own playerbase - Soken was a breath of fresh air. Been here ever since I started playing one week after this fanfest.
I bought a lunar whale too, just to support FFXIV because the devs and staff looked like they gave a shit.
I pre ordered XVI because they were on the dev team. There aren’t enough people with that kind of heart in the industry.
Bear in mind he was also likely doing work on XVI during this time in the hospital. Soken is a treasure, he Koji and YoshiP are practically the faces of CBUIII and I love em to bits.
I had quit WoW cold turkey in September, the year before this Fanfest. I had tried FFXIV back in Battle for Azeroth for a week and fricking hated it because - you know - every hour you spend in another game is a day of progress you lose in WoW. I saw this after WoW fans were crapping all over the Fanfest and checked it out. The love that these devs show for the game and the absolute humility that they showed towards their fan base, and the fact that they were willing to talk about such personal things in such an open forum convinced me to give FFXIV another try.
I absolutely, positively love FFXIV. I was only going to play the free trial up to the end of Heavensward and then I was going to move on to other things. But after I hit The Parting Glass...wow. That blew me away. I never cared for any of the NPCs in WoW the way I did for the Scions. This game grabbed me and I realized that this was the MMO that I've been searching for all these years.
I was watching this live, sitting by myself in my living room when this all went down. I remember the tears running down my face as Soken recounted everything. Then hearing the words from the other developers words I was all-out sobbing. This man put 100% toward a game I love, worked through this most difficult experience, and created music that has moved me so much. I'm tearing up just watching it again. 😭
I love YoshiP, Soken and the team because like you said, this isn't stuff done with the corporation in mind. They act human with real empathy. Something that is sorely lacking these days in the people at the top of these businesses. Just look at all the news lately with Blizzard as well as everything with NFTs. The management in those places only see pre recorded scripts and dollar signs. Literally their words are seeing us as "Obstacles to our wallets."
The Live Letters he does for the game are also for the most part unscripted. He just sits down in front of a streaming camera and shows us slides of future patch content as well as loading up a develop build of the game. This past Live Letter, at the start we saw YoshiP sitting down and playing on his Switch with the new Zelda game which he then showed the camera. The guy acts like a human with actual emotions and is a gamer just like the rest of us.
This moment is one of those where watching this live hits that much harder.
Seeing this right after jamming out to The Primals was a major whammy for us. I had spent most of the night watching Fan Fest 2021 with several of my FC mates chatting in Discord.
I've seen this more than once and still tear up. The caring this team has for each other is amazing.
If I could have one professional wish, I would want to create music like Soken. I can't respect him enough. His music has moved me to tears and made FFXIV more meaningful every time I play. He can also cleverly rework a piece in a different style where I say months after....oh my, that is actually this song too. He's a musical genius.
"To the Edge" could have been Soken's Magnum Opus. I'm so glad it wasn't... but it would have been a worthy masterpiece to go out on.
Also THIS is why people will kill for Yoshi-P and Soken, the both of them must be protected at all costs.
Always good to cry a little at the start of the day, why not
I remember watching this live, in my new dorm room alone before the first day of my final year of university. I was bawling my eyes out. It was such a special moment for me, watching fan fest after catching up with the MSQ. I truly felt glad to be part of the community and that the devs really loved and cared for this game. I wouldn’t have spent that day any other way.
I remember I woke up the next morning and got to this before going to work.
Had an early morning tearjerker, that's for sure.
But at the same time it ended with good news but it really was inspiring to see someone so determined to move forward, that not even his disease nor the solitude at the hospital, due to covid, brought him down.
Little tidbit, Soken was wearing a wig that day, as his hair hadn't grown back at that time.
We had gathered people together at Mikhettos Ampitheatre to show support by dance/emote in game for the end of this FanFest, then this part hit. A whole lot of gamers crying together for like an hour after the stream ended.
So much love for this team. ❤
Honestly. Huge kudos to Koji for maintaining his professionalism. Dude had to relay these heavy messages from close coworkers and manages to do it with a straight face and very little personal emotion.
One of the things that’s important to remember was, at least according to the 1.0 noclip documentary, Soken was on of the first people to actually agree and be onboard with the entire idea of remaking FFXIV into 2.0 in the first place. He’s always been a huge supporter of Yoshi-p so I can’t even imagine how Yoshi p felt when he knew all this time.
So many members of the XIV team are absolute treasures. Yoshi-P of course being the head of it all, and you really can tell he puts his heart and soul into it, and many of the others on his team follow suit.
I always like going back to this and being reminded that we are a cared about community
I was watching the fanfest when that bomb dropped. Having played the patch and the fight quite a few times already and loving it for what it was at the time, hearing about Soken's fight with cancer and how he kept working through it just so this gem could come out, it makes you realize that To The Edge could have possibly been his swan song. So either he pulled through and To The Edge was a testament of him never giving him and pulling through sheer adversity or it was his last message to his friends, family and the players to move on, head held high and persevere.
That's the moment, I think, that a lot of people gained an incredible amount of respect to Soken and the dev team, even after the revival of FFXIV with ARR.
There's always been a semi-running gag that people would tell Yoshi-P in Liveletters that he looked tired and to take a break and I think now this isn't even a joke; that Fanfest moment alone made it so people became much more concerned about the well-being of the people who provided them with the experiences, adventures and community that FFXIV has. It's also why when Endwalker was announced to be delayed, the fan reactions was more along the lines of "It's alright, take your time, we can wait, we believe in you guys and if you say you need more time, then you really need more time."
ive rewatched this moment with you guys like 4 times now, it never fails to hit me emotionally, such a powerful combination of game lore, meta knowledge, irl events and personal tragedy, its so fucking poetic lol
it's still hits me hard :(
I watched that live and it hit hard, still does seeing it again, but what hit even harder was how much Soken cares about the game and the players and seeing the love returned from chat was amazing. The FFXIV community, like all game communities, has its trolls and toxic players but that showed me the vast majority are wholesome(ish... Limsa can make you wonder sometimes) and care for the game and devs. I hope and pray that Soken stays healthy for a long time and can reap the rewards he deserves for all he has done for the game and community.
Will forever be something to remember. We were all on discord crying together when we watched this. Soken is a treasure. This man is going to get so many hugs at fan fest
Soken and Yoshi-P ultimate FFXIV bromance ever....
This was so touching. I will admit I didn't love To the Edge the first time I heard it, but got to like it more and more as I listened to it more times. Watching this was really touching. Also love the community response to this and all the "welcome back soken" love shared at the time. Especially Husky by the geek 40 musicians medley for him. Still watch it often.
Seat of sacrifice always hits different whenever you get in roulettes after you watch this speech. Its one of my favourite moments in the entire game now with all the hardship the team and Soken faced it feels like it was crystallised into a beautiful moment that will stick in my mind forever. Even long after i stop playing this game.
And the little interactions with the team while yoshi-p is bawling his eyes out shows how much the team care for each other.
That song - in retrospect is an amazing prologue to Endwalker.
Also, Soken and Yoshi P are f*cking kings.
This hit me so hard watching this live. We were all riding high from the Endwalker news and all the fun of the fan fest, and this sudden absolute honesty, and pain hit me in the feels. My Mom was in the hospital at that time and I couldn’t visit her because of the pandemic. When Yoshi P was crying and saying that nobody could visit Soken, I lost it. 😢
As someone who is STILL fighting AITL (Angioimmunoblastic T-Cell Lymphoma) this speech means so much to me and watching YoshiP get hit by it just shows how much these people mean to one another. I wish him nothing but a life of remission.
The worst part is that most of the dev team including koji himself didnt even know that soken had cancer until this very event happened, koji had to translate everything completely blind and was struggling to contain himself while being struck with the same realization we were struck by at the same time that soken was this close to being taken away from us and its only because of our love for his music that he didnt give up the fight and won in the end. I can easily imagine an alternate reality where people could have disliked 5.3 and would unknowingly bring soken to a spiraling depression that would seal the fate of his cancer, and im glad that such a fate never came to pass.
I recommend also looking up the "Welcome Back Soken" music medley that a lot of musicians in the FF14 community put together and performed very quickly after this happened. It is really heartwarming to see how much love this community has for its devs and especially Yoshi P and Soken.
This clip is mandatory watching for streamers nowadays
Been feeling the feels on this from the other side, because my dad was diagnosed with cancer last year. His treatment has worked, we're just dealing with the side effects now. But yeah...I have twice now gained a higher appreciation of the _weight_ of this song, and how it makes the trial that much more powerful.
I had a similar situation with my wife, her bowels burst from colon cancer and she almost died. If it wasn't for this game and it's community, I don't know if I could have gotten through the darkest 2 years of our lives.
Im so sorry, lots of hugs to both of you ❤
I'm so glad this nice and talented guy came out of such a scary thing okay. I didn't think anyone would be able to carry on Uematsu's legacy, but it's in fine hands with Soken.
I started FFXIV just after 5.5 released. This video made me absolutely fall in love with the game and it's creators.
Soken is modern day Mozart and an inspirational human being ❤
I'm 43 years old and my mortality is more and more palpable each day. This announcement hit right in the pit of my stomach and I thought about it for weeks.
And to add context to this, the online Fanfest was such a fun and wild event, especially The Primals concert, and then this was dropped towards at the close. It suddenly flipped the mood and people laughing suddenly ended up crying.
I just want to say that this theme, the FF Ending theme, is the perfect music for this kind of story.
I remember how profound To The Edge started to feel after this speech
As one of the people who spammed you with this factoid during 5.3, I apologise. I should have realised that so many more of us would be telling you this. But yes, you're right, to have experienced this battle at such a crucial point in the story (and in what wasn't a great time for me personally), and then to have it recontextualised like that, live, was absolutely brutal. Clearly so many people wanted you know about Soken's journey and I'm very glad you got to see this speech as well.
Everyone should start their day off with a good cry.
Soken is an international treasure that must be protected at all costs.
This is so epic, and fits 5.3 perfectly.
Ms. Ishikawa gave the lyric concept and the lyrics were written by Koji Fox actually, but unlike Ms. Ishikawa, Koji Fox KNEW about SOKEN's condition
That being said everything from the instrumentation to the lyrics mirrors the situation so?? Eerily.
It is such a strong multilayered piece they did such a good job with it
Watching the Extreme footage in the background of the fight, it only just now occurred to me that the Limit bar isn't just a flashy thing WoL does, *it's YOUR Limit Breaks.*
This entire time, Elidibus has proven he can whip out LB's like it's nothing with just brief concentration while it takes you minutes to charge a single bar to use the same ability once.
The fact that we can live to stand against that is even more potent with this song. Impossible debilitating odds overcome by friendship.
I can’t think of any other development team that would have this kind of care and respect for their people.
This is why I'm convinced that Soken is a primal.
There is a song on here put together by 1000 players who are singers and musicians to honor him after they found out,
It's a great song, but unfortunately it's also a spoiler for Endwalker, so the guys probably shouldn't look at it yet!
Soken was wearing a wig in this video as well, since his hair hadn't fully grown back yet
This event also had Soken preform Lah Hee live. You gotta watch it. Soken is too good for this world.
They did when they got to Ratika.
This. This video is one of the best examples of what separates Final Fantasy from other MMOs. The game has heart. The game has heart because the people making it have heart.
God damnit I actually tried to X out the notification box at the start of the video.
How is it still a good day for rain
Watch the beginning of the video again, Soken wrote the music, Christopher Koji Fox wrote the lyrics, he writes most of the lyrics to all of the songs in the game.
Ah, I was wondering if y'all were given this!
Every time I see this, from watching it live, even to today, I choke up.
This song at first thought was a gut punch....no...I was wrong...all of us were wrong because just as you think the rollercoaster is over the first hump...there's two more on the horizon...enjoy keeping your emotions intact during Endwalker fellas....you're going to need it.
I always think of how hard the final patch approval process would have been on Yoshida. His best friend is fighting cancer and he has to watch and sign off on the Elidibus scene.
"The rains have ceased, and we have been graced with another beautiful day. But you are not here to see it." I can only imagine he did a lot of work in an office with the door closed and blinds drawn because how could he possibly keep it together?
There are certain songs in Endwalker that I wonder if Soken started working on while he was in the hospital as well.
That line from Elidibus was spruced up for the English version. As I understand it he didn't say anything even remotely close to that in the JP audio. He was just lamenting the fact that he isn't the last Ascian to die and the others will be forced to find their own way forward with their mutual goal now unattainable. Not sure why they changed it.
@@providencebreaker1558 Is Yoshida left in the dark on the other localizations?
I thought it worked really well in the English version because it's not Elidibus' line, he's repeating what the others had said to him once.
The Japanese is essentially just "There's nothing left to it, then. I'm the last one left."
The English says the same thing but with a little more poetry. They had once said that to him, but now he says it thinking of them as he's the last of them, they're no longer here.
Heartbreaking though Soken's story is, i can't help noticing that the person who wrote the Rogue and DRK class stories, and the majority of Shadowbringers looks so sweet and innocent.
She also wrote the Crystal Tower raid story, and Endwalker :D
And then soken created "Do you Know... La-Hee?" and the world understood him as someone who would NEVER stop doing what he likes, be it writing awesome songs or trolling a massive livestream.
That's why ff14 is a "cult" hope the devs keep the magic alive there are too many studios that lost that feeling, in the end games are art not just business
morning all o/
God dqmn it got me again