Final Fantasy XIV‘s director, Naoki Yoshida, has responded to the player tributes to late Berserk creator, Kentaro Miura.
Earlier this week (May 20), it was announced that the creator of the popular dark fantasy manga series had died on May 6 at the age of 54, due to acute aortic dissection.
After the news broke, Final Fantasy XIV players responded by coming together in-game to pay respects to Miura, as his creation had greatly inspired the online game.
The memorials were being held across many of the MMO’s data centres and servers, with thousands of players joining to pay tribute the late manga artist.
Here's a better quality recording showing the full line of Dark Knights on Final Fantasy XIV's Balmung server paying tribute to Miura-san.
The turnout is amazing.
For those unfamiliar with FFXIV, the Dark Knight job and Guts share a lot of similarities. pic.twitter.com/ToMO0LM07X
— Josh (@EliteFourJosh) May 20, 2021
In an interview with PC Gamer, Naoki Yoshida responded to the player base by thanking them for paying respects.
Yoshida said: “It goes to show just how much people have received from Mr. Miura and his artwork. It was heartwarming to see how much influence he has had on players. I also want to thank players for taking the time to acknowledge that.
“Even players in Japan, too, are very much affected by this and there’s a lot of shock among the fandom as well.”
The director also shared that he was a fan of the Berserk manga series himself and describes the passing of Muira as a “very sad and unfortunate loss” adding that he was influenced by the artist’s work.
In Final Fantasy XIV, there is a Dark Knight job class that wields a great sword and the design was largely inspired by the design of the character from Berserk.
Miura’s Berserk has also inspired other games in the Final Fantasy franchise before, including Cloud Strife’s iconic Buster sword in Final Fantasy 7.
Players recently paid tribute to Final Fantasy XIV’s composer Masayoshi Soken who revealed his cancer battle while composing music for the Shadowbringers expansion.
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