It turns out that Final Fantasy 14 director Naoki ‘YoshiP’ Yoshida is a mega fan of Blizzard’s brilliant ARPG series Diablo. While the two series are very different in both tone and gameplay, the FF14 lead wants to find some way to combine the two franchises, if possible.
Speaking to TechRadar, YoshiP was asked about the types of collaborations he would like to create for Final Fantasy 14. Discussed alongside the likes of One Piece and Neon Genesis Evangelion, the developer expressed his desire to work on the Diablo franchise in some form.
“I love Diablo so much that I would want to make a Diablo game myself, and I have huge respect for all the staff working at Blizzard, not only as a gamer, but as a developer,” the director told the outlet. “So I really would love to achieve some sort of collaboration with them.”
Final Fantasy 14 has crossed over with a number of franchises in the past including Square Enix’s own Dragon Quest and NieR series. However, these collaborations have become weird with Fall Guys crossovers and GARO a Japanese tokusatusu series.
Diablo is also no stranger to its own crossovers with Blizzard now making live-service crossovers a main part of the ongoing fourth game’s live service. In the past, the game has collaborated with iconic anime series Berserk, so maybe there’s time for players to have a big boss fight against Final Fantasy’s Ifrit.
Diablo 4 has been subject to major criticism since its release due to the game’s seasonal update process and the lack of major gameplay improvements. However, with a major update in the works ahead of the game’s second expansion next year—which appears to be adding the long-absent Paladin class—it does appear that the game is finally going in the right place.
As for Final Fantasy 14, there’s no word on when the popular MMO’s next expansion will be coming out. However, considering the MMO’s usual two-year development cycle, we wouldn’t expect the next expansion to release until late 2026 at the earliest.
