Final Fantasy 14's London Fanfest 2023 may be over, but there are still plenty of great moments, including confirmation that Final Fantasy franchise creator Hironobu Sakaguchi has completed some of the most difficult raids in the game.

This is a great move. Since the game's director, Naoki Yoshida, is also an active raid rider (a black mage, one of the most difficult jobs in the game to optimize), the two wanted to play together. They connected online and played against the community using the game's party search system on a first-come, first-served basis. A little fun. You might think so.

Sakaguchi was ready as a paladin in the tank position, but here was the problem: FF14 has a boss attack called the "tank buster," which is designed to challenge a stack of tank hit points. Occasionally, this tank buster would hit in the vicinity of its target.

Cut to the first fight against Golbez in the "Voidcast Diaz" trial. In normal mode, there is no stress on this pair of hardcore raiders, but the moment Sakaguchi is targeted by the tank buster, he turns away from the boss and charges toward Yoshida like a shark sensing blood in the water.

Thanks to the interface setup, Yoshida's pathetic black mage icon can be seen frantically running away from Sakaguchi, but to no avail. Yoshida's lalafell becomes a paste, and Sakaguchi's sturdy tank handles the fireball well.

"We've been K.O.'d!" !" utters global community producer Shio Murouchi like a court jester. He sits just down the line, occasionally interpreting, watching a Final Fantasy father stunned into laughter and a recently grieving director trying to remember how to push their buttons with a giggle.

To top it off, that's not all he challenges. At around 1:16:37 in the following VOD, Sakaguchi tries to cut a second tangent to the distressed director, but this time Yoshida is ready.

"I'll die, I'll die, where's Yoshi P!" A second interpreter captures Sakaguchi's frenzy, but he cannot find Yoshi P among the particle effects and the giant model of the boss blocking the way.

He turns sharp left toward the white mage, locks back on to Yoshida, and soon dies at the end of the tankbuster. Probably because he took 3 stacks of vulnerability (the stacking debuff he gets when he fails) and forgot to play his defensive ability in his bloodlust. Yoshida replies: "This tank is in big trouble!"

As if.

Like a modern-day "Romeo and Juliet" retelling, the story ends with the demise at the hands of both players' antics: around 1:19:37, white mage Alva Alvitir (who, incidentally, was pulled out of the game by a game user), a "Final Fantasy 14" sees an opportunity to play a prank on the director and does so.

They run off a cliff, use Rescue (an ability that pulls party members to their places), and push Yoshida into the abyss. Meanwhile, Sakaguchi dies for completely unrelated reasons. In the next battle against Proto-Carbuncle, Sakaguchi again takes on Proto-Carbuncle. However, Proto Carbuncle's tank buster "crunch" fails to hit in the area. Yoshida still manages to escape.

Frankly, this is all tracking. You wouldn't want to pull a stunt like this on a complete stranger, but it's an old tradition when you're in line with a group of people you know well. After all, they need to be on their toes at all times, and nothing is more of a shock to the system than a supposed ally hunting you down while being chased by a meteor"