Hello, everyone!

The Return to Ivalice alliance raid series had its grand finale with The Orbonne Monastery during patch 4.5, but there's still something special we'd like to share with all of you!

As a refresher, Yasumi Matsuno, the Creator of the Ivalice series, worked on the scenario for the alliance raids. He was accompanied by Keita Amemiya, the Executive Director of the GARO series, who crafted the monsters' designs.

The series started off as "the story of Ivalice within the world of FFXIV" and was said to be "something completely different from Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy Tactics." The conclusion must have had quite an impact for the many fans of FFXII and FFT.

Just as impressive as Matsuno's scenario, we'd like to share some of the outstanding designs from Amemiya.

We'll be showcasing illustrations of the boss designs by Amemiya, which were included in The Orbonne Monastery, the third raid dungeon of the Return to Ivalice series.

The Thunder God

First up is the third boss found at the Monastery, "Thunder God."

Here's an illustration!

Can't you just feel a sense of majesty from this mighty Thunder God? Such a great design!

We've also got this rough draft version of this design as well!

However, after discussing with Matsuno, Amemiya decided to revise this design with a "guardian" feel to it.

It was his idea to have him illuminated with red and blue lights shining from below in order to portray the vivid colorfulness of the illustration.

Here are more illustrations of the Thunder God from different angles!

Even the dragon found on the tail is drawn with fine detail.

Moving onto the sculptures!

Here we have the Thunder God's sculpture rendered in 3DCG.

This was mentioned in a previous showcase, but this sculpturing is a method of creating 3DCG, and it's called a sculpture because it's made by carving out polygons. Pretty uh... sharp details, huh?

Ultima, the High Seraph

Here's an illustration of the coveted Ultima, the High Seraph. Amazing colors right?

According to the person in charge, they had a real hard time reproducing these colors in-game for the High Seraph, especially getting just the right shade of white!

Let's delve into different angles of Ultima through the below illustrations

The illustrations from all three sides are exceptionally intricate! The attention to detail is so well done.

Taking this design into consideration, it's really not that hard to believe that the figure consists of a total of approximately 230 parts!

And did you know a figure of Ultima is currently on sale? That's right! Feel free to check it out sometime!

Now it's sculpture time!

Amazing precision. Fine details! But... let's take a closer look at one of the specific areas, shall we?

There we go, if you look at the details attentively, you can see that a female motif was utilized in many places for this version of Ultima. This, too, was accurately recreated in the sculpture.

That's all I can show off today! The Return to Ivalice raid series was brought to you thanks to some seriously talented guest creators.

How did you enjoy taking a closer look at the bosses' designs? I, for one, am happy and grateful that you went through them with me!

A special conversation between Yasumi Matsuno and Yoshi-P will be published in the 675th volume of Dengeki Playstation on Apr. 27th. The full version of the conversation will be published on the web on May 3rd if you prefer to check it out then! There will be plenty of untold stories regarding the creation of Return to Ivalice, so please be sure to check it out!

Once again, thanks for going through this with me and I'll see you all around. Maybe I'll even see you during some of my adventures in The Orbonne Monastery!

Until next time!

- Sicycre
Community Team