Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail's new female Hrothgar race nearly had a cuter design

Final Fantasy 14's brand new race nearly had a cuter final design, but its game director chose another version for the "strong and nimble" build you see today.

The female Hrothgars will finally enter Final Fantasy 14 with the upcoming Dawntrail expansion later this summer, answering players' prayers after years of waiting. It turns out that, though, thanks to an internal competition to decide the final look of the female Hrothgar, the new playable race nearly appeared totally different.

"In general, we always create an internal competition of sorts for our characters," Yoshida said of the new race's design to PLAY magazine, adding that Square Enix's artists are tasked with picking ideas that they feel are "representative" of the race. 

"What we do is initially just create the lore, and we will give that information about the lore to the arts team, but we will not say anything about the appearance," Yoshida continues.

Square Enix's artists are left to their own designs to come up with a look that they think would be appropriate for the character, which is just what happened for the Viera and male Hrothgar races. "If I recall correctly, for female Hrothgar, we had, in general, eight types which were proposed, and then from those eight types, we narrowed it down to three. I picked the final candidates and then from there we went on to work out the fine details," Yoshida elaborates.

It turns out Yoshida was quite "torn" over which version to pick. "There was one which was a little bit popular internally, which had a smaller type of build. This was more akin to – I wouldn't say fairy-like – but it was quite cute, and it looked quite good. But when I thought about the typical characteristics of a female Hrothgar, I thought there should already be some notion of them being strong and nimble," the Final Fantasy 14 director adds.

So, the female Hrothgar's final design ended up reflecting this "strong and nimble" build rather than the cuter version. Yoshida also adds that he deliberately chose the final design for the race with a "more athletic build" in mind, which makes a lot of sense when you look at the female Hrothgars we've seen so far for the MMO, like newcomer Wuk Lamat.

Speaking of, earlier this year, the actor behind Wuk Lamat revealed they'd been playing Final Fantasy 14 for well over a decade, and had nearly become a community representative at one point. They sadly "bombed" the interview with Square Enix though, but we'd say the final outcome of getting to voice a character in the game more than makes up for that. 

Final Fantasy 14 finally arrives on Xbox consoles later this month on March 21, and the MMO's Starter Edition will be available for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscribers for a limited time.