"The time just felt right" - Ryozo Tsujimoto and Naoki Yoshida talk the Omega Planetes and Arkveld collabs

During Tokyo Game Show 2025, we had the chance to sit down on a conference-style interview with Capcom's Ryozo Tsujimoto, and Square Enix's Naoki Yoshida - about the recently released collaboration between Monster Hunter Wilds and Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail. While many others had the chance to ask their own questions, ours was relatively simple - what went into deciding which representative would appear in each game, especially considering that the teams had collaborated once before?

RPG Site: So, I'm James from RPG Site. I have a question for both Tsujimoto-san and Yoshida-san. What sort of process went into deciding which representatives from each series would be part of the crossover on the other side? It strikes me that while Arkveld feels like it is a very obvious collaboration candidate, Omega was a raid boss, contemporary to when the original collaboration between Monster Hunter: World and Final Fantasy XIV dropped. Nowadays, it's probably emblematic of the hardest content in Final Fantasy XIV. Was that a decision made on Square Enix's end, or Capcom's end? Or was it a mutual conversation?

Naturally, the answer came from both sides of the equation. Previously during the conference interview, it was mentioned that the Final Fantasy XIV development team actually had the chance to visit Capcom's Osaka office and play Monster Hunter Wilds early, partially to help get things rolling with the collaboration.

Naoki Yoshida: So when we first approached them, we thought that we're definitely going to be told, no, you can't use Arkveld just because it's such a new character, but they were like completely open to it. So, that surprised me. It was just a matter of us asking and them saying "yes", and then going from there.

Ryozo Tsujimoto: Yeah, we were very happy for them to borrow the main monster, and as Yoshida-san mentioned before, we had some of the team come to our office at Osaka and check it out before it was publicly available. I think the collaborative spirit on both sides meant that the Final Fantasy XIV-collab version of Arkveld really came together in a really nice way. I'm sure you'll be pleased when you play it.

While there was some concern on the Square Enix end of the equation, Tsujimoto's team at Capcom had a grand vision for Omega - and how it could even fit thematically with Monster Hunter: Wild's story.

Ryozo Tsujimoto: On the Monster Hunter side, we heard we were going to be doing this collab as part of a Title Update after launch, and we have a whole timeline of those plans. So Title Update 2 has some returning classics from the Monster Hunter series, Monsters like Lagiacrus and Seregios, and with the upcoming Title Update 4 we recently announced the return of Gogmazios, which is a massive monster, but with a huge range of attacks, and it has that kind of feeling of the biggest bosses in any Monster Hunter.
So whatever we were considering which Final Fantasy 14 enemy to borrow, we wanted something that would feel distinct from both of those, and even on a normal scale, it would feel something fresh and different in a way you can portray than when you have a monster return from a past title.

Omega was just the perfect fit for that because it's really focused on intensive positioning work and the feeling of having to dodge missiles and ranged weapons. The way it can rocket punch, those things just don't… you can't just make all the monsters shooting projectiles like this out, right? It feels like nothing that came before it in a way, and feels different to the things that would come after it as well.

So, yeah, we actually originally had a little bit of a discussion at the dinner with the Final Fantasy XIV team, and that's where we started talking about this. Omega came up as a topic back then and it was a great fit for the storyline. We had it planned, as you know, for those who played most of Wilds - about ancient civilizations, and those thematic elements were a really good fit for it, Omega. Beyond that, it just felt like the players have got so much more tools at their disposal in Wilds, that even though Omega is a very intensive battle for sure, we felt that it's a good point in the series for players to be able to take on something that intense, and it was a great fit for Wilds in particular. It might not have worked back in the day of Monster Hunter World, but the time just felt right.

In the weeks following Tokyo Game Show, I've had the chance to check out both halves of the collaboration - and I couldn't agree more when it comes to Omega. I enjoyed Arkveld in Final Fantasy XIV as well, but Monster Hunter players have undoubtedly gotten the better end of the stick this go around. In retrospect it shouldn't be too surprising; as even Yoshi-P anticipated it would be a perfect fit for the series, as well.

Naoki Yoshida: When they first approached us and mentioned that Omega would be one of the monsters that they would be interested in using, I immediately knew that that would be a great choice. As a Monster Hunter player myself, I could imagine how it would appear in the game, how it spins and how it charges lasers. Beyond that, it really has a "monster" type of feel. I knew immediately that it was gonna work great. My only worry was how it was gonna fit story wise, but after hearing their explanation of the story of Wilds, I knew that wouldn't be a problem.

It's not too often we see companies collaborate so closely on projects, but as someone who has been a massive fan of both Monster Hunter and Final Fantasy XIV it's neat to see the two companies continue to so closely work together out of respect for each others work. Both halves of the Monster Hunter World x Final Fantasy XIV cross-over are available in their respective games now.