If there’s one thing Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker will be remembered for, it won’t be its excellent conclusion to a decade-long story. Nor popularity so immense that Square Enix pulled the game from sale for six entire weeks to save the already-buckling servers from folding entirely. No, it will be remembered for its beautiful low-poly grapes that were so rudely “fixed” after they took Eorzea by storm.
Memes around the grapes have persisted 18 months after the expansion’s release, and it even caused director/producer Naoki Yoshida to go and quality check the grapes in Final Fantasy 16 to make sure they were up to snuff. Long may the low-poly grapes live on, especially now Square Enix is immortalising them as a physical goodie for the upcoming Final Fantasy 14 Fan Festival in Las Vegas.
Those who are attending the festival will be privy to some lovely Final Fantasy 14-themed gifts. There’s a 10th-anniversary crossbody bag, an adorable carrot-shaped pen topped with a loporrit, an Azem crystal keychain and a grebuloff magnet. Then, to top it all off, a “squishable Endwalker grapes” stress… prism of some kind. “Relieve any lingering stress after hours of ‘farm parties’ with these truly remarkable squishable Endwalker grapes,” the item’s description reads. “If you’re ever feeling a little low resolution, simply grab your squishable grapes and remember what once was.”
I’m certainly feeling grape envy, and the whole plethora of loot is a lovely bundle for the dwellers of Eorzea. It’s a neat way to lean into one of the more mainstream memes to have expanded beyond Final Fantasy 14’s player base, and will certainly come in handy when yet another Sage who keeps forgetting to apply shields joins the savage raid party. Definitely not speaking from experience or anything.
The Las Vegas Fan Festival kicks off next month, and we’re sure to be in for a couple of big announcements while it’s going on. If previous expansions are anything to go by then Endwalker is over halfway through its life cycle now, and I can feel in my bones that a new expansion announcement is around the corner. Even outside of new expansions, the game is celebrating its 10th anniversary of the A Realm Reborn relaunch at the end of August.