I remember the first time I wanted to take a screenshot of something in a video game. The game was Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles on the Nintendo Gamecube, which I was playing on an average CRT television. Despite my best attempts with an early-generation digital camera to photograph the screen, I was never able to get a good enough capture of it. While fortunately still in my memory, the ability to capture that moment was lost to me forever. Fast forward to 2020, an era of 1080p/4K gaming, and every current-generation gaming platform offering the ability to capture screenshots or record footage at the click of a button. Video games in recent years have further embraced this functionality, offering dedicated “Photo Modes” which give users an extra layer of camera-like control to take the perfect photo.
Welcome to Take That (In-Game) Snap, a new review series featured on The Otaku’s Study. During this series, I will be looking at, appreciating and critiquing the photography functionality offered in different games. Furthermore, I will provide glimpses at what each developer has provided regarding the character and world designs. After all, it is these designs that fill your mind with creativity and give your photo life. Game permitting, I will also cover how the community has expanded upon these designs through the likes of mods. Please note that in instances where modding the client is against a game’s terms of service, I will hold off on mentioning it.
To kick off this series, I will be looking at Square Enix’s online game Final Fantasy XIV, available on the Windows PC, Mac and PlayStation 4 platforms. This MMORPG enjoys an active Instagram community who have amassed over 800k public posts on the hashtag #ffxiv. While Savage and Ultimate content may be the “endgame” to some, for others, getting creative with their “Glamour” and looking fashionable is the real endgame.
All photos in this post were taken by me, using my own characters. Please note that many of these screenshots have received post-editing, and your results may vary based on several factors, including system specs.
Eorzea – Rich in Diversity with Plenty of Character Options
Virtually all Final Fantasy games both online and offline nail world-building. Although recent titles in the franchise have taken a more modern approach as of late, Final Fantasy XIV and its three expansions have kept its game world of Eorzea much more fantasy-themed. While there are a few modern and mechanical-looking areas in the world, particularly in the expansions, you can expect to find many a lush forest covered in greenery, barren deserts with uninterrupted views of the sky and inspirational dungeon interiors from a daunting cathedral to an eerie library. The world might not be vast like World of Warcraft for example, but every map has its charm and much attention to detail ensuring many a nook to take that unique snap.
Perhaps even more impressive is the selection of player races to make your character. As of the most recent expansion, there are now eight playable races for players to choose, six of which have gender variants. Want to be a bunny girl or catgirl? Viera or Miqo’te might be your best choice. Want to be considered small and compared to a potato? Lalafell represent! Want to look like an ordinary human? Choose Hyur. Big and bulky your preference? Be one of the few who are a Roegadyn. Each race has enough diversity between them to make their inclusion meaningful, and are further broken up into two clans which have their unique visual features. For example, I am a Dunesfolk Lalafell. While there is no difference in potential size, their eyes are glazed over due to lore-reasons and therefore look a little different in photographs than a Plainsfolk Lalafell. The only thing to watch out for is that the two newest races – Viera and Hrothgar – have different hairstyles from other classes and are not compatible with all headgear at this time.
Although not as in-depth as newer character creators in the MMORPG market which allow you to sculpt every inch of your avatars face ideally, Final Fantasy XIV offers much control over your character’s appearance and making them unique. You can choose from one of several options of face shape, clan-specific features, ear shape and hairstyle; and further customise them with hair highlights, eye colour, tattoos, face paint, lip colour, skin colour and more. Everything is done from menus, and it is hard to create a character which looks ugly. Therefore if that is your approach, then you are probably out of luck with this game.
You should spend as much time as possible making your character to your liking from the start. While there are options in-game to change your hairstyle, tattoos, face-paint and a small number of other features; more substantial changes including face shape and race changes come at a monetary cost.
Get Snazzy
So you have completed your character… now what? You have a few different options when it comes to accumulating items. The ideal way is to begin making your way through the main story until you hit Level 80 and more or less have access to 95% of the game’s clothing in some way. Whether the equipment is crafted, traded for, purchased via the Marketboard or dropped in dungeons – this is the best way of acquiring the freedom to obtain and wear gear as with any other MMORPG. Alternatively, you can trade in real money for special outfits via the “MogStation” webpage. This service typically covers event costumes, and those otherwise not accessible in the game, such as the downright adorable Housemaid Uniform pictured below. At the very least, you should get yourself up to Level 50, where most of the base game content is accessible, and you gain access to at least some of the more beautiful looking equipment.
An issue with a lot of online games is that outfits generally outgrow their usefulness as you level up. After all, you would not be able to tackle a Level 80 dungeon wearing Level 40 gear just because it looks fancy. Final Fantasy XIV subverts this issue through its Glamour System. Fortunately unlocked early on, this system allows you to assign any outfit you own as a “glamour”, which can then be applied to the equipment you are wearing. The requirement for this is the equipment is not lower level than the glamour AND it is compatible with the class you are using. For example, let’s say you are wearing Level 80 equipment but have a Level 50 body armour you love for the same battle class. Through this system, you can wear the Level 80 armour while having it look like the Level 50 armour.
With hundreds of equipment pieces available for each part of the body – Head, Body, Arms, Legs, Feet and Accessories; there are so many options available for you to choose from to make your “ideal glam”. Want to look like you are taking a trip to the beach? There are dozens of options for that! Want to look like you have come straight out of Nier: Automata? There are certainly options for that! Want to parade around as a pig? Surprisingly, there are options for that as well.
For a few examples, please check the below post I made to Instagram on New Years Eve 2018:
Glamour Plates – Your New Best Friend
You can easily be forgiven if the idea of having hundreds of costume options to make your unique style is daunting. Alternatively, every concept can be a good one, and soon you might end up struggling to manage the different designs in your inventory.
To make things a little bit easier and either allow you to have a different costume assigned to each of your classes OR just be able to switch outfit on a whim, Final Fantasy XIV in recent years has introduced a glamour plate system. This system allows players to store up to 400 equipment pieces in a separate storage box, and use those to set up 15 pre-designed plates which can be switched in specific locations in the game. While a few short of having one for each combat class, I personally use this system to give each of class its own glamour – from my Bunnygirl Samurai to my Card-drawing Astrologian Maid. It is surprising to think that we went years without it, previously having to individually glamour each piece of armour and lug around a wardrobe with us.
That said, there is one limitation behind this system which will impact you should you change classes regularly and share equipment between them. Glamour Plates only work when you are in a town or a residential district. In other locations, no changes will be made, and you can end up with a wonky design. If you are only focused on this system for photography, however, you won’t need to worry too much.
Getting to Know /GPOSE
Continually being updated by Square Enix, with new functionality introduced over the last few major patches, Final Fantasy XIV features a full photography mode which is accessible by typing /gpose in the chat box. This mode freezes your character and those around them in your client, allowing you to fiddle with camera angles, lighting settings; and play emotes, expressions or specific movements. This is an easily accessible mode which offers a HUD-less way of taking a quick snap, and a lot of versatility if you want to edit your screenshot to suit your precise requirements.
This mode has a menu which can be brought up while pressing the (R) Key, which is the hub you will want to work from while creating the perfect picture. Below is a summary of the options on each tab:
Top Horizonal Options: These options are available on every tab, and give you basic controls. These include:
- Whether the character automatically faces the camera (Option 1)
- A default lighting preset is used (Option 2 – But I would never recommend using this)
- Movement is turned on/off for all characters on-screen or only targetted character (Option 3 & 4)
- Ability to prevent time and weather from changing (Option 5)
- Enabling or disabling battle effects if a character on your screen used that as their last animation (Option 6).
- This is essentially a nifty row of standard tools, even if I would only ever see the need for half of them.
Tab #1: This is arguably the tab you will use most frequently. It gives you the ability to have finer control over the camera position relative to your selected character, access filters / special effects for quick post-production (personally, I rarely touch these) and alter the aperture (depth of field) to a different f-stop allowing different degrees of bokeh effect. Being able to fine-tune the camera position is fantastic, given the limits of native camera movements. That said, the depth of field can be really fiddly, and it can be frustrating to find a perfect setting if you have more than one character on-screen. However, it works okay overall.
Tab #2: Given you are unable to use GPOSE in combat, it is impossible to simulate status effects after having them cast on you. Therefore, this tab allows you to grant your character one of five allowable status effects for photographic purposes: Deep Freeze, Petrification, Pyretic, Sleep and Seduced. For those who are taking shots by the ocean, you can also force your clothes to be doused by water. For whatever reason, this tab also has borders, most of which I find don’t work on my ultrawide monitor – and those that do look pretty sub-standard.
Tab #3: While natural lighting is ideal when taking screenshots in Final Fantasy XIV, there will be times you don’t have a light source to work with. In which case, you can position three lights around your character and control both the direction (from focused to broad across three types) and intensity of the light. Experimentation is key with this system, but the outcomes can equal or even better than of natural light. Alternatively, you can use the newly added “Character Lighting” slider which will light up just your character with no additional options. Personally, I would stay away from the latter option.
Tab #4: Need to give your character some life from within GPOSE mode? Motion Settings will be for you, allowing you to assign yourself a movement direction or emote from the tool which is instantly reflected by your character. There are limitations to this, such as you being unable to animate those outside you or your squadron, and any battle animations need to be used before entering /gpose. But otherwise, it is convenient if you are initially unsure what expression you want your photo to have.
Tab #5: You might not need this menu at first, but when you do, you will be grateful you have access to it. This menu allows you to control who appears on your screen in GPOSE mode, nifty in particular if your friends decide to leave out their minions (essentially in-game pets you can have out for an extra “cute” factor) when you take a photo and they are standing right where you can get a perfect angle from.
The limitation of this is that you cannot choose individual player characters, pets, minions, NPCs or enemies to remove – the options are all or nothing. There is one exception. If you are friends with someone, you can target their character in /gpose. By turning off Non-controlled Characters > PC with a friend selected, both theirs and your character will remain. But most of the time you will use this to hide minions.
This may seem like a lot to take in, but once you dive into the system, it is very intuitive, and you should be taking good quality snaps rather quickly. Another consideration you should make when taking snaps however, is ensuring that your graphics settings (System Configuration > Graphics Settings) are set to Maximum or Very High (Laptop) at the bare minimum.
Overall, Final Fantasy XIV presents a fantastic built-in tool for those who want to use their characters and/or friends to take pretty photos for either personal use or to showcase on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook or websites such as this. It is accessible to those who just want to take a snap in 15 seconds, while also feature-laden to give users a high level of control over how their images look. Personally, this is one feature which has kept me coming back to Final Fantasy XIV, and spending hours and hours grinding or raising money for a new dress or coat. It is a perfect complement to what could be considered one of the true-endgames of this MMORPG.
Below is a small sampling of screenshots which have featured in the Take That (In-Game) Snap Daily Photo sub-series for Final Fantasy XIV. You can check out all posts covering all games covered to date HERE. New snaps are being posted daily.
For more information about how to purchase/play Final Fantasy XIV, please visit the game’s official website for your region. Alternatively, if you are after reviews, please read my articles on the game’s recent Blue Mage Update and the latest major patch.
