Correction: 7/12/24, 4:00 p.m. ET: A previous version of this story incorrectly implied that the feature discussed here was now available automatically within the game itself. It has been corrected below.
They say that fashion is the true endgame of Final Fantasy 14, and indeed, making your Warrior of Light as good-looking as possible is one of the most time-honored and beloved pastimes in Square Enix’s MMORPG. The recent graphics update the game received alongside the release of the new Dawntrail expansion has made it possible for players, with the help of certain third-party tools, to make their characters look better than ever, and folks are certainly taking advantage of that. However, they’ve discovered that the update has also created entirely new ways in which you can make your character look quite silly with the right tools. Naturally, hilarious screenshots have ensued.
One of the biggest aspects of the graphics update is the better character models it’s introduced, with faces receiving significant improvements. For example, pre-Dawntrail there was one bone for controlling eye-lids, now there are three. More bones means a wider range of movement and expression that creative players can manipulate in unintended ways with the help of third-party posing tools. This will mainly be used to make your Warrior of Light look cooler in all those screenshots you take, but some players are using it for something entirely different.
In order to get used to the new facial models and their many bones, one poster on X (formerly Twitter) started a challenge to players under the gfacials hashtag (yes, it is an unfortunate hashtag) to recreate some famous anime faces in-game. The trend has quickly spiraled into players just making all sorts of silly faces, many of which recreate memes from all over the internet. Some great examples include one poster making their Viera look like the meme of Jamie Lee Curtis yelling at someone and then drinking a glass of water, as well as so many female Hrothgar players just making their Warriors of Light do cat memes. Take a look at what the Final Fantasy 14 community has come up with thanks to all these new bones.
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