Final Fantasy XIV, like most video games, is far from physically taxing despite the often-incredible feats performed by your character on-screen. But what if you, say, actually had to dance to get the Dancer job moving? Absolute madman Super Louis 64 answered this question earlier today, and the results are pretty impressive.
Using an old Microsoft Kinect camera meant for Xbox 360 and a middleware known as FAAST, Louis was able to make it so that certain body movements translated into keyboard inputs. This essentially gave him the ability to perform Dancer job abilities with some simple, real-life dance moves. He quickly hit a snag, however, upon realizing he might not be able to pull off the in-game actions as perfectly as he wanted.
“My first goal with the mod was to map the motion controls as close as possible to the motions of the dance steps in the game,” Louis explains in the video. “However, after seeing each dance step and realizing my back isn’t getting any younger, I had to take some creative liberties and make sure I didn’t need to be Raised mid-dance.”
With the complicated dances out the window, Louis instead used more simple moves like a dab—which begins and ends every dance sequence—Carlton’s dance from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and The Monkey, a ‘60s kitsch classic repopularized by cartoon character Johnny Bravo. This all combined to make for a control scheme that’s both super engaging and much more exhausting than pressing a few buttons, considering he had to run up to his keyboard every time he needed to dodge enemy attacks and then reset the motion controls with a T-pose.
“After playing Dancer with motion controls, I don’t think I can ever go back to just keyboard and mouse,” Louis adds. “Shoot, I might even do this until my Dancer gets to level 80. This was a very fun workout and my face still hurts from smiling so much.”
Louis’ handle might ring a bell for frequent Kotaku readers. We previously covered his attempts to control a Final Fantasy XIV Astrologian with a Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Disk as well as the time he played through Dark Souls 3 using a Ring Fit Adventure controller. It seems like Louis can’t help but make every gaming session into a test of physical fortitude, but by god, do we love him for it.
While Microsoft’s much-maligned motion-capture peripheral may not have taken off with the Xbox 360 and Xbox One, now we know it’s good for at least one thing.
If you want more of these unique Dancer controls, Louis recently conducted a three-hour livestream over on Twitch. Hop on over and give him some love.