During the Tokyo Fan Fest, Gamer Escape staffers Ritsku, Shishikura and Marko had a chance to sit down and chat with Koji Fox about the lore book, performing with the Primals, and sneak a few game related questions in.

The interview (below) was transcribed and edited for ease of reading. Make sure to check out the episode itself (embedded at the bottom of this post) to hear it all- straight from a cafeteria table at the Tokyo Fan Fest.

Ritsku: The Encyclopædia Eorzea is finally out, how has the reception been so far?

Koji: Wow, uhhh It’s been way, way bigger than we expected. We went into it and you know, we probably you know should have done a little bit better you know with guessing the number and stuff, but we didn’t think it was gonna be that popular. We thought there was gonna be a core group of people that were like “Oh, we waited for it!” but everybody else is gonna be like “Eh, you know. I’ll just wait for the digital version.” Or “I can get that stuff from the lore forums!” But then, all of a sudden, it was like BOOM Sold out! Easter: BOOM, sold out! Waiting list: Arrrrgh, thousands of thousands of people and it’s like… My gosh! This is great! Yeah, I’m really, really excited! The Japanese version seems to be selling really well. They have an English version here in Japan. Everyone’s like “I can’t read it, but I bought the English version!” and I’m like, “Thanks!” It’s selling, really, really well! And now, I’m just worried they’re gonna say “We should make another one!” And I’m like “I’m going to write it!” Oda-san and I spend a lot of time… And while it was really fun, it’s like, we’re doing patch work, and 4.0 work, as well as Lore Book work and it’s just gotten really ridiculous there towards the end, but… Yeah, I love doing it though. It was so much fun. Oda-san loved doing it as well. We’re both really, really proud of it. And we’re glad that it’s selling, and that everyone’s loving it. Thank you! Thank you everyone who’s bought it and I’m then I’m sorry everyone who hasn’t been able to buy it! We’ll get one ready for you…! I promise!

Ritsku: The Encyclopædia seems to have an “Eorzean author”, what made you decide to go that route?

Koji: Well, again, when the world that we have in Eorzea… When deciding “Okay, how are we gonna do the characterization in Eorzea? What kind of world are we gonna make?” This was back in 1.0, discussing it with the director then, Tanaka-san, discussing with the lore director back then, Iwa-san, he’s like “What kind of world do you want to make?” The whole idea was, you know, dark, high-fantasy. Maybe around medieval times, maybe a little bit after that. 1600s-1700s. Ahhh, what are we gonna do? We had a lot of discussions about it. We decided, at least for the English, we wanted to give it that feel, that it was something that was pre-Victorian. So we thought “Okay, let’s take a look at actual bestiaries and Encyclopædias and things like that, that were written back then. And a lot of them seemed to be written by like, you know, it was a scholar of whatever, was writing to those few people that could read; other scholars probably. And we thought it would be kinda cool to have it be something that felt like that. Something that didn’t feel modern, something that felt like it was actually something that someone in Eorzea wrote for other scholars. And that’s why we decided to go with that type of, I don’t know-

Ritsku: It kinda incorporates it more to the world,

Koji: Yes!

Ritsku: instead of “Here’s the game team giving you the book!”

Koji: Exactly! And so we went out of our way to not talk about anything game related in that book. So if you go in there, it’s as if a person who lived in Eorzea is writing that. A historian, a scholar, is writing all of that. And there are a couple parts in the Japanese where it just kinda straight— there are a few parts t