Pour out some pixelated wine for Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker’s purple grapes. The latest update—Patch 6.01—has smoothed out their angular edges and made them far less blocky.
In the Patch 6.01 notes, Square Enix noted the following under “Resolved Issues”:
An issue wherein the polygon count of grapes in Labyrinthos were reduced in excess to alleviate system memory usage in the area.
* They have been adjusted to be comparable to those found at the Crystarium.
Meaning? Endwalker’s block purple grapes are no more, apparently.
Oh no.
In the video below, you can see the new, slightly-less-sharp purple grapes and compare with their former iteration, at around the 47-second mark.
Fans, of course, were saddened to hear that the purple grapes had been changed because they have been one of the best moments in Final Fantasy XIV’s Endwalker launch. So, they did what anyone would do: They paid their to respects for the low-poly loss.
YouTube’s resident musical genius Alex Moukala created this lovely tribute.
Others on Twitter and Reddit have been honoring the blocky purple grapes with fan art. Heck, even the official Final Fantasy XIV Twitter account paid its respects to the sharp-edge fruit.
But good news! It seems Square Enix forgot the green, blocky grapes in Wineport in eastern La Noscea. This has been confirmed by multiple Twitter users. They’re green, but the blocky grapes live! These grapes have apparently been like this since way before Endwalker even launched. Funny that people have just recently been noticing FFXIV’s blocky grapes!
Maybe Square Enix won’t fix these particular diamond-shaped fruits. I mean, who knows, they could be a special type of grape that’s grown this way. Japan produces square and pyramid-shaped watermelons, so why can’t the world of FFXIV grow blocky grapes? This is a realm reborn, after all, and not a nature documentary. Denying this possibility is a little too much reality in Final Fantasy for me. Embrace the blocky fruit, Square Enix. Do it.