Square Enix has rolled out the first Final Fantasy XIV patch after the ultra-popularEndwalker expansion arrived in November. Along with adding more quests, items and a raid dungeon, the update addressed various issues. One of those was a so-called bug fix that targeted some delightfully janky-looking grapes in one of the new areas.
the ffxiv community meme’d so hard that devs buffed the low poly grapes ? pic.twitter.com/fDAkbraYFM
— chrissy? (@chrissyxchi) December 21, 2021
“An issue wherein the polygon count of grapes in Labyrinthos were reduced in excess to alleviate system memory usage in the area,” Square Enix wrote at the end of the latest patch notes, perhaps in an attempt to bury the biggest news from the update. “They have been adjusted to be comparable to those found at the Crystarium.”
The low-poly model quickly became a meme after the expansion went live, as PC Gamer notes, with some players embracing the blocky aesthetic and other, more foolish players incorrectly deriding the grapes as ugly. So, not everyone may be on board with the smoothed-out edges of the model.
It’s hard to call this a fix, since it’s a shame Square Enix changed the look of the grapes. They looked fine as is. The previous version felt like a refreshing throwback to some 3D games from the ’90s, like the original Tomb Raider. In any case, the latest twist in the saga of the grapes goes to show developers can’t please everyone all the time, even when they’re tackling apparent bugs.
