When MMOs are populated by races of all shapes and sizes, it's inevitable that some of them—let's face it, usually the less humanoid folk—are going to get the short end of the stick when it comes to nice-looking gear. Armor warps and stretches on a Charr's large frame in Guild Wars 2, and helmets often clip their horns and manes. World of Warcraft's Orcs got a rough go of things a while back when they had to run around in comically tiny shoulder pads.
Then there's Final Fantasy 14 and its goddamn hats. When the Shadowbringers expansion was released in 2019, it introduced two new races: Final Fantasy 12's Viera, and the Final Fantasy 10 Ronso-adjacent Hrothgar.
Not only did Square Enix genderlock them—we wouldn't get their counterparts until Endwalker and Dawntrail, respectively—but there was one other glaring absence: neither race would be able to wear the majority of headgear in the game. At the time, director and producer Naoki Yoshida put it down to Viera and Hrothgar's unique head geometry, promising that the team would "Make more things compatible over time, bit by bit."
In Yoshida's defense, he said this before Covid put a real dent in game dev for a couple of years, but it's still mighty frustrating that we're here in 2025 with hardly any hats working for either race. But finally, finally, things look to be changing.
As revealed during a recent livestream, a whole heap and hats and headgear will finally show up on Hrothgar and Viera starting in August's Patch 7.3. According to translations from the Final Fantasy 14 community Discord, Yoshida said the team "managed most of them, except for metal pieces like helmets," which should be added in future updates.
We even got a couple of pictures: Hrothgar sporting job-specific gear like the Red Mage and Black Mage hats, as well as Viera wearing more casual choices like the Crescent Moon Cone. There'll also be the option to toggle ears on and off for certain headgear, as well as bangs finally visibly poking out of hoods. It seems like some hats will cut off ears full-stop though—similar to how Miqo'te ears have been treated in recent years—with no option to have them out on display.
As someone who switched from Miqo'te Viera in 2021 and has sorely missed being able to wear hats since, it's a massively welcome change. Is it one that should have come much sooner? Should Square Enix have been designing hats with Viera and Hrothgar in mind since they were added almost six whole-ass years ago? Absolutely yes, but I'm grateful we've finally got something.
My biggest disappointment has always been how incomplete some job-specific gear felt without being able to display the hat. Black Mages are nothing without their giant wizard hats, and I was gutted when I realised I wouldn't be able to wear Pictomancer's delightfully poofy turban. Class identity is a big deal for me, personally, and it always felt a little frustrating not being able to fully experience that unless I chose another race entirely.
There's also the whole other can of worms: the cash shop outfits. There's no option to purchase pieces individually, meaning Viera and Hrothgar characters had to pay for hats that they couldn't even use. I would have been more understanding if it was just pre-Shadowbringers cash shop outfits that were lacking compatibility, but six years' worth of real-money invisible headgear just doesn't cut it for a game that's repeatedly touted as Square Enix's main breadwinner.
Ultimately I'm interested in seeing just how many hats I'll finally be able to plop on my bunny's head. Yoshida saying "most of them" bar metal helmets has me relatively confident, but thousands of hours and over a decade of my life with this game has taught me to be tentatively excited for these things. But hey, if I can finally wear the Calfskin Rider's cap I dropped half a million gil on mere hours before my Viera transformation, that'll be good enough for now.
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