This week, it was announced that Berserk creator Kentaro Miura has died at the age of 54. The influence of Berserk far extends to video games (badass armour, tough guys with big swords, dark fantasy, etc.) so naturally the Final Fantasy XIV community has organized enormous online gatherings to pay tribute to him.

As you can tell from the video, thousands of players from multiple servers have donned their favourite Dark Knight gear and stood in the streets of Ul’Dah. Final Fantasy XIV director Naoki Yoshida has expressed his thanks to the supportive community and commented on the author’s sudden death in a PC Gamer interview.

“It goes to show just how much people have received from Mr. Miura and his artwork. It was heartwarming to see how much influence he has had on players. I also want to thank players for taking the time to acknowledge that. Even players in Japan, too, are very much affected by this and there’s a lot of shock among the fandom as well.

It’s not an exaggeration to say that I kept on buying the latest installment of the manga magazine just to read Berserk. So definitely a very sad and unfortunate loss.”

The director has also admitted to being influenced by Miura’s work on Berserk.

“Honestly speaking—and this is not limited to Final Fantasy 14 but with any game that I have been a part of—there are elements where, consciously or subconsciously, I was influenced by Mr. Miura’s work.

We took inspiration from the way that Guts stands in those panels in Berserk, and that was the images I showed to my team to reference when we were thinking about [Dark Knights]. Even when we were thinking about how to position and the composition in each of the cutscenes, there were a lot of times we referenced [Berserk].

Mr. Miura’s work was definitely very artistic and wonderful in the way he depicts some of those cool elements. It’s unfathomable just how much influence he has had on everybody. It’s such an unfortunate loss.”