I got back from Fanfest 2023 Las Vegas yesterday, and while I have a lot to say about that experience, it can wait for now.

With a new Fanfest cycle comes a new expansion, and that expansion, FFXIV version 7.0, is called Dawntrail. Dawntrail sees us heading into the New World of FFXIV, a western continent known now as Tural, and sees the Scions of the Seventh Dawn embroiled in the rites of succession to see a new ruler ascend the throne to displace Mamool Ja Ja, who currently holds the throne (and was referenced in XIV as far back as Wanderer’s Palace Hard dungeon). We’re promised a lot of the standard boilerplate FFXIV expansion things – a 10-level level cap extension to level 100, a new set of zones that will likely be 6 unique locations, of which were were told of two plus the main hub city, new abilities, and the like. Dawntrail will also mark FFXIV’s first graphical engine update, with the main focus being set on material quality, particularly texture resolution, metal details (the new metal textures have a great deal more shine and I assume are more artistic choices to align better to a PBR rendering system), and normal/bump map details (FFXIV has notoriously pixelated normal mapping to add detail, which often makes the close-up shots in cutscenes look a bit jarring).

There’s also an update to the game’s automatic foliage systems, which will allow the team to add better and more detailed plants through the game’s systems without having to manually place new ones. Lighting and shadows are also heavily overhauled and look vastly better. Lastly, in that update, models for characters are more detailed while largely retaining the spirit (in their chosen examples, only maybe a couple looked slightly changed due to the new art), so that should help push the visual update to most NPCs save for those with unique, non-player-based art.

Dawntrail and the cycle leading into it to come also give us more updates, as the game will be ported at last to Xbox consoles, with the current-generation Series X and S receiving an open beta version in 6.5 patch cycle before being officially launched with Dawntrail. There’s also some business, as our next big Gold Saucer update is a cross-over with Fall Guys, which will see FFXIV outfits added to the popular free-to-play obstacle course game and will see Fall Guys as a whole entity planted in the Gold Saucer as a new minigame that can be played within FFXIV.

With the recap out of the way, I want to go deeper on my thoughts about the expansion.

The Trailer Vibes Are Immaculate

The idea of a “summer vacation” expansion after the weight of Endwalker is, frankly, a bit welcome. While I loved the Endwalker launch story, the patch cycle never delivered on the lightening of tone that was promised with 6.1 and has also suffered because it’s just Final Fantasy IV adapted for the MMO – there’s not a lot to be excited about in the current story if you’re not an FFIV fan or player, although the FFXIV bespoke elements are good (you leave Zero alone next patch YoshiP!).

I will acknowledge that this could be bad too, though. As a game, I think FFXIV’s best overall storytelling comes in through conflict and heavier themes, and it is the place where I think the game is largely peerless in the MMO space – lord knows WoW tries to do heavy themes, but it has all the subtlety of my newest kitten howling at us when we have food in our hands. FFXIV has good comedic relief elements, but those are at their best as a core element in service of a standalone side story, like Hildibrand, and I think less so as the main story.

That being said, I think the story is going to have some heft to it. The presented premise is veering close to a Scion civil war, with the Scions split on which side they support in the leadership procession of Tural, and I think the tension of the story (and best possibility to advance FFXIV as a franchise) comes from the Scion’s internal conflict over the issue, and not as much the issue of Tural’s succession itself. At least I hope so, because I think that is the better story to tell (after disbanding the Scions in 6.0 on paper and then not presenting a conflict between groups in the time since) and it also steers clear of some potential issues I will address later in this post.

Tural is beautiful in artwork, and it has a rich cultural palette to lean on – the South American/Central American themes are well-shown in the trailer, but there are hints of Southeastern Asia through architectural elements and it seems like the game will have a bit wider of an influence set than the New World idea implies (and, by getting SEA-region references, we’re closer to a Final Fantasy X kit in the game, which I really, really want). The early impression (and we are early, no video save for the trailer yet) is a good one overall in terms of the artistry and weaving of themes.

A Two DPS Expansion

Two new jobs are coming, neither of which was revealed here (as expected). There’s a lot of speculation and I think the Corsair idea is all the way in – the WoL in the trailer is holding a weapon at a gun-sheathing location that was removed from the trailer’s boat moments, but also clearly has it later during the duel shown in the trailer, which seems to be a lock for melee DPS and it draws upon the FFXI heritage and the theme, which seems pretty fitting.

The second DPS is where people are going a little crazy. What caster they could add is open to speculation, and the two ideas I’ve seen that I would give the most credence to are Green Mage and Pictomancer. Green Mage is a relative newcomer to FF as a series, introduced in references in FFXII and expanded in War of the Visions as a caster class that centered on buffing, debuffing, and damage magic. This would, likely, end up putting Green Mage as a caster closer to the Dancer role in that it will probably be brought as your caster if you want buffs it offers for your raid/party and gauged more via rDPS than personal DPS. There’s a fresh template to draw upon there and even in WoW, this kind of role is fascinating as seen through the Augmentation Evoker, which would be the MMO parallel I’d expect to see most referenced (although FF’s parsing culture already knows how to account for buffing others in performance so hey, fewer of those teething pains!). The reason for this speculation is simple – it fits the mold of a less-explored job in FF alongside an established one (Corsair being well-trodden in FFXI while Green Mage has only been a full thing in side-titles) and because the Ninja Turtles are green to tie into the hint shirt.

The second idea is Pictomancer, the job held by Relm in Final Fantasy VI. Pictomancer feels like everyone’s favorite bait choice (I saw, no joke, over 20 different people tweet some variant of “hey, crazy idea I personally just thought of, but the Ninja Turtles are named for artists, so Pictomancer!” like it was a meme template of some sort), but there is something to the idea. In FFVI, Relm’s primary mode of attack is Sketch, which builds her moveset based on the enemy she sketched. In FFXIV, this would likely have to take a different form, with it either being summoner-adjacent (Sketch creating simulacrum of enemies to attack with) or more locked in stone for balancing purposes (different painting and sketching abilities that create pre-defined abilities to use that can be balanced around). I think the idea is very cool conceptually, although I fear that the flavor would largely be the draw, because I think it would be difficult to implement in a novel way and will end up feeling like artistic Black Mage or Summoner but otherwise not distinct enough gameplay-wise.

Without much to go on, I expect that the melee DPS will use Scouting/Aiming gear and help close the Ninja gap, taking away the last armor type locked to a single job, and the caster will use….well, Casting gear, obviously. Otherwise, we have to hold our actual conversation on jobs until after London Fan Fest at a minimum, because there just isn’t much to say yet.

The Content

FFXIV’s content is a largely-predictable set of things that rarely changes much between expansions. We will have a series of new dungeons, likely with MSQ dungeons at levels 91, 93, 95, 97, 99, and 100, with two optional level 100 dungeons at launch, and a new 8-player raid series will likely mean 3 tiers of 4 bosses released at each even patch (7.0, 7.2, 7.4). A new Alliance raid will bring 24-player queueable raids in the odd patches of 7.1, 7.3, and 7.5, and we’ll have new Tomestones and major gear updates in the even patches with each new tier of 8-player raiding.

There’s hints at more Variant and Criterion dungeons, which are cool but also kind of flat without a look at the incentive structure, and they’re talking about reconsidering how Deep Dungeons work and are implemented. In a separate interview, YoshiP also talked about the possibility of adding some kind of Field Exploration content like Eureka or Bozja to Dawntrail, which is something that the current relic hunt has made people clamor for with more intensity.

Until we get more specifics and trailers, it feels fair to expect that the content is going to follow the Endwalker model – which is good and bad, because Endwalker’s patch cycle has not been a player retention powerhouse even if the content has been mostly fun (at least until the rewards and alternate paths run out). Given where we are in the hype cycle, not much more to say here just yet.

The Big Issue and Question – Themes, Cultural Respect, and FFXIV

The New World rumors started heavy on Thursday before Fan Fest, because all the key art on the convention center was WoL art in solid gold with not a mention of the 10th Anniversary to be seen (eliminating that as the cause of the goldening). The New World as a concept in FFXIV is a bit sticky of an issue, as while it hasn’t come up that much in FFXIV, when it has been described or discussed in detail, it was….kinda iffy. The Blue Mage quests and Martyn’s backstory weave a bit too well with how European colonizers displaced Native Americans in the real world, down to bringing rare Eorzean diseases to the New World (at least they weren’t gifted on blankets here), along with the focus on the Mamool Ja as the main race of the New World and that combined with how they have been presented in FFXIV to date. The absolute hackles were raised with the idea that we, the WoL, would go to a continent loosely based on Latin American culture and displace a leader, which has really bad parallels. Imagine combining the worst elements of the Ala Mhigo plot of Stormblood with the real-life inspiration of the CIA installing fascist figureheads and…the oof size could not be larger.

However, I think that a couple of things have swung perception in a positive way for the FFXIV team.

Firstly, the trailer has a lot of detailed, accurate, and respectful depictions of authentic culture from the real world setting. They’re largely easter eggs or visual in the trailer, but for people from the area whose culture is being depicted, I saw a lot of genuine excitement that the team included these things accurately and touched on themes and elements that aren’t in a lot of narrative fiction, and I think seeing that excitement for cultural representation is really cool. A lot of the people I follow in this camp are also folks who’ve been very disappointed by WoW’s depiction of their cultures, so there is absolutely an element of comparison in that excitement, but it comes across as genuine and the prime example I saw doesn’t even play FFXIV at all, so there’s not even a fanboy angle to challenge. It seems like a rich cultural tapestry to draw upon and I like the idea of less-shown cultures getting a chance to take center stage in media since it expands the possibility space and gives us something fresh and interesting to enjoy.

Secondly, the lore panel with English localization lead Kate Cynwar specifically addressed this point. She noted that the team researches these references heavily, wants to weave them in respectfully and in a fully-integrated way so as not to be out of place, and acknowledges that the team’s track record on this issue has been spotty and is something they are actively working to do better on. Again, by comparison to WoW’s cultural references, this is a night and day difference (imagine anyone on the WoW team ever apologizing for cultural issues and publicly stating they got it wrong before, you can’t, it would never happen), and it is also a genuinely good way to approach the issue.

I think, through this lens, that the best story to tell in the space is the Scion story. Using the world of Tural as a backdrop, there’s a lot that can be told there that can use the cultural setting in a good way while also steering away from the potential potholes of the story as-presented (if we get FFXIV Pinochet, I swear to god…). The Scion conflict also gives a lot of potential to offer great character advancement for the Scions, who’ve been kind of in stasis since we got back from the First, where they had some great character development before falling into the current stagnancy. Erenville being added to the main cast is quite cool, although how integrated he will be remains to be seen, and the trailer gives a promise of a colorful and vibrant world with a lot of potential new characters we could meet. I suspect that beneath the veneer of “summer vacation” is going to be something a lot more serious than we might envision, and that is going to help us unpack the otherwise light and cheery themes. Endwalker has some good and bad examples of this, mostly through the Loporrits (introduction sequence was meh, but they help break up the crazy sprint of darkness that is Ultima Thule by, like, a lot), so I think there is reason both to hope and also to maybe worry that the game might be too light in Dawntrail.

But on the core issue of cultural usage and respect, it seems like the team is taking positive strides and is very self-aware that assuring the community of this is a necessary step to progressing the expansion hype cycle, and that is good. Until we get more specific story details and setting information, there’s not a lot to say (a theme!), but I think the most eyes are on this part of the expansion news and the visible excitement of people seeing their cultural heritage represented does a lot (for me) to build hype that it will hold water and they aren’t just cynically claiming to hold respect of those cultures in high regard. Obviously, as time passes and content launches, I’ll be looking to those same voices to see how the perception evolves and I am curious to see how they do in that regard. I’m excited for the theme on some level and as long as it doesn’t devolve into a slew of jokes about tacos or serious plots that invoke the real life subterfuge of the US government in the South American continent, I’ll be on-board.

In Closing

Overall, Dawntrail seems to be an interesting possible expansion, and the things we do know at this point (precious few though they are) offer a lot of good promises for what can come next. I’m keen to see how the gameplay evolves, see the team take the feedback about Variant and Criterion dungeons and their rewards to heart, and to offer a more well-rounded and frequently-playable package of content that can last for the long haul. I’m especially interested to see how combat gameplay evolves, since Endwalker brought the two-minute meta and has already kind of made it feel iffy – I would love to see a shift away from that towards something more distinct and similar to the older state, with individual cooldowns mattering a lot more to each player rather than a big even-minute cooldown dump at the raid level, which has made combat in the game a smidge less interesting and also more punishing if you mistime your buffs.

As a first salvo of information though, I am hyped, especially because the FFX adjacent themes of some buildings and the Pelupelu tribe mean we are closer to my dream of a Sin raid series for the 8-player set.