With the Tokyo Fan Fest complete, now we have our fullest picture to date of Dawntrail prior to its Summer 2024 launch. It was a good event overall, but there are some interesting points to discuss both good and bad, so let’s just jump right in with less preamble.

No Release Date?

In my predictions post for JP Fan Fest, I speculated that we might see them withhold a release date announcement because of how the Endwalker delay shook the team. I didn’t expect to be right with this one, and yet…well, here we are. No preorders, no Collector’s Edition showcase, no release date. What could it mean? I think the easiest thing to say is that they simply don’t want to open up sales until they know for sure it will come out on-time, and I think that is probably a good thing. The team themselves, more than the audience for the game, was clearly rattled by the delay of Endwalker, and there’s clear hesistation to repeat that even if most players didn’t really mind outside of time-off requests or things of that nature. Yoshi-P still refers to it as “the only time he’s ever delayed a game in his career” and it is clear from most interviews and press with Yoshida that his career record is something he cares deeply about. For Square Enix, the man has a wellspring of faith since his game is currently what is primarily propping up the business, and so I think that holding the announcement and not making that day-one preorder rush is something they’ll be okay with if Yoshi-P believes it will work. The current Square Enix CEO can then spend more time saying stupid bullshit about AI usage in game development!

So while I’m not necessarily fond of this as a strategy (I was so ready with store tabs pre-opened to get a Collector’s Box), it makes sense and provided that we get the news of the on-sale via a pre-announced and scheduled stream or event, I think it will be fine. I suspect that by around April, we should have a release date, preorders, and everything lined up and ready.

Pictomancer

Swerving at least a portion of the fanbase, the new caster job was announced to be Pictomancer. It is a semi-support caster DPS job with no raise capability, using a brush as a weapon to deal damage through painting simulacrums of spells and minions. The visual style is unique, with all the spell effects shwon in the brief job unveiling using brighter, almost toon-shaded visuals and a paint-splotch aesthetic, coupled with an Artifact gear set that looks like Relm from Final Fantasy VI, the first Pictomancer in the series. Like Viper, the lack of representation across the FF franchise means that Pictomancer can lean in to some unique ideas and play off of what the FFXIV team wants the job to be without a ton of preconceived notions. Unlike Viper, because Pictomancer has some foundation in the franchise via that FFVI connection, there will be some expectations from corners of the fanbase as to how it will play and what abilities it should have.

I’m of two minds about Pictomancer. On the one hand, I think it is quite aesthetically neat and I like the overall idea they’re expressing with the job. It has a unique niche in terms of style, and that’s kind of cool. On the other hand, without seeing gameplay, there’s not much to say, and my fear is that it will fit the formula of FFXIV, where since it doesn’t have raise, it will end up being in the Black Mage hole of being good for higher personal DPS without the prog benefits of extra non-healer raises, and while the visual style is neat, I 100% expect it to be cool-looking but functionally quite similar to existing jobs. There’s fun theorycrafting about palettes for resource building in the job gauge and using different spells to change colors and that’s neat, but I also worry that in gameplay terms it’s going to feel quite like summoner or Black Mage, and the talk of instant casts also invokes Red Mages. Until we see gameplay, I’m holding off on both doom and hype, because that’s going to determine, for me, how interesting the job actually is. Visually, though – super cool, I like the contrast.

The Expected Swerve In Tone

The biggest reveal, for me, was the fact that the continent of Tural is much larger than we expected and comprises two distinct halves, one of which has some lightning problems and a very different aesthetic. Instead of an entire expansion with a referential South American/Southeast Asian style, we get at least one zone and a city that are vastly different, cyberpunk-adjacent purple neon technoscapes. The unveiling of the town of Solution Nine (which, by the logic of past fan fest city unveilings will make it where we are spending tomestones, oh boy!) and the melded zone of Heritage Found change the tone of the expansion pretty sharply and seem like our end-of-expansion “shit got real” moment. Visually, both of these areas look really cool, although how cool they’ll play remains to be seen (Solution Nine being a town means no flying which is such a copout to build a modern-style city-scape and then have it be a much smaller walled portion for gameplay) but I really like the aesthetic and it adds a lot of fuel to the fire for speculation. At the same time, it also means we have only seen 5 of the expected 6 zones, and that means a secret is in the works (we’ll talk more about why this feels assured in a moment). Heritage Found is a neat zone concept from the art and screenshots, as it lends itself to this perception of a fusion and seam between the style we expected given all the other Dawntrail zones and the techno-modern purple neon metropolis.

On theories, this is interesting, because while my initial instinct towards the Allagans is still, perhaps, in play, other ideas spring forward here too. Mhach’s visual style fits the purple aesthetic notes much more closely and could be a better overall fit, although Mhach having a whole secret city would also be interesting given what we learn of Mhach in the Alliance Raids of Heavensward. The connection a lot of fans are making, and the one that resonates with me most closely, is that Solution Nine’s name is a tell – either that the Ninth shard found a way to selectively join to the Source to avert a Calamity (thus “Solution Nine”) and thus would introduce crossover into the shard-crossing plot threads we’ve been tugging at with the Thirteenth and Y’shtola for a couple of years now. Some have speculated it has to do with the Second Umbral Calamity, as that was the Calamity of Lightning and the text shared about Heritage Lost indicates that the region, much like all of Etheirys during that Calamity, is blanketed in perpetual dark clouds and lightning. The last bit of speculation that I’ve seen is that there is an Ascian story waiting to be told here, that Solution Nine indicates some manner of planning of the Ascians and that it is reflected in the overall cityscape (what if Amaurot had RGB lights?) and the presence of a very Ascian-adjacent red symbol in the cityscape art used to unveil the 8-player raid series. All of these are interesting theories and we’ll see speculation all the way up to Dawntrail, I’m sure.

Overall, I really like these new areas because Final Fantasy’s sci-fi bent is often my favorite part of the setting. Places like Deling City in FFVIII and Akadaemia in FFXIII-2 are more interesting to me than the traditional, brick-and-mortar fantasy style of other areas in the franchise and even when it is mostly a facade, I like when FFXIV leans into that type of presentation.

The Arc-raid-ion

The new 8-player raid series for Dawntrail is The Arcadion (Arkadia in Japanese), which is represented in concept art by a towering skyscraper with large fans on the front facade of the building, the same purple-neon cityscape aesthetic of Solution Nine, and some cyberpunk-adjacent signage including a conspicuous red sigil graphic as a part of it.

Because there’s literally no gameplay details, there’s not much to say, and all we know at this juncture is a single piece of concept art and that the story of the raid zone is a Final Fantasy XIV original tale. Indeed, searching the raid series name through fan wikis and communities unveils no existing lore, so there’s a lot of potential here for things to get interesting. It will release one month after launch, mirroring how Asphodelos was handled in Endwalker, although details on the launch remain to be seen like if they’ll continue pushing Savage out a week as they did the last two tiers in Endwalker. That techno aesthetic for a full raid series is ideal for me, so I’m at least marginally excited, especially now that I know I have raid teams for Dawntrail and will be on the ground floor (perhaps literally?) of pushing through the new raids.

Beastmaster Is The New Limited Job, and Speaking of FFXI…

Our patch-cycle limited job for Dawntrail will be Beastmaster, a job that was contentious and well-loved in FFXI. Given how Blue Mage was butchered for implementation into FFXIV, I think FFXI fans may end up disappointed, but the potential still exists, much like with Blue Mage, for the job to be a new and unique brand of fun in its own right.

We also have confirmation of our first story NPC for the Echoes of Vana’diel Alliance Raid series, which will see FFXI cross-over into FFXIV in a new and different way. The Shadow Lord is the new piece of concept art we received, which fits with the progression of FFXI’s story, given that Shadow Lord was the main antagonist of the original FFXI story. For FFXI fans, it seems like the crossover into Dawntrail will be pretty cool and reverent of the source material, and that’s neat. I am curious, after reading up on the Shadow Lord fight, to see how they attempt to play with the mechanics for FFXIV. It actually has a design that can definitely integrate into FFXIV with some tweaks and the multi-phase nature of the original will be fun to see as a final boss in an Alliance Raid.

The Other Stuff

Our new “lifestyle content” designed to replace Island Sanctuary is Cosmic Exploration, going to different planets to do…something. We don’t know much yet other than that there seems to be a group-play component far beyond what Island Sanctuary allows for, so hey – cool idea, going to other planets, curious to know literally anything about it!

Field content akin to Bozja and Eureka will be returning in some form in Dawntrail. What that content is, if it ties to the Relic for the expansion, or what might come from it is all TBA, so not much to say here. It is clear that the constant refrain of Endwalker’s lack of endgame repeatable content has at least made this a point, which is good – but until the form it takes is visible, holding out more substantive things to say.

Female Hrothgars were unveiled with the legs NPC being shown as one and named as Wuk Lamat. The female Hrothgar is a cool addition, although I wouldn’t play one – the animations shown in the unveiling video were weirdly stiff and strange and I just really like my Au Ra too much to switch.

The first Ultimate raid of Dawntrail will be, surprisingly, Futures Rewritten Ultimate, tackling the Shadowbringers raid series in Eden with specific emphasis, it would seem from the title and art, on the relationship between Ryne and Gaia. The jokes write themselves, but I think mechanically there’s a lot of good here to chew on, and it also sets up my ideal Ultimate from the story perspective – the Endwalker MSQ Ultimate being Zenos-based and showcasing that interaction effectively. I do think that not getting a Stormblood MSQ ultimate is a bit disappointing, and so far not getting a replacement is also sad (a lot of fans wanted a Four Lords Ultimate and I think it would be cool), but I think that in breaking the predictable trend of Ultimates, they open the field to more options, and that is cool.

Overall Opinion and Analysis

I have a hard time with this, because I can admit this first – I am excited for the expansion. I think the story and overall presentation of FFXIV are sharp and well-used instruments that I like a whole lot, and I see a clear pathway to enjoy myself with the expansion, both within the story content but also the gameplay, especially now that I have a much larger FFXIV community in-game. A lot of the zones look really cool, I’m a sucker for the aesthetic of Solution Nine and the adjacent regions, and I like the current gameplay loop of FFXIV enough to stay subscribed and keep playing.

The other side is that the more attention I have paid to FFXIV, the more I realize it is very, incredibly formulaic. That’s not necessarily a bad thing! – but it does mean that there’s inherently less to get excited about or ponder aloud about. The story is always a point of pondering because it’s so tightly-concealed until launch, the raid gameplay is generally quite good, and I like the job gameplay even if some people perceive it to be too homogeneous. But then I also know that dungeons will be interesting ways to portray a straight line through a linear dungeon of four packs > boss > four packs > boss > four packs > boss, and I know that the expansive landmass shown on the world map is smoke and mirrors for a smaller and less significant world of six zones that are largely flat planes (great looking flat planes, but hey) that will lack a lot of gameplay significance once I’m leveled on all jobs, and that the core non-instanced gameplay loop is going to be gathering timed nodes, doing hunt bills for a new currency (we’re due for one since we’ve had our two with Nuts), and the eventual inclusion of Tribal quests. This makes it sound like I dislike the game, and I don’t, not at all! But it is, to a point, very predictable and I think that once you realize that, it does take a little bit of the fun out of it. I will never say that WoW is an ideal model for content delivery, but the way they throw small and huge curveballs out on a regular basis means that each expansion is vastly different in character, tone, and reception, and you never quite know what to expect. In FFXIV, I can already tell you that we get the Shadow Lord Alliance Raid in 7.1 alongside MSQ quests that last about two-three hours, an EX version of the level 100 launch trial, augmented crafted gear for the 7.0 crafted loadout, which will be item level 710 for the original versions and 720 for the new stuff, while Savage drops 730 gear. I know with certainty we’ll have two EX trials on launch, normals at levels 93 and 99, and the EX version of the level 93 trial will give us 710 accessories while the level 99 EX gives 710 weapons. There’s new stuff, but the predictable, repetitive nature of it means nothing *feels* new, you know?

Personally, I love aesthetic appeal, and so in spite of all that, I am hyped to see all the new stuff, hyped to see the hidden zone, excited for the new raid series and to run through those linear dungeons the first time. I am vastly hyped for new story and to see how the team responds to the pointed critiques of their content design in Endwalker. But I get why people can look at all of this and come away disappointed, feeling like we need more info, something new, and being most excited about things like Cosmic Exploration where we get something genuinely new and different that people can speculate about. I love speculating about content to come, which is why the part I put my most into in this post was theorycrafting about Solution Nine – it gets the brain going! But I also know that the content that leads to it is going to be this very structurally sound but preexisting frame that CBU3 always drops FFXIV content into, which robs it of some of the joy it could have, and that’s kind of a bummer.

Stepping away from the structural analysis, it’s a sound announcement and sets up what looks like a decent expansion cycle for FFXIV, and so we begin our path to Dawntrail with the story bridge patch to come on January 16th!

(Also, I am extremely salty that JP Fan Fest had full seating and prizes for doing the battle challenge. Where’s my Asura sticker, Yoshi P?!)