The last Final Fantasy FanFest is currently in full swing in Frankfurt Germany, with Square Enix’s keynote speech last night revealing further details on the latest expansion, Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood.
Square Enix kicked off the show with an extended teaser trailer, showing off previously unannounced areas that players will be able to explore in Stormblood.
The trailer shows an amazing underwater location, which appears to be enclosed in a giant glass bauble, and could be linked with the new beastman tribe. We also find out that we are not just visiting Al Mihgo in the expansion, but also visiting Orthard. We will be visiting Doma and helping liberate it from the Garlean Empire, with the story taking us back and forth between the two cities.
The new world map is a lot larger then it was in update 3.0, with many new locations being revealed – this new map shown will be included with the Collectors Edition as a cloth map. The last expansion, Heavensward, was only focused on Ishgard, so having two different locations should help keep the content feel fresh. We can also expect the return of Yugiri, who is wearing the new Ninja AF gear, though her equipment has a unique colour scheme. Square also revealed a new character named Gottetsu, who will be a main character in the plo. Little was revealed about the character, except his name and the fact he will have some role in the patch before the expansion with 3.5 part two.
The second and final job was confirmed as the Samurai, with Yoshi P admitting he was shocked on how fast people got the spider man reference with the director Sam Rami. Some may be disappointed that this expansion will only feature two DPS jobs, with no new healer or tank job, however, Square did explain why this is the case. With Heavensward the amount of people playing tank or healer did increase with the launch of the expansion but soon dropped again with people going back to DPS jobs instead, with only players who were tanks or healers before the expansion sticking with the new jobs. So rather than focusing time and energy trying to balance a new tank or healer job they decided to make the new DPS jobs as balanced as possible, though until the expansion launches there is no way to tell if this was a good idea or not.
They did mention with the new battle system, there will be lots of tweaks and reworks for previous jobs, so even though there are no new tank or healers they will still be fixing the main issues from the previous expansion. The Samurai will be a close ranged DPS using Katanas, and each Katana will have a unique scabbard with the team working hard on making this a reality, though I feel like effort could really be used for something else.
There will be no starting class just like the previous expansion and red mage, with the job being unlocked in a 2.0 area, so all you need is the expansion to unlock it. The job will also start at 50, though this is tentative so could also change before launch. Samurai will be using striking gear, so that means it will be sharing drops with Monks. You will be able to use unique art of Sen to attack your foes – these are Setsu ‘snow’ Getsu ’moon’ and Ka ‘flower’. The sword style is based on Lai style, which involves quick and dangerous strikes to the enemy. They also said you will be able to charge your Katana to execute a huge powerful slash once a gauge has charged up, though whether you can move when charging wasn’t announced. If the Samurai has to be stood still when using his attacks, then this could be a major issue for a lot of players especially with everyone rushing to play it at launch.
One of the new main location in the game is Hingashi, with the city of Kugane. This is a nation that is very isolated with trading being illegal in most of the nation, with only the port city of Kugane allowing any sort of trade with outsiders. This is to try and help stop with violence on the streets, though the trailer shows that this doesn’t seem to work very well. Another location the warrior of light will be visiting is Orthad; Square has shown off multiple areas for this location with the Ruby Sea being the first location you will visit. It is a location with lots of pirate activity but will also be connected to Kugane. The area looks like something from a very pretty japanese fairy tale. The second beast tribe announced is the Kojin, who love to trade and have become quite friendly with most of the races when trading – they are mostly commonly found near the Ruby Sea or under the water. The beast tribe believe in multiple gods, believing artifacts can hold the spirits of powerful gods but their main god is Susanoo, the god of revel. This god is unique to Final Fantasy 14 just like Ravana was unique to Heavensward..
We also got a teaser of the new dungeons, with some artwork which appears to be a dungeon connected to the Ruby Sea, though I could be wrong her,e with ghost ships, a dungeon, and what looks like a lighthouse. Yanxia is another area shown off in Orthad, which is the location of Doma. Azim steppe is the third location shown off, and will be the first expansive plains location in FFXIV, which is the home to the nomad tribe of the Au Ra. The nomad tribes live in this area, and as the warrior of light you will end up meeting them and probably helping them with some troubles.
The last two Fanfests teased a new residential area for housing in Stormblood, and finally it’s been revealed as Shirogane. You will be able to purchase housing from this area after the expansion launches, but it will not be included at launch as they want you to experience the new content before sitting around waiting for plots of lands to become available. However, you will be able to access the housing area before it goes on sale, so you can look around and maybe work out which plot you want ready for when it launches. If your free company already has a house purchased, with the new area you will be able to move your house to the new location without having to sell it off; this is a nice feature, though could mean all the new plots will be taken up even faster. It was also confirmed that the limit for furniture inside houses has been increased with each size house now getting double what they previously had, though if you are running the game on a 32bit PC OS you will have issues loading up all the items in the house due to memory complications, but PS4 owners will be fine.
A small teaser for the new theme was played near the end of FanFest, with the focus of the theme being about humanity and the struggles it can face. The song is called Revolution, sung by Susan Calloway and composed by Nobuo Uematsu.
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Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood has a tentative release date of June 20, 2017, with early access available via preorder.