A Realm Reborn was quite a while ago now, but the majority of Final Fantasy 14 players will know that it came as a sort of "hard reset" for the title. After being panned by both critics and players, Naoki Yoshida and his team were brought in to wipe the slate clean and start anew, doing so by having a very angry Bahamut descend from the skies to wipe out Eorzea.

Fast-forward over a decade later, and Yoshida is planning for the upcoming Dawntrail expansion to act as a similar "rebirth" for Final Fantasy 14, albeit with a lot less death and misery. In a recent interview with Famitsu (translated by Twitter user aitakimochi and RPG Site), Yoshida talks about how Dawntrail will serve as less of a progression of the story and more of a demonstration of how the developers at CBU3 have improved over the years.

He goes on to state that Dawntrail will be "three or four times more solid" than anything players have seen before, and that drastic change in quality will mark a change in direction for Final Fantasy 14. Dawntrail's story will, of course, still be full of twists and turns, introducing new characters and locations to the Warrior of Light, but it sounds as though Yoshida is planning for the expansion to be more of a reboot on top of a reboot, and we can see that from the new features that have already been announced.

For example, the introduction of both Viper and Pictomancer jobs, as well as the addition of female Hrothgar, suggests that Yoshida and his team are going all out on the gameplay side of things, while the impressive graphical update currently in the works also implies Dawntrail will be focused more on substance over story. Having worked on Final Fantasy 14 for over a decade, it makes sense that the developers would want to use their experience to improve the game as much as possible to set itself up for the next decade.

Unfortunately, we still don't have a concrete release date for Dawntrail, with only a vague release window of Summer 2024 still to go off. Thankfully, plenty of new content will drop before then, including the introduction of a new female Hrothgar character called Wuk Lamat, who players will meet upon the release of Patch 6.55 on January 16.

Next

It's Harder To Get Back Into Monster Hunter World Than Expected In 2023

2018's Monster Hunter World is still a masterpiece, but it's aged more than you'd think.

Posts