There’s a certain dramatic irony in the idea that as the Tokyo fan festival started winding up the Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail hype, the snow had just started falling in my home state. Not a big deal by any stretch of the imagination, but it still amused me just the same. As someone who is naturally more inclined toward winter than summer anyway, I can assure you this was the opposite of a complaint.
What’s far more substantial is the actual content that was announced and previewed, and while my initial predictions for this expansion had proven to be largely incorrect, this was definitely the fan festival wherein I made up for some early misses with some solid hits. So let’s do our best to walk through what we know about the expansion at this point in what I hope will be at least moderately interesting format. There was a lot, as there always is when these sequences come to a close.
I had remained pretty resolute and unmoved on the idea that our next magical DPS job would be Pictomancer, and lo and behold, our next magical DPS job is Pictomancer. This is one of those weird instances where it feels like the attempts to say “it’s Green Mage” was fishing far afield and never made much sense, but a surprising number of people were just ride-or-die for the idea based on “turtles are green” and “Krile is holding a symbol that is kind of associated with Green Mage, sort of.”
But now it’s true: Pictomancer is our next magical DPS, and from the sound of it this one will be more on the supporting end. It’s an interesting pick for a new job, but as I’ve said before, we’re going to have to dig a fair bit; having the new job be based on a character with a unique weapon and ability concept makes a fair bit more sense. And the graphical flourish alone is unique, which should bring a lot of people to the new job.
We also got lady Hrothgar, and honestly I find them a whole lot more interesting than Viera right from the start. They’re distinct and well-animated, and while I’m sad it took so long to get them, I’m glad to see that the wait at least was worth it. I do tend to believe Yoshida when he says that this is the last one, for real; it’d be odd to add any more, and most of the obvious further asks don’t totally work.
But that’s secondary. What’s more interesting as a question to me is Solution Nine.
One of the things I’ve long appreciated about how FFXIV handles its more tech-focused areas is that they do have a distinct set of aesthetics and limits. We know what Allagan tech looks like, the casual magic-is-technology constructions of the Ancients, how the Garlean magitek is built, and even how the Omicron society looks. Solution Nine looks like none of them… except looking a little bit like a very future-flung Allagan setup.
That, of course, is what gets my brain humming. What if that’s exactly what Solution Nine actually is? We see in the preview video that there are little decorations that clearly reference miqo’te and hyur faces we’re familiar with. What if the reason it’s called Solution Nine is that it’s meant to be some kind of haven for Allagan survivors?
In 1989, the soap opera One Life To Live had a deeply strange storyline running wherein the otherwise very normal cast wound up dealing with the underground city of Eterna that tied into some character backstories. That plot has stuck in my head for decades (I was six when I caught some of it as my mom was watching it), and I can’t help but feel a certain familiar affection for Solution Nine already. It’s a completely out-of-context thing for the entire world, beyond just the weirdness on the moon and the like. Not because we lack weird science fiction additions, but because Solution Nine is pretty clearly a big residential area that looks more advanced than anything else we’ve seen.
Even beyond the obvious comparison, though, it shows that the game still has not only the capability but the willingness to go for things that will surprise its audience. Whether or not the game will pull it off remains to be seen, but it seems indisputable to me that whatever we find out about this strange city, the writers are not going to rest on their laurels and just do something familiar. I respect that.
We also did learn the new limited job, which is a bit earlier than I expected; I had been thinking Puppetmaster rather than Beastmaster, but I don’t think I’d really nailed either down as a firm prediction. Again, this seems like the reasonable choice. I’m curious about how the job is going to feel distinct from Blue Mage, just because both of them are all about building up a roster of either captured monsters or abilities learned from monsters; I’m also curious how the job is going to fit in any sort of boss encounters into its abilities, since you can’t really capture most of the bosses in the game logically speaking.
To be honest, I am a bit disappointed in one thing: the lack of a firm release date. I do understand Yoshida’s reluctance after the Endwalker release date, but the optics and emotional impact aren’t great. Either this means that the team is targeting early summer but isn’t yet wholly confident in it, or it’s targeting mid to later summer, which is going to be bad for the game’s overall health. While the individual Endwalker patches have been solid from my perspective, they definitely have had an extra couple of weeks tacked on to each, and that’s not a boon for the game’s previously rock-solid and expansive content lineup.
I also don’t want to wait until April for the crossover event. It makes sense; I bet something else is planned for March and the Xbox beta is planned for February, so that would fit into the general pattern of trying to have something unique each month. I just personally don’t want to wait quite that long. That’s a me problem.
On a whole, though, the fan festival felt like a lot of the things I predicted came to pass, and the execution was on point for all of the rest. I’m looking forward to seeing more, and while there are things I would have liked to have learned more about, I knew they were never happening. (We wouldn’t have learned about new abilities at the fan festival under any circumstances, for example.) Time to see what we’ll be doing for the next few months, then.
Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments down below or via email to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, as we’ll be right on the cusp of the 6.55 patch, I want to talk about that based on what we know and what we can assume. There’s a fair bit going on there, even if it doesn’t seem like enough to hold for the next… six months? Hopefully six months?
The Nymian civilization hosted an immense amount of knowledge and learning, but so much of it has been lost to the people of Eorzea. That doesn’t stop Eliot Lefebvre from scrutinizing Final Fantasy XIV each week in Wisdom of Nym, hosting guides, discussion, and opinions without so much as a trace of rancor.
