Following the announcement at the Las Vegas Fan Festival, Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers finally showed up in Paris during the European edition of the community event dedicated to Final Fantasy XIV fans: the MMORPG dedicated to the famous Square Enix series. Shadowbringers is the third expansion of the game and, like those that preceded it, promises an incredible amount of new content accompanied by various updates and improvements of sorts.
On stage, to tell the news of this expansion, as we always find Naoki Yoshida, the beloved director of the game as well as the key figure who allowed Final Fantasy XIV to achieve an incredible success, with 14 million subscriptions (data August 2018). As per tradition, for the European event, Yoshida presented himself in cosplay, in the role of the next new job that will be introduced with Shadowbringers, or the Gunbreaker.
It will be a Tank type class, thus supporting Paladin, Warrior and Dark Knight in this important role. The Gunbreaker uses as its main weapon the Gunblade, the iconic weapon of Squall, the protagonist of Final Fantasy VIII. The peculiarity of the Gunbreaker compared to the other Tanks is that to defend the party and keep the enemy's attention high, it will have to use magic bullets, ergo no use of TP or MP, but careful management of ammunition. The quest to unlock this class will be accessible to Gridania and, once obtained, it will start at level 60.
With the release of Shadowbringers, the game will update to version 5.0 which obviously will involve not only the aforementioned new content, but also substantial changes to the game system that we already know.. Not all the details are known about it, but we know for sure that for example the TP will be removed to cope with the introduction of new skills of the new classes as the level cap has been raised to 80. It also seems that some skills will be merged to those already known to streamline the actions to be used in combat.
At the level of the plot, Yoshida did not unbutton that much, even if the opening trailer and the events of the current patch 4.5 could give some clues as to where the adventure of our Warrior of Light, or rather, Warrior of Darkness, will be. that from what little we have been able to understand it seems that our alter ego will have to take a dark path to face the new threats.
Although therefore we do not know how to geolocate the new areas of the game, two of them have been shown, however, The Rak'tika Greatwood e The Mheg. The first is a magical forest that strongly recalls the village of Eruyt from Final Fantasy XII, so we dare to think that it will be the home of the Viera, the new playable race that will be introduced in this expansion. The Viera, among other things, will be the only female game breed, it will not have a male counterpart.
The Mheginstead, it is a very open natural area, full of colors, waterfalls and rainbows. It will be the residence of the Pixies, the new beast tribe of the game, characterized by the use of arcane arts and their cheating and swindling attitude. Pixies, like dragons, also speak a unique language here called "fae". Obviously, as with any beast tribe, there is no lack of its Primal counterpart, represented here by Titania, a creature certainly not new in the Final Fantasy universe, even if little remembered and present.
Also announced the arrival of new dungeons and end game raids, although Yoshida and his team reserved the right to disclose more information in the coming months. There will also be a new End Game for Discipline of Land and Hand, also linked to the continuation of their stories which apparently include the return of particularly popular characters.
Speaking of particularly popular characters, it is also worth mentioning the previously announced Trust system that will be introduced with Shadowbringers, namelyor the ability to play with the most important NPCs such as Thancred and Y'shtola. Thanks to the Trust it will be possible to take these characters around the world and, above all, in the dungeons to emphasize the game alone.
The real bombshell, however, came with the presentation of the new Alliance Raid: Yorha Dark Apocalypse. After the collaboration with Yasumi Matsuno for Ivalice, this time Final Fantasy XIV will boast the collaboration of Yosuke Saito and Yoko Taro for an incredible raid based all on the universe of Nier.
Given the narrative quality of previous alliance raids, we are confident that Yoshida's and Yoko Taro's team will create something unique never before seen in Final Fantasy XIV. It can even be thought that the events of this raid could become canonical for the narrative and the future of the Nier series.
Shadowbringers will arrive on July 2, 2019 on PC and PlayStation 4, but will be accessible as early as June 28, 2019 for all those who pre-order the title. In addition to the early access, the pre-order (available from February 6) will also give the possibility to obtain two items in game, a Baby Gremlin Minion and an Aetheryte Earring, the latter will be an accessory that will guarantee 30% more than the experience up to level 70, great for those who want to get prepared for expansion. There will obviously be a Collector's Edition, which has already been shown revealing its contents: an artbook, a deck of playable cards, a sticker with the logo, an exceptional display box and a very high quality Warrior of Darkness action figure.
In addition, those who purchase the Collector's Edition, will have the opportunity to also get Fran's minion, the Grani mount and Squall's original Revolver for the Gunbreaker in-game.
To find out more, especially on the other new Job, we will have to wait until March 23, 2019, the date of the Japanese Fan Festival to be held in Tokyo. In the meantime we are incredibly satisfied with what was announced, and shown, on the Parisian stage of this Fan Festival. With Shadowbringers, the Final Fantasy XIV team have once again demonstrated that they know exactly how to carry out a project of this magnitude and the numbers are proving it, as well as the affection of the players and fans towards Yoshida and all his team. . After almost 6 years, the future of this MMORPG is still bright and we can't wait to find out what else it has in store for us.
► Final fantasy XIV Online is an RPG-type game developed and published by Square Enix for PC, the video game was released on 30/09/2010
Final fantasy XIV Online is a game to own at all costs: we decided to evaluate it with a 98%, if you are interested in learning more you can read the Review of Final fantasy XIV Online
