Announced today at Square Enix’s annual Final Fantasy XIV Fanfest, the popular online game’s third expansion, Shadowbringers, is coming early winter 2019. Expect an expansive story, a raised level cap and multiple new jobs — including one wielding a gunblade.
Now that players have freed Ala Mhigo and Doma in the Stormblood expansion, now it’s time to take the fight to the evil Garlean Empire. What will happen to the Warrior of Light and the allied armies? Who are the mysterious Ascians who have been messing with players since the game launched? Who is the Warrior of Darkness? These questions will be answered in the new expansion.
Well, one will be answered in patch 4.5, in which we’ll find out why the Warrior of Light must take a darker path.
While producer Naoki Yoshida could not give details on which new character jobs will be introduced in the expansion, he indicated a hint about one of them was present in the expansion’s teaser trailer. In said trailer, a character is seen wielding a weapon that is part gun and part sword, similar to weapons used by Final Fantasy VIII‘s Squall.
Shadowbringers will also bring new primals to fight and beast tribes to gain favour with, including the adorable Nu Mou.
Other new features include nine new dungeons and a new series of end game raids. Crafters and gatherers will have the opportunity to come together and use their skills to rebuild the Holy See of Ishgard.
A feature akin to Final Fantasy XI’s Trust system will be added in Shadowbringers, allowing non-player character heroes to accompany players through dungeons. This will allow players to play through the story scenario of the expansion completely solo.
And for players who’d like to play through previous chapters of the story again…
New game plus! Players will be able to go back and play older storylines with their current, ridiculously overpowered characters.
Updating…
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2 responses to “Final Fantasy 14’s Next Expansion Is Shadowbringers, Coming Winter 2019”
I wish you could join the Garlean Empire. They’re much more interesting than any of the Eorzean city states.
Probably will someday,
but likely long after the Ascians leading their country are removed.They’re only interesting because we havent seen them yet, so your mind is filling in the blanks of how awesome it could potentially be. Uldah has constant political shenanigans and power brokers running shit with a huge class divide, Gridania is living in constant fear of forest spirits that are perpetually on the brink of waking up and nuking everyone so white mages placate them, hunt dissidents and randomly let sick people die if “the spirits will it”, and Limsa is struggling to pull itself into civility with all the asshat pirates running around looting and plundering and everyone just wants to let loose and murder each other for sport. Then you’ve got the fantastic racism of Ishgard, the entrenched religion and propensity for capital punishment via Halone’s Fury bullshit.
All of that shit is equally interesting as Garlemald and the Garleans, probably even moreso because of how those city states interact with each other, how much their ideologies conflict and how they eventually undergo change, while Garlemald is just a standalone state and army that assimilates conquered nations under one flag because they’re literally just designed to be a Roman analogue, and follow Roman history to the letter barring the magical tech shit since the writers at SE have no imagination. Even the primal hunting is just another way of saying “hurrrrr we don’t like your reliance on things we don’t personally believe in because it’s savage by our standards” which was the rhetoric Romans used to justify their conquests and slavery. Same with the popular belief leaders like Nero were demons because they wanted to watch the world burn, which the Ascian control revealed in 4.5 is another analogue of.
tl’dr Garlemald won’t be as interesting as any of the current factions. It just seems interesting now because SE is being vague and mysterious about it, and are just copypasting from actual history because lol effort.