The last major piece of content for 2023’s Final Fantasy XVI now has a release date. The Rising Tide, the second of two planned post-release DLCs, is coming to PlayStation 5 on April 18. It will cost $US19.99, or players can purchase the $US24.99 Expansion Pass to gain access to both The Rising Tide and the first DLC, Echoes of The Fallen. The expansion will be centered around a new area of the map, and will also answer one of the biggest questions from the base game: What happened to the Eikon of Water?
The Rising Tide will transport players to the new land of Mysidia, which lies in the northern region of the map and has been hidden away in the northern territory of Storm. As shown in the trailer for the DLC, Mysidia has managed to remain untouched by the Blight, the game’s all-consuming plague, and still has a stunning blue sky, offering a pleasant contrast to the drab, overcast skies that dominate the later parts of the game. How this is able to exist is a mystery that players will need to unravel. Mysidia will sound familiar to longtime fans of the franchise, as it has appeared as a town name in past titles (such as FF4) and usually acts as a location heavily tied to magic. That appears to be the case in FF16 as well. In any case, Mysidia’s stunning landscape looks just as gorgeous as the base game’s locales.
The trailer’s unknown narrator gives us a bit of lore for Mysidia. The land appears to be something of a haven for Bearers (magic users who are often enslaved in the world of FF16) who ran away from prosecution. The narrator speaks of the people of Mysidia creating a new mother crystal through the sacrifice of a single child, possibly the Dominant (individuals who wield the power of godlike beings called Eikons) of Leviathan, the Eikon of Water. FF16 lore mentioned that the Eikon of Water had been missing for ages, so Clive and crew will need to discover the history of Mysidia and its origins. Jill is also from the north, and the trailer for The Rising Tide makes heavy mention of Shiva, which Jill is the Dominant of, so we can only hope she’ll get more depth and agency in the DLC than she did in the base game.
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