This year, for the first time in Final Fantasy XIV history, I very nearly did not go to the preview event for Dawntrail.
Readers no doubt know that I tend to be pretty honest and open about my personal experience and relationship with this game, and I’ve spent the last year dealing with real-life trauma. So while I’ve definitely been looking forward to Dawntrail, I nearly said that I didn’t want to go through the hassle of travel and dealing with those expenses and problems.
But when I talked to Bree about it, she told me that if I didn’t go, I’d regret it in a year’s time. And you know what? She’s pretty smart. I listened to her, and even if I didn’t feel perhaps as primed for a fun summer vacation as I would have wanted, I headed out to take part in the Dawntrail media tour just the same. And perhaps to no one’s surprise, I had a good time. So let me tell you about how it went – and then we’re going to dig into half a dozen articles with everything I learned.
The media tour always involves a whole lot of things happening in close succession, but as always, my goal was to get a look at basically everything possible within the job abilities, get an overview of the various areas, learn the new jobs, and take part in the dungeon. I also had a chance to get some personal interview questions answered by Naoki Yoshida in addition to a general public Q&A, which was cool, as was the generally really nice space that we had our event.
However, as always, there are caveats. The first and most important one to keep in mind as you read literally all of this: These screenshots and impressions are from an in-development build, which was still changing and being worked on at the time that I played. Nothing was final at this point. I have specifically avoided listing potencies or analyzing any of that, but icons for gear were still placeholders, NPC dialogue was intentionally held back, and so forth. This is a flavor sample of the expansion as a whole, not the full release, and it should be understood as such.
Second, please be aware that anything and everything I wrote about were based on my personal impressions. I was not the only person at the event, and perhaps more importantly, while I do my best to understand all of the jobs in the game, there are still blank spaces in my knowledge. Some jobs I have very clear pictures of; others I do not. In large part I do not think this is a major issue, but I encourage fans to take in other viewpoints than my own rather than seeing me as the only source to understand any and all jobs within the game. (There are a lot.)
Third, there is stuff that I didn’t really get to play around with much. For example, the two-channel dye system was in for previews, but the only gear we had to play around with was the new artifact kit, and even then it was only in previews. I did not get to play around with mixing-and-matching hats and glasses. The vendors were still holding placeholder lists, just like how the dungeon drops were all just single potions. As is always the case in these previews, we were presented with a narrow slice.
And thank gosh for that because even with the narrow slice, there was a lot. There’s stuff that didn’t even make its way into a full column; for example, I took on one of the A-rank hunts with several other attendees, and that took us a few times before we got her mechanics down. (Along with several jokes about how she’s the third eldest Primal. First Zodiark, then Hydaelyn, then THIS A-RANK.) FATEs were scattered about, all of which work in familiar ways but presumably have their own mastery grind associated with them. You get the drill.
Obviously the graphical update was in full effect, but… I honestly didn’t notice it. But I mean that in a good way. You get the sense that these areas look better than ever, but there’s nothing that grabs your wrist and pulls you out of it, nor is there a sense that you’re suddenly a very old graphical asset jutting against a brand-new one. Everything looks very good, and it also looks very familiar.
In fact, I even remade a spin on my actual character for running around in the world, although I changed some aspects and I’m not saying which one it was. I did actually have a couple of screenshots get flubbed while I was there and I am generally not as happy with this batch as I was with the Endwalker set; just more travel and more exhaustion, I suppose. Mea culpa.
Last and arguably least, as will be noted in the individual articles, Square-Enix did pay for my travel and lodging for this event. If you think this substantially affects my ability to discuss the game in an objective fashion, well… I don’t know what to tell you. I was excited about the expansion before the preview event. I’m excited now, but I am also a little disappointed in a couple of specific changes and got about what I expected elsewhere. As Kurt Vonnegut wrote, so it goes. The disappointments mostly come down to things I had concocted that were never promised, so I can hardly be salty about them.
And now… on with the show! Let’s take a look at our summer vacation in Tural. Wait, I forgot to check, do we get a new emote in which we get to do Pacha’s “just right” pose as a reference? Because if not I rescind every nice thing I have to say about the expansion, I need me some Emperor’s New Groove reference.
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