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We're winding down this year, so it's a good time for the folks behind Distant Worlds to add a lot of new shows for 2019. Good news if you're one of our international readers, as most of the new shows being added are outside of North America this time. I'm sure more here in the States and possibly Canada will be coming soon, and there's still one new domestic date that I hadn't seen before, but for now here's a big list of mostly European show additions.

• Bangkok: December 1 and 2
• Nashville: January 22, 2019
• Hamburg: Valentine's Day! Adorable Date Night Opportunity!
• Berlin: February 15
• Dusseldorf: February 16
• Geneva: March 22
• Milan: March 23
• Rome: March 24

The shows in Hamburg, Geneva, and Rome are new cities for the tour. In Bangkok, Yoko Shimomura is scheduled to attend (remember, Nobuo Uematsu is still recuperating his health). Tickets for all of these shows are on sale now!

A New World has added even more dates than Distant Worlds, in other far-flung locales, particularly in the South Pacific:

• Christchurch, New Zealand: November 9
• Auckland: November 10
• Singapore: November 17
• Sydney: November 23
• Brisbane: November 24
• Adelaide: November 27
• Canberra: November 29
• Melbourne: November 30
• Perth: December 1
• Los Angeles: February 23, 2019
  (with two shows on the date)
• Atlanta: May 26

Tickets for all of these shows are on sale as well; the Atlanta show is included with registration for MomoCon.

Source: Distant Worlds, A New World

Nintendo did a new Nintendo Direct late last night (America time, that is). And if you have a Switch and are a classic Square Enix fan, you are 100% in luck - there are now a ton of Final Fantasy games coming your way. First, five games from the late 90's/early 2000's: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy IX, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, and Final Fantasy XII were all announced for 2019 releases on the Nintendo system. One would have to assume that for these games, they will be ports of the most recent Windows releases, and in the case of X/X-2, will be purchased as a single unit as they have been previously for PS4 and PC.

The cute and simple version of Final Fantasy XV, called Pocket Edition, was released on mobile in February of this year, and for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One just last Friday. The Switch version was likely also ready for that release day, but as Nintendo Direct was delayed a week due to hurricanes in the Pacific Ocean, the announcement lost a bit of momentum and fell behind the other consoles. It's priced at $29.99 on Switch, but currently you can get it for 40% off as a release celebration.

World of Final Fantasy is also coming to Switch, on November 6. The Switch edition will be called "Maxima," will add in a new feature called "Avatar Change" in which the player characters Reynn and Lann will be able to change their appearance to that of classic Final Fantasy characters when in their non-Jiant modes. Cloud, Lightning, Yuna, and Noctis all appeared in the short video snippet as Avatar Change options, though it's likely that many more will be available.

Finally for new news, a remaster of Chocobo's Mystery Dungeon was also announced for release sometime this winter. This game was originally released a decade ago for Wii, and the new version is subtitled "Every Buddy" because in the new release, every monster is available as a friend option (and because two people can play by splitting the Joy-Cons).

If you don't have a Switch, though, you won't be left out. Xbox One and PlayStation 4 will be getting a number of these games as well. Microsoft gamers get the biggest lift, as most of the games were not previously available there: World of Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy IX, Final Fantasy X/X-2 and Final Fantasy XII will all be arriving on the XBO; WoFF will arrive on November 6 just as for Switch, with the others coming next year. PlayStation 4 gamers will also get Every Buddy, and can upgrade their WoFF to Maxima with paid DLC. WoFF will also be coming to PC!

Source: Siliconera

Distant Worlds and A New World have updated their schedules again, adding a few new events coming soon. For Distant Worlds, a show has been added in Miami on November 4 (a day after the Boca Raton show, for Floridians who couldn't make that date), as well as Nashville on January 22, 2019. This will be the first visit to either city in five years; Susan Calloway is confirmed for Miami but no major announcements for Nashville as yet. Both shows are on sale now.

A New World has added just one new date, at Zipper Hall in Los Angeles on February 23, 2019. Tickets for this event are also on sale now.

For folks looking to see or meet Nobuo Uematsu at their preferred show, some potentially unfortunate news; Kotaku reported yesterday that Uematsu has cancelled an upcoming performance in Japan for health reasons; our hopes are that he recovers soon!


Source: Distant Worlds, A New World, Kotaku

Since Square Enix' video presentation for E3 yesterday, the company has been doling out a bit more information about the games contained within. There are still no enormous revelations here, but they have been working to fill in some of the gaps from what appears to have been widely viewed as an underwhelming appearance for this year's E3.

Kingdom Hearts III remains Square's big splash for this E3, with more information coming out in seemingly every presentation. Square Enix released the trailer that was shown after the Kingdom Hearts concert last weekend was shown to the wider public, showing most of the scenes of the Microsoft trailer as well as the new Ratatouille scene and a bit more Mickey than we're used to. You can hit the Kingdom Hearts YouTube channel to watch the trailer, but if you've been keeping up so far this week there's really not much you haven't already seen. In Sony's presser, yet another new trailer appeared, this time featuring an extremely realistic Disney world, that of the Pirates of the Caribbean universe. The main characters of PotC all appear in cinematics, and there's a long sequence of battle gameplay from the Pirates world. There are also some longer clips from Hercules, Rapunzel, Toy Story, Monsters Inc., and Frozen that were new in the trailer.


Sony also announced a Kingdom Hearts-themed limited-edition PlayStation 4 Pro, and an all-in-one SKU that will contain all of the HD remasters of previous KH games as well as Kingdom Hearts III. No price points were announced for either.

Also, heretofore-unknown game The Quiet Man got a little more detail after the screening of the trailer, as reported by Siliconera. The game will indeed be an action game that is intended to blend live action video with computer-generated graphics, and it's intended to be an intentionally short game, to be "completed in one sitting." This implies to me that they're planning to release it digitally-only, and that it might be a game intended to test the waters for future work. It also implies that the trailer might have actually been 100% in-game footage, with the live-action scene part of the actual game and not filmed just for the trailer.

Squenix also sent out an email blast last night with more information about the free download of The Adventures of Captain Spirit, coming on June 26. It explains that the central character in the episode is Chris, a ten-year-old with lots of imagination who wants nothing more than to be a superhero. The game appears to take place over a single Saturday in Chris' life, and involves something "extraordinary" happening to him. It can be preloaded on Xbox One now, and will be available for PS4 and Steam soon.

Square Enix just wrapped their E3 presentation, a very quick half hour that I suspect will be a disappointment for most everyone. If you're looking for the quick hits, you can probably get by just by knowing that they didn't reveal much of anything that wasn't already known, and those things were not groundbreaking. If you were hoping for Final Fantasy VII, or something else brand new in the Final Fantasy universe, you're out of luck there. If you're like me, and were hoping for an announcement of the next game in the Deus Ex series, nothing there either.

We did get some new gameplay of the next Tomb Raider, coming out in September, as well as the intro movie. The gameplay looks like they've integrated in a little more nuance to the stealth aspects of the game, with parts of the takedowns looking a bit like Deus Ex to me. Lara's got a new "stalker" mode for stealth knife kills, too. It looks like they've improved the enemy group AI some to help them work more in teams and be more observant, too.

For Final Fantasy XIV, they showed a trailer for the next patch, 4.4. Titled "Under the Moonlight," it looks very Ivalice-y, which is probably a great thing. There's also the upcoming crossover event with Monster Hunter World, in which Final Fantasy costumes and monsters will become available in MHW.

Life Is Strange dev studio DONTNOD debuted a mini-episode in the Life Is Strange universe, called "The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit," featuring a tween boy playing as his favorite superhero. It's a game that takes place in the world of LIS, and the devs teased connections to Life Is Strange Season 2, but no direct lead-in to that story. It will be a free download for everyone on June 26.

Dragon Quest XI is getting a worldwide release on September 4 of this year, and there was a new trailer comprised of mostly cutscenes. There were some small gameplay bits, it appeared, with the protagonist equipping one and sometimes two pretty large swords. Also on September 4, Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius on mobile will have a second Dragon Quest crossover event to commemorate the release.

Next up was a game called Babylon's Fall, announced today from PlatinumGames, the developers of Nier: Automata. No details were announced other than platforms (PlayStation 4 and Steam) and a 2019 release date. One could guess from the trailer that the game will involve some sort of action-based sword-and-sorcery combat, but the teaser was short and fairly dark, and not incredibly heavy on detail. Speaking of Nier, if you missed the announcement with Microsoft yesterday, Automata is set to be released for Xbox One on June 26, two weeks from tomorrow. The XBO version will include all released DLC with the purchase package.

Just Cause 4, leaked just before E3, had some new video and an introduction from the developers explaining the new location and the addition of new features like extreme weather and further upgrades to the now-standard open world experience provided by Just Cause games. It will be out December 4 of this year.

The last new reveal of the half-hour show was The Quiet Man, for PlayStation 4 and PC. It's meant to come out in August, and again based on a very short teaser looks like it could be a third-person brawler. The teaser implies that the lead character might be deaf, which could be interesting if there's a good way to integrate that plot point into the gameplay.

Two very small things, barely worth noting because they were such known quantities by now; Octopath Traveler was again shown in trailer form, with no new information given, and Kingdom Hearts III was represented by the same trailer I posted earlier today.

Here's the full video if you're interested after all of that:

More Kingdom Hearts III news before E3 even starts, out of yesterday's Microsoft presentation. It's another new trailer, different than the one shown after the concert as described yesterday. This one leans heavily on the new Frozen world, with Sven, Anna, and Olaf making an extended appearance as well as Elsa fighting off a Heartless reindeer. Other Disney worlds make brief appearances as well, including Monsters, Toy Story, Hercules, and Tangled.

This is the first game in the series released for a Microsoft platform, so no wonder as to why this new trailer debuted with them. Of course, that's two new trailers in two days, so I wouldn't rule out seeing yet another before the week is out!

Kingdom Hearts III, as reported yesterday, will release in Japan next January 25 and in the West four days later.


Source: Siliconera