News

I've been remiss for quite a while at keeping everyone up on Distant Worlds (and A New World) dates. However, for the former, the Final Fantasy 35th Anniversary Program has continued apace, and there are eleven future dates coming up across the US, Canada, and Brazil:

• Los Angeles, August 13, 2023
• Cleveland, Ohio, September 9
• São Paulo, September 28
• Rio de Janeiro, October 1


• Austin, Texas, November 10
• Montreal, December 3
• Seattle, January 20, 2024
• Charlotte, North Carolina, February 3
• Washington, DC, March 2
• Hartford, Connecticut, March 23
• San Francisco, May 31 and June 1

The smaller chamber orchestra for A New World currently has only three shows through the rest of 2023:

• Boston, September 29
• Cincinnati, October 1
• San Diego, December 8

All shows for both series are available for ticket purchase or preorder right now.

Source: Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds, A New World: Intimate Music from Final Fantasy

The North American Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest began today, and as expected, producer and director Naoki Yoshida's keynote featured the announcement of the next expansion planned for the game:Dawntrail.

The theme of the expansion is "Summer Vacation", as the Warrior of Light and friends travel to what's been known previously as "The New World":Tural, an area located in the Far West. The premise for the Warrior of Light traveling there is an invitation to a contest that will help decide the next ruler of its hub city, Tuliyollal. The Scions will be pitted against each other during the contest--just who will be on the Warrior of Light's side?

Other revelations included:

• Urqopacha, a mountainous region home to "peoples both exceedingly large and unusually small in nature."
• Yak Tel, a forest region accessible by dirigible.
• The Pelupelu, an allied tribe.
• A level cap increase to 100.
• Two new jobs, both DPS: one melee and one magical ranged caster.
• A "whiteboard" feature which will let players plan raid strategies.
• More details on the previously announced graphical update.
• A cross-over event withFall Guys, including new content to the Gold Saucer in Final Fantasy XIV.
• The expansion of the free trial to now include the entirety ofStormblood.

There was one other huge announcement: the game is making its way to the Xbox Series X|S. Open beta will be in spring of 2024, before Dawntrail is released.

Here's the teaser trailer for your enjoyment:
Source:Final Fantasy XIV Official YouTube Channel,USA Today,Game Informer

Rumors had been bouncing around for the last couple days that a remaster or remake of the classic Squaresoft/Nintendo collaboration for SNES would appear at today's Direct, and so it was.The original game released in 1996 and the original was packaged up for Virtual Console on Wii and Wii U, but never for Switch, and perhaps now we know why. The game's been redone with a very nice new engine, even with the slightly-squished look of the original isometric visuals intact.

The new version of the game will release on November 17, 2023. Digital preorders are available now; I assume there will be a physical release of the game as well, but those details are not yet available.

Source: Nintendo of America YouTube

After the mild disappointment of the Sony Showcase, in which we got no Final Fantasy VII, the Summer Game Fest stream that just ended gave us a little bit more of what we're looking for: a brand-new trailer for Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

This had been expected for the last week or so, when the official Twitter accounts in both Japanese and English started posting semi-cryptic updates about the progress of the game, and users noticed that they started exactly seven days before Keighley's SGF. Bad news out of the way, first - the trailer locks in a mostly-assumed bit of news, that the game is delayed now until "Early 2024." That same title card has some surprising news, too - the game is shipping on two discs. This obviously means that it's going to be a larger game than the first one, which shipped on a single disc for Playstation 5 even including Yuffie's Intermission. I'm going to do something odd for CoN news here and put my impressions of the trailer in a separate thread so they can be more easily avoided for users who want no chance of spoilers. For this post, I'll just suffice to say that my kid got very excited very quickly.

The other Final Fantasy VII game that's on the way, Ever Crisis, also got a new trailer and updated release information. In this case, the new information is that players can pre-register for the game now; additionally, players on Android devices can sign up to get into a closed beta starting today and running until just about the end of June. It seems like this game should make it to Switch, eventually, but unfortunately that was not part of today's announcment.The way I see it, if you're not completely sold on Final Fantasy XVI yet, there is at least a lot of good Final Fantasy VII coming... but probably not soon enough.

Sony's Playstation Showcase ended a little bit ago, and while there were a lot of very grabby games involved (go do some Googling for Sword of the Sea, Neva, and the Metal Gear Solid and Spider-Man news if you've got a Playstation 5), the only thing that got rebirthed was the Marathon IP from Bungie.

If you were looking for Square Enix in the hour-long presentation, your options were a bit limited; we can start with the announcement of a new team-based 4v4 shooter called "Foamstars," which appears to be made up primarily of OG Fortnite and Splatoon vibes. It's a third-person shooter where the core mechanic is shooting foam everywhere, whether to build, transport, or hunt. The world and characters look fun and shiny, but my gut call is that this might struggle to find an audience.The only other presence for Squenix in this event was for Final Fantasy XVI. It was an interesting change of pace from other recent info from the game (that I've failed to cover here), as it seemed to have a lot of focus on the world around the main characters and the motivations for the plot, versus the very combat-heavy videos we've seen over the last few months. In my opinion, it gives some much-needed texture to the world that they've shown us so far and is pretty helpful with the game coming in a month. But yes, not a thing about the Final Fantasy VII world. I guess nothing more to see for that game until later - hopefully not all the way until Tokyo Games Show, which is at the end of September?

Source: Square Enix NA YouTube

A new prequel novel set in the Final Fantasy VII universe released in English earlier this week, entitled "Final Fantasy VII Remake: Traces of Two Pasts." The novel, written by Kazushige Nojima (the primary scenario writer behind both the game's original PS1 release as well as 2020's Remake) and translated to English by Stephen Kohler (whose other Square Enix-related translations include Final Fantasy XV: The Dawn of the Future and NieR:Automata - YoRHa Boys), explores the childhoods of characters Tifa Lockhart and Aerith Gainsborough, with roughly half of the book devoted to each character's backstory.

If you're a big fan of FF7's leading ladies, the novel answers numerous questions and expands upon the characters' origins, such as Tifa's introduction to Zangan and how Aerith came to be in Elmyra's care. And for the FF7 dorks who always wondered about that heretofore unnamed cat that shows up with Tifa in the Japan-exclusive Before Crisis flip-phone mobile game... Well, I'm happy to report that you're in luck, too! Find out all about Tifa's cat. And its cat antics. And how Tifa is most definitely a cat person.

Published by Square Enix Books, the hardcover version of the novel retails for $24.99 and the ebook edition for $14.99 (available on Amazon, Apple Books, Google Play, Kobo, and more).

The AmaCoN link is of course right here, and as of the time of this post, it's 10% off. I've already ordered a copy for my daughter's birthday, though there's a good chance I sneak in reading it before that myself.

Source: Square Enix Books/Penguin Random House