One February 5, 2021 Square Enix held their Final Fantasy XIV Announcement Showcase live on YouTube. I started playing FFXIV this year so this was the first one I’ve ever watched.

My understanding is they have these every so often to introduce new features and explain the direction the game is going.

I do have to say that I was impressed. They had Naoki Yoshida (the producer who saved the game) on stage with a translator and I can see why everyone likes the guy so much. The entire presentation from start to finish was a lot of fun.

The overall format of the event was Yoshida explaining various things, showing a few videos and it looked like they were even taking questions from a live chat as well. It’s a fantastic example of how companies should interact with their fans. You can tell the guy cares a lot about the game and was genuinely excited for what he had to talk about.

Here’s the whole video if you want to give it a watch.

Endwalker

The biggest announcement from the show of course was the introduction of the next expansion Endwalker.

I’m still only a little ways into Shadowbringers so I didn’t know a ton of what was going on but it was a great little teaser trailer. I’ve always loved the FFXIV trailers and I’ve watched them all over the years even back before I started playing the game. It’s cool seeing the Warrior of Light character switching classes and going on his journey from expansion to expansion.

The big thing about this expansion is that they’re going to the moon which is why the moon features so prominently in all the artwork and promotional material.

The expansion is also very influenced by Final Fantasy IV which is cool too. One of the neat things about FFXIV is that even though it’s its own story it does celebrate all the other previous Final Fantasy games as well.

You can check out the teaser trailer for Endwalker below.

I’m definitely looking forward to the full longer version of this.

This expansion will apparently completely end the story they’ve been telling since the beginning and then going forward in 7.0 they’ll be telling a brand new story. So that’s definitely something to look forward to as I hear the story in Shadowbringers gets pretty awesome.

Sage Class

The other big announcement was the introduction of a new healer class coming in Endwalker called the Sage. There’s another DPS class coming as well but they’re saving the introduction of that until the next event.

I don’t really know too much about healer classes but I have to admit they made this class look pretty cool.

You can see the sage reveal in the video below:

I’m playing as a ninja and I probably will never bother to learn a whole new class but I do like the look of what they have going on here.

PS5 Version

They also announced the PS5 version of the game which most people knew was coming eventually anyways. I play on PC so I’m not super interested in this but it is nice that the PS4 players apparently get upgraded to the PS5 version for free.

The below video outlines everything about the PS5 version and I believe there’s a beta you can get involved with.

Artwork

They also showed off some really cool artwork of the areas in Endwalker.

One of the new areas you’ll be able to visit is Thavanir and they showed off a couple of beautiful pieces of art of this location.

Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Artwork

Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Artwork

I definitely love the creativity shown off in the world of FFXIV. The game is just fantastic to explore and everything about the world design from the architecture to the clothing is fantastic.

We’ll also finally get a chance to visit Garlemald which doesn’t look like it’s in the best condition based off this artwork.

Garlemald Artwork

They also announced that the summon Anima from Final Fantasy X would be making an appearance as well. As a big fan of FFX myself I think that’s pretty awesome.

Anima from FFX

And to just wrap up this section, here’s a few screenshots of the new Thavanir area which has a pretty cool and unique look. Definitely different from anything else so far.

Final Fantasy Thavanir screenshot

Final Fantasy Thavanir screenshot

Final Fantasy Thavanir screenshot

Yoshitaka Amano was also commissioned to make a special piece of artwork for the expansion. His art is always amazing and if you haven’t checked out his artbooks you should definitely pick them up.

Yoshitaka Amano's Artwork for Endwalker

Island Sanctuary

Another one of the major things they announced but didn’t really show off was some kind of relaxing Island Sanctuary where you can let your minions and companions roam around.

Island sanctuary art

In Conclusion

Those were the major announcements but there’s also a host of smaller miscellaneous things such as an increased level cap to level 90, new beast tribe, new dungeons, new high-difficulty raid called Pandæmonium (which is of course spelled with that weird ae character because SquareEnix), new alliance raids, new PVP mode, new gear and the ability to travel between data centres, not just worlds on the same data centre.

They’re also going to be recalculating the damage numbers because everything getting to too much to calculate now apparently which I guess is a symptom of having to keep increasing everything each expansion.

So all in all it was a pretty fun livestream. Lots of exciting announcements and I’ll definitely be tuning into the next one.

Other companies should definitely take note that this is how you need to interact with your fans, especially if you’ve got an ongoing “Games as a Service” kind of situation like what FFXIV has.

There was also a much longer almost 5 hour Letter from the Producer live video that aired a few hours afterwards. I tried watching this but I couldn’t really get into it. I’m not that big of an FFXIV nerd. They really go into detail and cover everything. Plus it’s all in Japanese.

If you do what to check it out the video is below: