Trailer

Story

• Much of the game takes place on a fleet of airships: ‘Realmships’ or ‘Fimhimnar’, ‘Five Firmaments’
• Character: ‘Visna’
• The Warrior of Light becomes the ‘Far Wanderer’ from the Source, exploring the reflection of the Fourth
• More will be learned in the story patch on Sept. 8th

New Jobs

Tank: Bastion

• High fantasy + mechanical
• Evolved Mode only (in line with the new combat action design)
• Weapons: ‘Skyltborg’, twin shields with guns and blades
• Distinctive Features: defensive and curative party boons
• Story Origin: From the Northern Empty, Aerslaent

Ranged Physical DPS: ?

• Tokyo FanFest

Regions

Naglfar, Realmship of Water

• Central crystal, an ‘Arkcrystal’; there is one central to each ship, and they are central to the scenario

Town: Fargarth

(Music is placeholder at this time)

• Set on Naglfar, within a protective barrier; holding a number of airships

Hringhorni, Realmship of Fire

• The protective dome is different per ship, demonstrated here

Main Scenario System Updates

Main Scenario

• Focus: More options for proceeding through the story content
• Common prelude, more options for branches, converging again to a common point.
• You pick the order in which to tackle the branches. (It is not yet clear whether you can freely switch between them.)
  • Personal conjecture: This is likely going to happen more often than it currently does with the start of each expansion.

Auto Content Balancing

• For zones and instances related to the branching paths - aiming to make balance work no matter what group levels are in those areas
• Active consideration: gear drops for dungeons

Game Design

Weekly Activity

• Discussed in Anaheim FanFest: moving from daily activity to reach weekly goals, to simply moving to weekly activity, giving more flexibility

IL Acquisition

• New routes for upgrading, including savage gear

Seasons

• Discussed in Anaheim FanFest: Just another name for the IL cap bump that occurs every two patches; this is not a change from current progression cycles
• Reiterated: Not a purchasable battle pass
• Personal conjecture: This is mostly being given a name because it gives a time limit for activity during a season to give you the benefits of that season

Character-Focused Design

Armoury System Update

• Reiterated from Anaheim: customization of character presentation, max IL syncing across jobs, customizability per-job still available with materia

Character Action Skins

• Changes the animation for a given action
• Earned as rewards
  • Personal note: unclear if exclusively rewards; there may well be cash shop skins as well
• Both general and job actions included
• This can bring back some of the animations from lost actions in the past
• Introduced in 8.0 with a set of general action skins; expanded in 8.1 with the first round of job action skins
• Takes time to implement

Character Creation Options

• Discussed in Anaheim: finer tuning + new options for character creation
• Further expanded in 8.1 and beyond
  • Toggleable shading on nosetips for Lalafells and Viera
  • Toggleable war-paint on Miqo’te
  • Au Ra horns no longer locked to specific faces
  • Butt slider and long hair secrets

Public Field Improvement

• Bringing experiences like Eureka in the main world; currently, the system has an in-progress name of ‘world raids’; this is still in-progress
• Automatic walk to quest destinations: an optional feature
  • Likely going to be a delay in implementation, with staggered release of this for collections of quests

New Raid Difficulty

• An intermediate between Normal and Savage, at most as hard as Extreme trials
  • Low participation numbers and high engagement are required for savage, meaning difficult to access this IL cap rewards
• Intent is for a stepping stone to improve skills
• Rewards: Savage gives you raid gear directly, which is not a change from the current system; this new difficulty will give ‘season gear’ which gradually upgrades as you play this difficulty
• More detail will be given at a future ‘Letter from the Producer Live’

Same-Region Player Matching

• Discussed in Anaheim: able to match with anyone in the same region (including Party Finder duties)
• Schedule: Japan test Oct. 12; expanding to other regions later

Other Updates

• The usual, covered in Anaheim: Level cap increase to 110, treasure hunts, hunt marks, dungeons, gear and recipes, enemies
• Duty Support will continue to be expanded, including an overhaul of the chocobo companion starting in 8.1
  • Chocobos will be able to join in dungeons: a light party can be formed of two players and two chocobos
  • This will likely take advantage of the new auto-balancing systems
  • Current systems (gysahl greens, commands, etc.) will be overhauled and reconsidered

8.0 Content

Alliance Raid: Evangelion

• Collaboration with ‘khara Inc.’ underway, Mahiro Maeda collaborating as special guest artist and designer (with major credits under his belt worldwide for animation and concept art)

8-Player Raid: Beyond the Lifestream

• FFVII Remake crossover
• Same structure as usual: three tiers, but with the new intermediate difficulty added
• Coming in patch 8.01, per usual pattern

Gold Saucer: New Attraction

• Bringing in the FFVII Remake’s Gold Saucer
• This adds the attraction ‘Keybound Brawler’, a typing game activity (obviously!)
• This attraction will start with FFVII collaboration, but will expand to other themes in the future
• Rewards for this include Barrett and Tifa’s outfits; including Barrett’s gun as a fashion accessory
  • Personal conjecture: These are just new MGP rewards, not necessarily tied to the typing minigame

Misc. Updates

• Switch 2 port arriving Aug. 4, with one month free as it’s stress-tested
• Collector’s Bundle
  • This reveals the name of the cat-folk race: Köttr
  • Amano box art, Tapestry, Statue, keychains (Köttr, Ethos)
  • Valhallr Odin Mount, ‘Entreat Crystal’ Emote, Crystal Skyltborg available in Digital Collector’s Bundle