Welcome to the Caves of Narshe

Naoki Yoshida, producer of Final Fantasy XVI, posted a message through various official sources today that the development of the game has been delayed by roughly half a year due to COVID-19. Because of the need for teams to work from home, there's been issues with communication coming out of the Tokyo office, which in turn has caused problems with asset deliveries from outsourced partners. In extreme cases, those deliveries have been cancelled.

The news wasn't all doom and gloom though; Yoshida stated the next big news drop is due for Spring 2022. Additionally, he listed the tasks they are currently working on:

• Increasing graphic resource quality
• Refining combat mechanics
• Fleshing out individual battles
• Putting the finishing touches on cutscenes
• Conducting overall graphical optimization

So while there have been delays, the game sounds like it has progressed fairly well into its development cycle.

Yoshida ended with an apology for not delivering more news in 2021 as had been previously stated, and thanked fans for their continued patience.

Source: Official Site

As recently as yesterday, Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster had a release date of "2021" on Steam - I know, because I checked it after seeing the latest screenshots in Famitsu. Last night, though, Square Enix published an update on social media announcing that the game would be pushed back to February 2022.

The announcement simply says that "in order to bring you the best experience possible, we're allowing the necessary time to apply final polish while finishing development on the game." So, the typical amount of detail in such an announcement, but no reason to think that things are wildly out of control.

As a make-good, two more tracks have been added to the soundtrack available for pre-orders: a Timelapse Remix of Locke's Theme, and a new instrumental of Aria di Mezzo Carattere. The Timelapse Remixes are a blended version of the original OST and the new soundtrack.

Source: Final Fantasy on Twitter, Final Fantasy VI on Steam

Chocobo GP, the Mario Kart-alike announced recently, got a news update from Square Enix today announcing both a "Lite" version and a release date of March 10, 2022. The game will be released simultaneously worldwide for Switch.

The "Lite" version, just announced, will be similar to a wide-release demo and will be free to play. While the full game will have a "story mode," which serves as the game's progression mechanic for unlocking characters and abilities, the Lite version allows the player to sample only the prologue and take part in some local and online multiplayer. Any saved data from the Lite version will port into the full version when purchased.

The new trailer also shows a bit more of the game's unique features like the 64-player knockout tournament online mode, so if you're interested in at least the Lite game it's worth a quick watch.


Source: Gematsu

The 2021 iteration of The Game Awards, the awards show for games that is kind of... I guess an awards show for games that also kind of wants to be E3-light, happened last evening. My assumption is that the "E3-light" part is really the more interesting for folks, though, and in that regard Square Enix did show up with a couple nice treats.

The biggest and most immediate news we already suspected: a release of Final Fantasy VII Remake for PC. That was confirmed last night, and not only that, it was confirmed for next week and also confirmed to include Intergrade. Unlike the PlayStation 5 release that pretty much nobody has gotten to play because nobody has a PS5, this one will not be able to be upgraded from a previous PS4 purchase. That said, the PC version will still play at up to 4k with a good enough rig, and the specs to play at 1080 seem quite reasonable aside from perhaps the 100GB space requirement! The game will be available on the Epic Games Store only, at least for now.

Forspoken, the game long known as Project Athia, also got a new trailer last night and, I believe, the first specific announced release date: May 24, 2022. The game will be released only for PlayStation 5 and Windows. The new trailer is below for your enjoyment.


On top of that, if you are interested in the awards themselves, Square Enix as a developer and publisher won five. Two were for Final Fantasy XIV, and one each for Life Is Strange: True Colors, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Nier: Replicant.

Source: Square Enix Blog, Wikipedia

The Game Awards nominations have been announced, and Final Fantasy XIV Online has been nominated for two awards.

The first nomination is in the Best Ongoing category. The other nominees for Best Ongoing game are: Apex Legends; Call of Duty: War Zone; Fortnite; and Genshin Impact.

It's also been nominated in the Best Community Support category, with fellow nominees: Apex Legends: Escape; Destiny 2: Beyond Light; Fortnite; and No Man's Sky.

Other Square Enix games picking up nominations are Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, nominated for Best Narrative, Innovation in Accessibility, and Best Action/Adventure; and Life is Strange: True Colors, nominated for Best Narrative and Games for Impact.

The Game Awards will be hosted live from Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on December 9th. Gamers can vote on nominations at The Game Awards website.

Source: The Game Awards

Final Fantasy XIV's newest expansion, Endwalker, was due to release Tuesday, November 23rd, but has now had its release date pushed back by two weeks. The new release date is Tuesday, December 7th, with early access for those who pre-ordered happening Friday, December 3rd.

This reporter was watching the Live Letter where the news was announced, and Naoki Yoshida (affectionately known as Yoshi-P), producer and director of Final Fantasy XIV, seemed rather distraught at having made this decision as he kept repeating "I'm sorry" in Japanese. According to the official announcement, Yoshi-P made this decision to ensure the quality of the expansion would live up to his vision. He thought hard about cutting material, or breaking the expansion into several releases so they could still meet the scheduled release date, but ultimate decided against those ideas.

Along with the updated release date for Endwalker, we also received the schedule for the first two patches. Patch 6.01 is scheduled for Tuesday, December 21, 2021 and will bring the Pandæmonium raid, while Patch 6.05, scheduled for Tuesday, January 4, 2022 will include the raid's Savage version along with new tomestones and gear.

Finally, a new trailer for the expansion was shown. Here it is for your enjoyment:




Source: Final Fantasy XIV Lodestone

This week, we got updates on two upcoming Final Fantasy games that were announced earlier this year. While they're not big news because we knew they were coming, now's the chance to get ready for them to drop.

First, Final Fantasy V Pixel Remaster will be releasing on November 10, only a couple weeks away now. Preorders have been available for this one for quite a while, and the preorder bonuses on Steam are still up. The versions for mobile are, as usual, not available for preorder.

Also, as of today, pre-registration for Final Fantasy VII: The First Soldier is ready to go. The exact release of the game is still no more specific than November 2021, but this Battle Royale-style game set in the Final Fantasy VII Remake universe can be accessed now in app stores and Square Enix are offering gifts to all players who pre-register based on the total number of users set up before launch.


Source: Square Enix

There are new concerts coming for both of the major ongoing concert series from our friends at Square Enix. We've got new shows in the "A New World" series and one brief but big update in the "Distant Worlds" subseries focused on Final Fantasy VII Remake, so here's a quick list of updates since our last catch-up so you can see if they're coming near you.

For the smaller-scale "A New World" series, there are a lot of shows showing up mostly in the first half of 2022:

• Fort Worth, TX (at Anime Frontier): December 5
• Berkeley, CA: January 14, 2022
• San Diego, CA: Two Shows, January 15
• Houston, TX: January 22
• St. Paul, MN: Two Shows, March 18
• Ann Arbor, MI: March 19
• Cleveland, OH: March 20
• Rosemont, IL (at ACEN): May 22

For the Final Fantasy VII Remake, I was actually too slow to post this so I missed the one this weekend - Yosh, vocalist for "Hollow," used as the theme of FF7R, performed live at the show in Los Angeles last weekend. But, still coming up, if you can get to Hawai'i for Thanksgiving weekend, you can see Nobuo Uematsu again! It's been a while, and good for him for being able to choose to attend a show in Honolulu.

There will not be a sweepstakes for tickets to that show at CoN. We tried... okay, we really didn't.

Source: A New World, Final Fantasy VII Remake Orchestra World Tour

Today's Nintendo Direct, while maybe a little short notice to fans, obviously had some time to build up industry steam; among the many wild announcements at this evening's Direct were details on four Square Enix games appearing on Switch in the very near future. A couple of the games had been previously announced, but a couple were pretty well out of left field. Here are the details:

• Actraiser: Renaissance, a detailed remaster of the really unique Super Nintendo game of the early 90's, was both announced and released today. It's got some really crisp and pretty visuals, a remastered soundtrack with new compositions, and some new content too, and it's out for Switch, PlayStation 4, Steam, Android and iOS already.
• Chocobo GP is a spiritual successor to the PlayStation Chocobo Racing game released over 20 years ago. From watching the trailer, it does look like a less polished version of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, frankly, but it could be pretty entertaining to race in some of the Final Fantasy-themed courses they might come up with, and it looks like the gameplay modes could add some diversity too. And it has Gilgamesh! It's coming for Switch sometime in 2022.
• Also coming in 2022, March 4 to be precise, is Triangle Strategy - it's no longer a "Project" but I guess a snappier name never really came to mind. Based on the demo from ages ago, this one could really be the successor to the original Final Fantasy Tactics that people have been waiting for, and not only that, Squenix have outlined some of the updates being made based on demo feedback and I think they're hitting the right ideas.
• Finally, an RPG from Yoko Taro that was first announced a couple weeks ago - Voice of Cards. Subtitled "The Isle Dragon Roars," this is a really unique looking game that plays as a combination of console and tabletop RPG, with the entire game laid out as playing cards and combat happening in a hybrid tabletop CCG/turn-based JRPG sort of format. The writing even appears to take some tone from the idea of a Dungeon Master providing exposition to a party at a D&D session. It's coming out at the end of October.

To me, this looks like a really diverse set of games coming up for Switch players to experience, and even if they don't all end up amazing, it's refreshing to see some of these shots being taken.

Source: Gematsu, IGN

Earlier this week, a data leak that came from Nvidia's GeForce Now service heavily implied that there could be some really exciting Square Enix games coming available for PC gamers. As a leak, it's of course speculative and possibly straight-up incorrect, but if we can be allowed to dream for a bit, this could mean fun times for Final Fantasy gaming on your favorite computing device.

Two games appear on the list that are essentially no-brainers for some point in the future: Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy XVI. There's no reason to think that both of these games won't eventually appear on PC no matter what, and in the case of the former, it's not even the first time it's been seen in a leak. Of course, with no further details, there's no way to know when FF7R might come about, or if it will be the enhanced version released for PS5 with Intergrade. Final Fantasy XVI is almost surely even further down the line, since the game's not complete and will have some level of timed exclusivity to PlayStation 5 anyway.

The other two games might be more interesting, anyway, or at least they would be for me. As described in the leak, those games are titled "Final Fantasy Tactics Remastered" and "Final Fantasy 9 Remake." I, for one, have been wanting a PC port of FFT since the original came out over 20 years ago, and would probably line up to buy that game for the fifth time if such a port were released. For Final Fantasy IX, this would be a really shocking addition if it were a genuine remake. I would suspect that this part of the leak is the result either of a typo or a misinterpretation, honestly; either might suggest that it's another port that matches the existing PC version of FF9, which seems more realistic than a genuine redux of the entire game. If it is a genuine remake, though, that will probably be one spectacular game.

I'll be watching for more information regardless, as this is all potentially exciting stuff!

Source: Game Rant