News

That's right, 2018 plans. In the newest, and reportedly last, Active Time Report scheduled for the one-year anniversary of the game yesterday, Square Enix outlined some new content coming over the course of the game's second year. Unfortunately, the ATR was not subtitled this time around, so there are big parts of it I can't yet report on, such as the survey results from the questionnaire the game served up for a while a couple months back. One takeaway is that anything not explicitly laid out here is still meant to be locked in for plans and timing by the end of this calendar year.

The crux of that survey, though, was asking what other characters in the Final Fantasy XV world needed an "episode" DLC, in the manner that Noctis' party has gotten, concluding with Episode Ignis arriving on December 13. More on that in a bit, but in terms of the survey, it's worth noting that the next episode, centering around Ardyn, will be the first released of the "at least three" scheduled for next year. Ardyn's episode appears as if it might be more of a look back in history than previous episodes, with a focus being put upon worldbuilding in Eos. The dates and other content for other episodes are unclear, but Hajime Tabata expressed in the ATR that 2018 was not a hard-and-fast window, and that episodes would be released only when they were "satisfactory." Tabata also acknowledged that players really want to get more story content for Lunafreya, so I think it's a safe bet that one of the episodes will also center on her. I'm still kind of hoping for an Aranea one, for what it's worth.

The big free December update, though, will be out just before Ignis and will add the ability to switch active party members during battle. For those who haven't played, up until now every battle required you to operate as Noctis, only able to set equipment for the rest of the party and allowing that to influence their battle decisions, as well as giving them orders for special techniques when available. The new update will give a new in-battle option to switch to another member of the four, and use some of the battle mechanics that have been given to those characters in their episodic DLC.

Now, back to Ignis. His episode, as mentioned, will be out in just a couple weeks, and appears to take place canonically in the time immediately after the major plot events of Altissia. It's meant to have a couple hours of plot, but will have two routes of completion, one unlocking only for players who have finished the main game. This secondary route is implied to have some impact on the way that the polarizing ending of the main game has been received; I'll go no further so as to avoid spoilers, but I think anyone who has finished the game can probably guess what that might mean. The secondary route will also have a challenge boss fight, which differs from the other battle available to players who complete the episode via either route - a one-on-one Ignis v. Noctis battle all around Hammerhead.

Stay tuned as more information should lock in over the next few weeks!

Source: Siliconera, Gematsu

Square Enix had a financial reporting briefing today, and the core of it was absolutely Nintendo's new console and mobile titles. As reported by the Wall Street Journal's Tokyo tech reporter, the company plans to "aggressively make games for Switch," ruling out no IPs in the company's stable. They did not go into any detail as to any specific IPs, of course, but they did reference new IP, active IP, or even resurrected IP. You can let your mind run absolutely wild with those possibilities, of course, but we've already seen the concept in action with games like I Am Setsuna or the possibility of Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition.

The company went on to say that the Switch is a great place for mid-level games, and due to the similarities in system architecture with the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, it's very possible that more games could be made cross-platform in the future and include the Switch. I think in reading between the lines, this implies that the games can be ported but might need to be toned down, particularly in the case of games made with the PS4 Pro or One X in mind.

Additionally, as per Gematsu, the company mentioned the existence of unannounced mobile titles to be released in the second half of this fiscal year, as well as "sharp," "powerful," and "well-made" titles to be seen at next year's E3. There's no information currently as to whether these sharp titles are ones we already know are coming, like Kingdom Hearts 3, or whether they're currently under wraps.

Finally, the company dropped a few ongoing sales numbers to show its strength, with Dragon Quest XI having sold more than three million copies, NieR: Automata booking more than two million, and Final Fantasy XV at over six and a half million worldwide.

Source: Siliconera, Gematsu

Hardly unexpected since everything's being ported to Steam these days but yeah, World of Final Fantasy will be relased on Steam on 21st November.

A day one edition will be available for the first week which will give you a digital soundtrack sampler and a wallpaper. Not a big deal to miss if you want to wait to buy the game.

Source: Steam, Square Enix Store

A pop up experience celebrating the 30th anniversary of Final Fantasy is coming to London. The experience will last from the 3rd-5th November and take place in Slingsby Place, Covent Garden.

Fans will get the chance to sample the upcoming Dissidia Final Fantasy NT ahead of it's release, as well as play past games from the series. There's also merchandise exclusive to the pop up experience, artwork covering the history of the series..

Special guests include DISSIDIA® FINAL FANTASY® NT producer Ichiro Hazama and FINAL FANTASY® XIV director and producer Naoki Yoshida.

Source: FinalFantasy30.com

I could swear I'd heard about this before now, but I can't find it in any previous CoN news, so let's just treat it as new, shall we? Late last week, Square Enix published a new page on their 30th Anniversary microsite announcing a gallery exhibition in honor of the series' milestone.

The show has been announced in Alhambra, California, starting on December 2 and running through January 7 of 2018, at Gallery Nucleus. It looks like a fairly small gallery, and the photos included don't give a great indication for what all will be included. The announcement video includes only Sakaguchi and Shinji Hashimoto, and the list of artists involved don't have any direct ties to Square Enix; with that in mind, perhaps the show has as much to do with artists inspired by Final Fantasy as it does artists who have actually worked on the series.

If you're in the Los Angeles area for the holidays, try to check this out and report back to us!

Earlier today, I shut down the nomination phase. Sorry to those who were too lazy to get it done! It's possible you might not have gotten your favorite song in to the top sixty-four nominations by missing out, but it's okay, because now it's time for the second phase, and it's much faster to do this one and it's the part where you can win prizes.

https://regalia.cavesofnarshe.com/ is still where it's at. If you go back today, you'll see something similar to before, but now there are only sixty-four songs to choose from, and you only choose five. The new list is alphabetized, so that nobody has any idea which songs were most popular - from that list, you choose, in order, which ones you think will be the top five after everyone votes on the matchups which will be coming soon. Once you submit your list, you're entered to win the prizes we showed a month ago!

We'll leave this phase open until at least November 1, after which we'll get the voting started. Please remember to share to social media after you make your picks, because everyone everywhere can still play, whether they nominated or not!

I'll post the list of sixty-four as a subsequent comment to this news post for folks who want to see it before making their picks.