Revelations from JP Fan Fest (January 2024)

[Cleretic]

I've seen some speculation that ht enormal raid might be Ascian-related, because one of the signs in the background of the art looks like it might be derived from the sigil for Ultima in the Ivalice games--therefore, Altima. I don't really see it because I think it's a little too differently-stylized and asymmetrical (all the Ascian sigils were pretty symmetrical), but I wouldn't hate the turn, for two reasons:

1. It'd be them clearly doing different things with the Ascians,
And 2. If it is them, they're being very heavily de-emphasised.

That said, the thing I'm most excited about is one of my dumbest wishes coming true: for an expansion where the crafting and gathering content is WAY wilder than the combat content.

By the way, some 'other FF game' reference-spots for people: 'Solution Nine' is one of Zidane's Dyne skills in FFIX (EDIT: As I was beaten to), and the art for the FFXI raids was of the Shadow Lord, the antagonist of their base game; basically, their Gaius equivalent.

[Iscah]

Also, looks like Thancred, Urianger, and Krile are the only Scions to make it to the poster.

Hmm yeah, it seems a weird decision to leave so many Scions off the poster. Almost like they just went "we'll take whoever fits into the layout" and ditched the rest.

[Enkidoh]

Actually, it does kind of make sense, we already know that a fundamental part of DT's story concerns an apparent schism in the Scions and that the player has to take a side apparently... so maybe this poster represents one side of that (with the earlier one representing the other half?). Time will tell though.

Also, thanks for reminding me about Solution 9's name origin - I admit I had completely forgotten that! (Some FFIX fangirl I am lol).

[GrizzlyTank]

Seeing how there are slums under the 2nd city. Going to assume that it's cyberpunk Midgard.

[Cleretic]

Also, as the resident fangirl of a very specific niche, I do want to highlight something Yoshi-P himself said:

Yeah, Heritage Found and Solution Nine are gonna have some wild fish to catch. There's potential that it can join Azys Lla and Ultima Thule in 'all killer no filler' fish lore.

Seeing how there are slums under the 2nd city. Going to assume that it's cyberpunk Midgard.

I don't think they're 'slums', I got the idea that they were possibly ruins. (Fairly well-respected ruins in that case, but still.)

[Tehmon]

I expected some sort of developed technology to come into play, but not quite like Solution 9. I dig it though, but my biggest question mark beyond just what the place is, is what kind of people reside in there. I'm definitely more excited for Dawntrail now.

[MikkoAkure]

I've seen some speculation that ht enormal raid might be Ascian-related, because one of the signs in the background of the art looks like it might be derived from the sigil for Ultima in the Ivalice games--therefore, Altima.

The name "Arcadion" being Greek gives me some pause since the Ancients used Greek. Otherwise I thought I remember something about the Giants being the Allagans of Tural so maybe it's them? But they ported their designs straight from Aht Urghan and it doesn't look very cyperpunk to me.

Hmm yeah, it seems a weird decision to leave so many Scions off the poster. Almost like they just went "we'll take whoever fits into the layout" and ditched the rest.

I have a feeling the main party roster is going to be shaken up again and perhaps this expansion and maybe the next will mostly just focus on a couple of the main Scions plus some other new characters. Krile had never been a "main party character" before and now we have Erenville, the Hrothgal, and maybe the mysterious Miqo man so the cast is a little bloated. I can see the others being around in Tural and dividing into their two groups based on whatever happens, but I don't know if they'll all be as prominent as they were in ShB and ED or if it'll be like HW and SB where we focus on just a few who wander with us and the others are hanging out doing other things.

Kind of a weird thing to bring up, but take a look at this...

As soon as I saw the pictures from Solution 9, I thought, hmm, as soon as the keynote's over I think I'm going to pull out my copy of EE3 and find the page with the alphabet for Norvrandt, Eorzea, and the in-universe author's proposed proto-alphabet.

I didn't spend a ton of time squinting at it, only enough to match a few letters and parts of words, but look at this. I think the letters on the signs in the pictures are closer to the proto-alphabet or something resembling it than either the Norvrandt or Eorzean alphabets.

Oh good catch. It does look like that!

I guess we're getting Ancients again or some derivative after all.

[Tehmon]

If the 8-man raid is more ancients, at least it's in a completely different setting. That alone piques my interest.

[Naraku_Diabolos]

Seeing how there are slums under the 2nd city. Going to assume that it's cyberpunk Midgard.

Yoshida confirmed awhile back that Midgard is actually in one of the Shards. Yes, the VII Midgard.

[CNitsah]

What I noticed
- curious about the cosmos exploration. it feels it's gonna be something like Ishgard restoration rather than the reconstruction of Doma.
- no talk of a trial series. So that it looks like they'll go with the "1 dungeon and 1 trial per patch". To me that something that hurt the storytelling during the EW patches so I'm cautious.
- the return of exploratory content. I'm happy with that, but I'm still cautious. They still could give us an exploratory zone without shelf life, because that's the direction the game seem to go. I hope they didn't only get the "playing in group" part of this whole rant, but also the "give some incentive to play it on the long term".
- from the look 8 man raid might be linked to the solution 9 thing (same color schemes).
- Eden as an ultimate made me go "maybe I should play the ultimate this time" for a few seconds.

The little video with all the area already explored and the solution 9 one are still the things that gave me most chills. It really gave me that "Let's go on an adventure and discover new things" vibe that the trailer fail to give me.