So... no more short stories?

[unlimitedBLACK]

So at this point we're a couple months past when the Rising 2024 took place. The chief reason I bring this up is because aside from breaking what's been a pretty consistent tradition for the Rising event, it also calls into question if SE plans to publish another collection of short stories that lumps together everything from 2019's Rising and forward.

For context, "Chronicles of Light" collected all twenty of the short stories published alongside the Rising from 2015-2018, and included five additional stories exclusive to the print edition. These are all stories related to ARR, Heavensward, and Stormblood. And the collection was announced at a PLL in December 2018, after Shadowbringers was announced AND after all of the 2018 Rising stories had been published online.

As of December 2023, an additional 22 stories have been published as part of the Rising events from 2019-2023, related to Shadowbringers and Endwalker content. The last short story was an out-of-season addition for the 10th Anniversary event, and was released December 7th 2023.

Essentially, here are the principal questions:

1. Do we know if SE has said anything (in ANY language) about the decision to not include new short stories for 2024's Rising?

2. Has SE given any indication that they are open to doing a second collection of short stories to accompany "Chronicles of Light?" Because if the timing of the previous announcement was any indication, it should have been announced last year.

I dunno, it just seems weird to me that the Rising came and went and no one appeared to notice that the short stories just weren't a part of it this time.

[Anonymoose]

For me it was odd that the usual first-story date came and went in silence, and then odder that the rest of the event came and went in silence.

I figure at this point we'll just get a retroactive comment on it by Yoshi-P one day in a Q&A.

Too bad, too. Missed out on an opportunity to do four straight stories starring Wuk Lamat just to have a little fun with the spirit of the times.

[Iscah]

We also never received the notes from the skipped Q&A at Fan Fest a while back.

[Cleretic]

We also never received the notes from the skipped Q&A at Fan Fest a while back.

This is a bit more of a disappointment to me, but it's more for curiosities. Like, I don't think anything there would be greatly life-altering, but I'm still curious.

For short stories, I honestly don't miss them this year, and frankly I found it a little weird that we got them in 2015, 17 and 19 anyway; it was a little over a month since the expansion released, that's not much time to let the text breathe by itself. If they're gone next year I'll be disappointed, but this year I wasn't even done with all the stories the expansion itself served up at the time they would've happened (I'm still not; I haven't finished Pictomancer).

Then again, I'm thinking about it now and I don't actually think I liked any of the short stories, so I might not be a great source of input. The only one I immediately remember thinking positively about is the Jullus story during Endwalker, but I don't think that was so much enjoying the story was I was enjoying that post-collapse Garlemald got some spotlight in a period that was way too firmly stuck in Ancient Time.

[Moomba33]

I really enjoyed the anniversary short stories. I'll be sad if they never come back.

[Fenral]

For a very boring possible explanation: Koji was the team's resident prose writer/translator, and he's probably busy with Fantasian: Neo Dimension. (He's also credited in the original iOS version!)

[SannaR]

It feels off that we haven't gotten any yet. Meanwhile Endwalker had three different tales of sets. Plus a bonus story. I know the team can get busy, but it's been months since we were told we would get those other answers posted. It feels as though they want to focus more on the blog with community and dev team spotlights.