Wark Digest #189 - The Annual Review, 2025 Edition

Welcome back to the Wark Digest, your weekly newsletter of new developments and historical insights from the Final Fantasy universe. I’m Chris, aka Hoogathy, and this week we take our annual stock of the year that was and the year ahead for Final Fantasy.

This week’s newsletter is 2670 words, a 13-minute read.

---

2024: The Year That Was

525,600 minutes, how do you measure a year in the life of a storied video game franchise? By looking back at the roller coaster of events that unfurled, and breaking them down into three categories:

The Good:

• The first months of 2024 saw plenty of updates on Final Fantasy XIV’s next expansion, Dawntrail, starting with the last part of the Fan Fest circuit

  • Patch 6.55 arrived in January, setting the stage for 7.0

  • A crossover with Final Fantasy XVI was held, in a legendary collaboration between XIV’s director and XVI’s producer

  • The long-awaited graphical update was implemented, though there were a couple hiccups in the lead-up to launch

• Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was the main draw for the first quarter, though, leading up to its February 29th release

  • Cid and Vincent were confirmed to appear in the game and accompany the party, but would not contribute to battle in any capacity

  • The debut of the vocal theme “No Promises to Keep,” written by Nobuo Uematsu and performed by Lauren Allred, caused waves alongside the dramatic in-game moment in which it appears

• Ultimately Rebirth launched to one of the series’ highest metascores, ranking a 93 at launch (and now settled at 92)

  • While nominated for some of the major Game of the Year awards, it didn’t take many home—but it has been scoring with individual publications, (including my own CGMagazine!)

• Talk of the third game began almost instantly, with director Naoki Hamaguchi expressing his ambition to incorporate the Highwind into Rebirth’s staggering open world just as it was in the original

• Part two of Final Fantasy XVI’s DLC, The Rising Tide, added Leviathan to the roster of Eikons in a challenging late-game story chapter

  • A PC release followed in September, and Complete Editions appeared online

• Yoko Shimomura received the Lifetime Achievement Award at GDC, an honour previously awarded to Hironobu Sakaguchi in 2015

• Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis chugged along at a good clip, not only adding Yuffie, Cait Sith, Vincent, and Angeal as playable characters throughout the year but also refining the experience with new content and QoL adjustments

  • It reported 7.7 million downloads right in time for a Remake crossover event

  • In an unexpected turn, it also crossed over with Monster Hunter

  • The FFIX crossover returned, alongside a new event for FFVI

• The Brass de Bravo concerts returned, a collaboration between Uematsu and the Sienna Wind Orchestra; they performed several tour dates around Japan, but unfortunately no new music has been released from it

• Industry insider Jason Schreier claimed that a Final Fantasy Tactics remaster “is real and happening”

• The FFXIV Tabletop Roleplaying Game started to arrive, beginning with a Starter Box set to whet appetites for this unique take on Eorzea

• Sakaguchi announced that his Mistwalker studio’s most recent game would arrive on all consoles as Fantasian Neo Dimension, published by Square Enix in an arrangement facilitated by Yoshi-P

• Devoted fans recovered working devices that could play Before Crisis Final Fantasy VII and began efforts to not only back it up, but make it properly playable; their efforts are still ongoing, and slowly bearing fruit

• The Pixel Remasters thankfully saw a second wave physical release at traditional retailers, instead of being virtually limited to Square Enix’s store

• Clive was revealed as the next DLC fighter for Tekken 8, following in Noctis’ footsteps but supplanting hope that Tifa would make the cut instead

The Bad:

• Despite a resounding critical reception, Rebirth’s sales figures haven’t been openly proclaimed by Square Enix, casting some doubt on its commercial performance

• Dissidia Opera Omnia went offline on the same day Rebirth launched, ending a 6-7 year run and the most ambitious cross-series story Final Fantasy has ever seen, while it was still going relatively strong

• Brave Exvius shut down its Global version as well, at the end of October, though its fortunes had been falling for some time (though the Japanese remains)

• We saw the untimely passing of Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama, whose work on Dragon Quest helped inspire Final Fantasy and also included Chrono Trigger

• FFXIV’s Xbox version received a staggered rollout, requiring active Game Pass and FFXIV subscriptions (making it inherently more expensive than other platforms after the Free Trial),

• In May, Square Enix braced for the impact of their next financial report, claiming $144 million of content had been cancelled (as “exceptional losses”) in a preemptive move—the previous fiscal year had seen a 3.8% increase in sales but a 26.6% decrease in operating income

  • This came with a renewed business plan for the future, focused on quality over quantity; a “regular cadence” of AAA and smaller titles; and more “contact points” for consumers (meaning a shift away from console exclusives)

  • This sadly also meant some layoffs at the American and European offices

  • The old studio structure shifted subtly away from “Business Units” to “Creative Studios” (ie. Yoshida’s team is now Creative Studio 3)

  • The next financial report was more stable, even as Japan’s larger stock market was turbulent

• Dawntrail somewhat divisive upon launch, with the dramatic shift in story stakes leaving some players unsure what to think (and unfortunately some mis-prioritized responses to a lead character dragged down the discourse as well)

  • November’s 7.1 update helped curb this somewhat

• World of Final Fantasy director Hiroki Chiba left SE to become a freelancer, dashing the already-low hopes of a sequel

The “Huh?!”:

• Apex Legends hosted a crossover event with FFVII, letting characters cosplay as FFVII heroes and engage in a specially themed mode featuring the Buster Sword

• When asked if FFVI could ever be remade, Kitase stated it would take up to 20 years to do it on the scale of the FFVII Remake, but… why does it have to be on that scale?

  • Later in the year, Dragon Quest III HD-2D would offer a much more realistic example for a FFVI remake to follow, but will SE take its own hint?

• Japanese food company Nissin ran a simply surreal ad campaign featuring Sephiroth (voiced by Toshiyuki Morikawa) insisting that Cloud eat a bowl of donbei udon—I’m still not sure what to think of “shall I give you this donbei”

• CEO Kiryu mused on the possibility of expanding the reach of SE’s IPs with multimedia projects, designed to draw attention from other demographics

• Speaking of IPs: Gearbox, the inheritor of the Eidos and Crystal Dynamics properties (like Tomb Raider), announced some financial troubles of their own, further making SE’s decision to practically give those studios away look even worse—frankly, something I didn’t think could be done

• Way too close to April Fool’s Day, SE announced an actual line of pet toys, including a Buster Sword replica

• Ahead of Dawntrail, FFXIV announced a collaboration with…Mountain Dew?

• The Pixel Remasters came to Xbox, but skipped the Xbox One for some reason

• SE didn’t sign off on having their IPs appear in Astro Bot for some reason, leaving a big omission in its massive, living video game museum—and after Astro beat Rebirth for GOTY at the Game Awards, this seems all the more ill-advised

• Fans have also been experimenting with a method to “break” FFVII and skip most of disc one, allowing Aerith to appear in the Jenova-LIFE fight (even if this method currently breaks the game, literally)

• The second Ultimania for Rebirth was announced for Japan before the second Remake Ultimania finally arrived in English (but it finally arrived!)

• A mobile adaptation of FFXIV was announced in collaboration with Lightspeed Studios, seeking to expand the game’s audience, but how many veterans are eager to return to A Realm Reborn now?

What we thought: In our last annual review (issue #137), I felt like 2023 had been a bigger net positive for Final Fantasy and Square Enix, thanks to FFXVI and a general upward trend in the quality of the products—in fact, the image I used was of “climbing up the hill.”

Continuing that image, 2024 was… a bit like sliding back down that hill. FFVII Rebirth felt like a triumph as a product, but its commercial success doesn’t seem to reflect it 1:1. And then came all the unpleasantness mid-year as the company adjusted to changing trends and other outside factors. It was rough to see layoffs within SE, having watched so many other studios across the industry do the same.

That being said, the company’s revised and streamlined approach seems (mostly) sound, getting ahead of a speeding car before it can pick up too much momentum. I get the feeling we’ll look back on 2024 as a transitive year, shifting gears and enduring some growing pains as the series approaches 200 million units sold.

---

2025: The Year Ahead

Given all of that, what can we expect for 2025? Here’s a look at what we know is coming, and some speculation on what we might expect:

• January 9-16: A free login campaign is active in FFXIV for lapsed players (those who have been inactive for at least 30 days at the start of this period), allowing returnees to play as much as they like over four days

• January 15: Cid Highwind will debut in Ever Crisis, alongside Chapter 8, including the Rocket Town scenario and the Golden Saucer date(s)

• January 23: Final Fantasy VII Rebirth will arrive on PC

• February 28: Final Fantasy XIV Tabletop RPG’s Standard Rulebook is tentatively scheduled for release on this day, providing the full rules for creating characters (opposed to the premade, limited options of the Starter Set); also available is a Deluxe Edition with even more material

• March 28: The next set of the Final Fantasy Trading Card Game, Tears of the Planet, is due to launch with Rebirth cards included for the first time (including the iconic key art of Aerith right on the packaging)

  • New original artwork includes Cloud (with Sephiroth reflected in the Buster Sword), Barbariccia, Atomos, and Baralai, to name a few

• Late March/early April: FFXIV’s patch 7.2 is expected around this time, with Yoshi-P beginning his own rigorous testing on it in February

• Before April: Nintendo has said they will be revealing their “successor to the Nintendo Switch system” before the end of their current fiscal year, which concludes March 31; so, at some point before then (for all we know, it could be the next week or two) the curtain will be pulled back on their next system

  • Nintendo has identified Square Enix as a third-party company they’re committed to collaborating with, so we’re curious to see how SE supports the new hardware (if recent leaks are to be believed, there could be a considerable showing…)

• June: Final Fantasy’s crossover set in Magic: The Gathering will bring a big spotlight on the series, with a slew of original artwork

• July: Moogle Bounty Mayhem, a board game by designer Seiji Kanai and artist Ryoma Ito, is expected to launch this month, featuring Ivalice-style moogles battling monsters in a family-friendly manner

• Summer: FFXIV patch 7.3 will likely come out mid-year (July/August-ish)

• Fall/Winter: One more major FFXIV patch, 7.4, could still land before the end of the year, barring any delays along the line (and by that point we might even be hearing about 8.0 for 2026?)

• Sometime in 2025: Final Fantasy XIV Mobile, the free-to-play adaptation, will arrive on iOS and Android within the year, should all go well

• Sometime in 2025: Dragon Quest I & II HD-2D should also arrive at some point

• ????: Kingdom Hearts 4—might we get an update at some point?

What we thought: For the first time in several years, there’s not really a “true,” new Final Fantasy game set to release within this calendar period (based on what’s announced at this time, anyway). We’ll almost certainly see a handful of ports, remasters, or other miscellaneous smaller titles before the year is up, but as it stands, there’s nothing on the caliber of a Rebirth, FFXVI, FFXIV expansion, or even a Stranger of Paradise to look forward to at this moment. (XIV Mobile doesn’t quite cut it.)

That being said, there are so many other ways to engage with the franchise’s various worlds and ensembles, from SE’s own TCG to the crossover with MTG, to the tabletop RPG, to an increasing amount of merchandise available beyond the SE store. Just as Square Enix is reprioritizing things in its financial report, so too is the Final Fantasy software lineup.

This might be a great year to take up one of these other mediums—or we just might get something big dropped on us short-notice. Time will tell!

The biggest thing? Based on the current forecast and its absence of a new mainline game, the possibilities for the “successor to the Nintendo Switch” might be the most promising. We already know the substantial Final Fantasy library on the Switch will carry forward onto the new hardware, now we just need to see what that hardware can do, and how Squeenix will support it out of the gate.

---

Around the Union

2024 was a great year for Final Fantasy Union itself, from the continued operation of the YouTube channel and this very newsletter, to the debut of our premium newsletter, to our staff meeting and speaking to FF staff like Yoshida, Hamaguchi, and Starr personally at various events. The cherry on top might be not one but two successful Ultimate Pub Quiz events in London, UK, where we got to bring the community together (and add several voice actors into the mix while we were at it!).

Stay tuned in 2025 as we keep striving to bring you news and insight from this series we love, and we may have some exciting surprises up our sleeves for you as well!

In the absence of a new video this week, and to highlight some of our favourite work from 2024, might I suggest revisiting these pieces?

• Kupo Chronicle #4 - Next Fantasy, examining the options for a hypothetical “Final Fantasy XVII” in light of the series’ last entries and the current state of the industry

• Wark Digest #160 - What’s In A Leak?, where we revisited the NVIDIA leak in light of a new “scandal” and a supposed remaster confirmation

• The Complete History of Final Fantasy III, our long-form documentary on the last 8-bit Final Fantasy’s development and impact

And lastly, in the first Kupo Chronicle of 2025, we look back at the unorthodox career path of Nasir Gabelli, the reclusive programming legend who coded most of the 8-bit FF games himself, now that he has made his first public appearance connected to FF in decades. Who is he, why are his contributions so meaningful, and what does it mean for the future?

---

Now you’re up to speed! From the whole team at Final Fantasy Union, thank you for subscribing. Please let us know what you think of our coverage, and what you’d like to see covered in our weekly installments. As ever, if you’ve enjoyed our work, please share it with your friends!

Join the discussion on our Discord!

Or, find Final Fantasy Union on social media: Facebook | Instagram | Bluesky |

Until next time, kupo!