Wark Digest #266 - Resonant Pixels
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 the spirit of Final Fantasy V lives on this summer in updates from Final Fantasy XIV and Final Fantasy Resonance.
This week’s newsletter is 1408 words, a 6-minute read.
Onward to the Occult Crescent
With a week to go until the European Fan Festival, details on Final Fantasy XIV’s next patch, 7.55, are beginning to drop ahead of the festivities.
What they’re saying:
After Fan Fest on the weekend, patch 7.55 will come on Tuesday, July 28
The patch will bring…
The finale of Dawntrail’s Allied Society Quests
The Occult Crescent: North Horn, the next zone in the level 100 field operation, containing the new 48-player raid, The Forked Tower: Magic (and its Extreme variant)
The coordinating Relic Weapons will launch alongside the field operation, the Phantom Weapons’ “Occultum” tier (Item Level 795), while Phantom Armor will also be upgradable
And, would you believe it? Further Hildibrand Adventures
Being an “off-patch,” so to speak, 7.55 won’t include new Main Scenario Quests
The Forked Tower: Magic is meant to be a less intense encounter than The Forked Tower: Blood—suitable to groups of random players, instead of requiring thorough coordination with allies
Also, this appears to be bringing clothing options inspired by Bartz, Lenna, and Faris from Final Fantasy V
What we thought:
This is kind of a softball patch, and a bit of a light update to immediately follow upon the second Festival of the year, but should still offer a fun challenge to late-game players
The stretching we’re seeing here will hopefully be some of the last we see from the pandemic/Endwalker era—updates have been slower and sparser through the Dawntrail era as the game’s development recovered from those challenges and geared up for the Evercold era
The revamped pacing and the “Season” system could be a very welcome addition by comparison, if only because the pace may pick back up in a more sustainable way for everyone
Given we’re now halfway into July, we should be hearing more about the Nintendo Switch 2 version’s launch—it’s scheduled to begin service in August, with approximately one month of “Early Access” before the official launch
Likely this will be covered in the keynote, but the exact timing of the early access and the “official launch” was a little vague at the Orlando event
What’s next? Saturday, July 25 is day 1 of the European Fan Festival, and its 2-hour Keynote address from Yoshi-P (which will surely be chock-full of further Evercold info) will be begin at 9AM London time (4AM New York time, or 1AM LA time). The Development and Community panels will follow throughout the day, followed by the next Letter From The Producer Live broadcast.
Resonant Pixels
We learned a little more about Final Fantasy Resonance this week, thanks to a new “Pixel Trailer” and an interview with producer Keisuke Nakashima from French website FFDream.
What they’re saying:
Development on Resonance began about 5 years ago, starting with a debate over which art style they should embrace—ultimately deciding upon HD-2D with more 3D elements and a more dynamic camera, to help set the first HD-2D Final Fantasy apart from other Square Enix titles
Nakashima specifically called Final Fantasy V an aesthetic inspiration
The story isn’t a 1:1 retelling of Brave Exvius’s first season; Nakashima claimed the ending has been reworked to make Resonance’s conclusion a satisfying one, while dodging confirming any plans for season 2 or 3
There will be 26 “Visions,” which are comparable to Jobs; 17 of these will be the protagonists of the mainline games plus Sephiroth
Yes, this does include Clive, who can be seen in the trailer
No, this does not include Katy Perry or Arianna Grande’s FF personas
However there are no plans to expand this number via DLC, due to the challenge of balancing the game
Additional content was developed to flesh out the game from its mobile origins; it’s estimated to take 30-40 hours for the story, or 50-80 hours when completing the side quests and such
Apparently the Six Jurors of Paladia and the Eight Sages of Hess will be present, while Nakashima confirms the War of the Visions “universe” is also considered canon and its continent of Ardra will be involved
Chain Combos have been removed, as they were deemed unsuited to a console game
What we thought:
As cool as Resonance looks, that 5-year development time is somewhat concerning; it’s nice they took the time to apparently do the game right, but game dev times are truly inflating
While it sounds like Resonance has been planned to be self-sufficient, they’re clearly dancing around the possibility of adapting further seasons beyond the first
This is a smart call, especially given that development time: make the game right and able to stand on its own two legs, because you can’t guarantee that there will be the time and resources to make two more games
But if we do get Resonance 2 and Resonance 3… I wouldn’t complain
Much like the FFVII Remake trilogy, now that they’ve laid down the ground work with this game, adaptations of season 2 and 3 (and maybe WOTV?) could be developed much faster
The overworld is so back, baybee—but who would’ve known that the most traditional-looking game we’d get, with the actual Final Fantasy name, would be an adaptation of a mobile title?
The estimated length is perfect as well, falling into a similar sweet spot as the golden era titles
I was never able to get into Brave Exvius, but Resonance has truly caught my attention and became one of the most intriguing things on this year’s radar for me
What’s next? Nakashima related that the game’s logo was largely Yoshitaka Amano’s call; they asked him to make something involving Fina and a crystal, and even the producer isn’t wholly sure of the meaning behind Amano’s artwork.
Around the Union
Forget flashy hats, Final Fantasy’s iconic mages don’t all need iconically headwear to stand out—some arcane masters wear masks and capes instead. This week we explore an unorthodox Final Fantasy original, “The Complete Evolution of Blue Mages!” Delve into this class which turns the enemy’s signature attacks against them, and let us know who your favourite is in the comments!
Over at Datalog, things take a horrifying twist as we explore “The Complete History of Sweet Home”—the roleplaying game that unknowingly started survival horror! Another storied developer has entered the ongoing tale we’re weaving of RPGs’ history…
And lastly, we recently asked about your physical vs. digital game buying habits, in light of the potentially discless future in front of us, and it seems the majority are still invested in the physical space:
How do you buy your games?
68% - Mostly physical
14% - Mostly digital
18% - Digital +special games physically
This skewed a little higher toward physical than I expected, to be honest. As a quick follow-up for Science: Circana, the group tracking game sales in the US, who reported physical game spending ticked upwards last year, also recently reported that 63% of gamers buy two or fewer new games per year. To cross-reference across our own community, and based on your rough estimate of the past couple years…
Obviously there are a lot of factors at play here, such as the variety of games being released, but I thought it would be interesting to see how close we come to what Circana’s Mat Piscatella calls the “hyper-enthusiast” range: the 14% who buy a new game monthly or more.
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Until next time, kupo!
I'm gonna assume that 5 year development time is because of multiple projects at once same how the kh4 team has been working on final fantasy during its development time