FFXIV: Japanese Dawntrail Fanfest Keynote Reveals
Posted on January 7, 2024 by Aywren
The third and last fanfest keynote finally dropped last night, and here are a few of my thoughts on all that was announced. I’m far more content (though just as curious) about what I saw this time around than I was with the past couple fanfests. They do know how to save the best for last.
First, here’s the full trailer video, which reveals the second new job and our first look at the female Hrothgar race.
Pictomancer Reveal
As we can see, Krile is acting as the new job, Pictomancer. This had a somewhat mixed response from what I saw in the chat. I think it might be one of those love it or hate it type jobs.
It’s much more flashy and has a more … for lack of better word… kawaii… feeling to it than most of the FFXIV jobs do. It immediately made me think to some of the gimmicky classes you’d see in Korean F2P type games. I’m not sure that’s what they’re going for, but it feels just a touch out of place amongst the usual and more serious jobs – I mean, look at its counterpart – the gritty assassin-like Viper.
Here’s a reveal video about Pictomancer:
As for my thoughts on it, I’m an artist, and I don’t mind cute type things. I sorta like it. I like that they’re trying something visually different (though I usually play with my battle effects off anyhow, because I just can’t see through all of them for alliance raids).
What will pull me away from Red Mage is how the job plays. I like Red Mage because it’s simple, reliable and it makes sense to me.
If Pictomancer is complex – sometimes buffing/support DPS jobs can be overly complex – and doesn’t make sense to me, I’ll level it and not play it. If it feels good and I understand how to play it, then I might do something more with it. It really depends.
I’m in the same boat with Viper, which is not a class type I usually play – though I do like the dual wielding.
Female Hrothgar
The second big reveal is one that a lot of us have been waiting for – the visuals of the female Hrothgar. I sensed a bit of mixed reaction on this, too. Some people are very happy with it, some not so much.
I’m on the fence. I’ll need to create one and see it in action before I can decide what I think. On first glance, they remind me a lot of the Kerra race from Everquest 2. I have the same issues with some of the Hrothgar faces that I did with the Kerra – namely the weird overly-large feline chins.
I was a big fan of Charr characters in GW2 – I have rolled a lot of them and love playing them. While I didn’t expect female Hrothgar to be quite as bestial as Charr (and I’m glad they’re not, body-wise), I was hoping for a feline face that wasn’t too much uncanny valley.
I think they did a good job on the male Hroth heads, I just wasn’t a fan of the hunched over body shape. So, we’ll see where I stand with this race once I can get some hands-on in the character creator.
Who knows, I might fantasia to a female Hroth Pictomancer at the end of the day. It certainly would be different… and we now know our characters are all getting a free fantasia due to the big graphics update.
Cosmic Exploration
The last big announcement that I want to mention is the new lifestyle content that we got the first glance at. This apparently has something to do with the community building structures on… other planets?
Yeah.
It’s kinda way out there, and we didn’t get a lot of information about it.
I’m all for real-time projects, like we had with the Firmament. I just hope they consider some way of making progress related content for crafters/gatherers that can persist.
I do enjoy projects like Firmament and Island Sanctuary, but once it’s done it’s done. And if you were late to the party in Firmament, all that’s there for you now is a fast way to level crafting jobs and earn tickets to buy fluff stuff.
Anyhow, I’m not sure how I feel about the idea of building on other planets. But if this keynote has revealed anything, it’s that Dawntrail is not all what we expected it to be from the info we were given in the first two fanfests. I mean, check out the newly released image of the second hub city, Solution 9.
And the first look at the setting for the 8-man raid, the Arcadion.
So, I suppose we’re just going to have to wait and see what all this is about.
No release date yet, sadly. We just know that Yoshi-P firmly confirmed sometime in Summer 2024.
No benchmark yet, either, but I’m waiting to see how my PC is going to run it, and hopefully get a chance at female Hrothgar character creation.
Did you have any take-aways from this fanfest so far?