Final Fantasy 14 director Naoki ‘Yoshi-P’ Yoshida has said Square Enix won’t be announcing a release date for the Dawntrail expansion until they’re sure the schedule won’t change.
Previous Final Fantasy 14 expansion Endwalker was originally set for release in November 2021 but was delayed by two weeks to allow developers time to “further improve” the quality of the update. According to Yoshida, the decision was only made a few week’s prior to the anticipated release date.
Speaking at the Japanese Final Fantasy 14 Fan Fest 2024 over the weekend, Yoshida explained that he didn’t want the same thing to happen with Dawntrail.
“Given that this is Fan Fest, you’re probably expecting us to announce the release date of Dawntrail,” said Yoshida via a livestream (thanks PCGamer). He went on to confirm the studio did have a release date that it was aiming for internally, they weren’t willing to make that public. “We are making sure [Dawntrail is as] fine-tuned as it possibly can be before announcing [the release date] so we will not be sharing that today.”
“If you’re wondering why, well, it’s because Endwalker [was] the very first time in my career we had to delay the release. We don’t want that to happen again, even if it’s just a few weeks. So we are taking great care to make sure our schedule is on track before announcing, but we will get you that info as soon as we can,” he continued before promising the expansion would be coming at some point this summer.
“We will not be releasing on Square Enix time, we will be releasing on Final Fantasy 14 time, which means properly in summer.”
Despite not confirming the release date, Square Enix did share lots of new info about Dawntrail over the weekend, including the second of two new classes: Pictomancer.
An expanded trailer also gave fans a better look at the western region of Tural, which seemingly features everything from Wild West-inspired mining towns and tropical jungles to the cyberpunk-influenced city of Solution Nine and the steampunk Heritage Found city.
In other news, Riot Games has confirmed a new weapon will be coming to Valorant as part of a new update. The Outlaw is the first new weapon that’s been introduced since the game launched almost four years ago.