Dawntrail will be Final Fantasy XIV's fifth major expansion, Square Enix announced today. The new expansion was unveiled during the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Fest keynote with a trailer featuring an island and beach theme and what looks like a new job, all coming summer of 2024.
At Final Fantasy Fan Fest 2023, FF14 director Naoki Yoshida (affectionately known as Yoshi-P) took the stage to unveil the new expansion, joyfully declaring he wanted to continue to work on the game "until I die or even afterward."
Dawntrail's story is intended to be "the very best summer vacation a hero could possibly have," in "a sudden change from the ending of Endwalker" and marks the first step into a "new story" for the game. It takes place in the "New World," known officially as Tural, which lies over the ocean to the far west of Eorzea. There, the Warriors of Light will assist in a rite of succession to determine Tural's next ruler. The rite involves a contest that eventually takes them to the gates of a "fabled city of gold." Of course, the Scions will be involved in this, but Yoshi-P warns that the contest may divide the Scions into two factions...
In Tural, players will get access to a new hub city: Tuliyollal, a city with an emphasis on diversity located in a larger region called Yok Tural. It's not very industrialized, but is inhabited by diverse groups of people focused on living in harmony with nature, and is ruled by Gulool Ja Ja, a two-headed Mamool Ja. The contest at the heart of Dawntrail is to determine who will succeed him.
Dawntrail joins Heavensward, Stormblood, Shadowbringers, and Endwalker in the line of expansions released for Final Fantasy XIV. The expansions have been lauded for their in-depth storylines, each of which is a roughly 60 to 80 hour RPG on its own.
Endwalker was a major successor for Final Fantasy XIV, coming at a time when World of Warcraft was suffering a great deal of upheaval. It was so successful, in fact, that Square Enix had to take it off sale to account for the server load.
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