Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail is a Latin American-inspired “vacation” setting

Announced July 2023, Final Fantasy 14: Dawn Trail was a step in a new direction for Square Enix’s behemoth of an MMORPG. Now that a nearly decade-long story is coming to an end via the End runner expansion, Creative Studio III teased a new start for the Warrior of Light’s never-ending journey, this time promising players a “summer vacation” of sorts set on a continent amid political unrest as it elects its new leader. And with the new expansion would come further tweaks to the game, in addition to the addition of two new job classes and a complete graphical overhaul. Square Enix offered Polygon the opportunity to dive into a piece Dawn trailwhich looked at both the Viper and Pictomancer job classes and the chance to run through one of the new dungeons.

While attending Fan Fest 2023, I was tempted by the idea of ​​a new job class, mainly because I had grown tired of the constantly hollowed out Summoner, the lack of involvement in playing Gunbreaker (or any tank for that matter), and the homogenization of most healing arts classes. So I jumped at the chance to give Viper a try at this recent preview event. Now that I’ve played them, the Viper and Pictomancer remind me of the more experimental era of Final fantasy 14 which arrived with the release of the Heavenward expansion – when the professional classes were more interesting, and when Creative Studio III was still ironing out the wrinkles A state reborN.

These two new job classes are both refreshingly complex. At first glance, Viper seems akin to the Ninja with its dual blades and nimble animations, but in practice it’s a more involved version of the Reaper, which was introduced via End runner. The Viper is fast and fluid, with your attacks based on devastating swings of your dual blades or combining the blades into a polearm via special attacks and stances to tear apart enemies. You’ll constantly switch between stances, apply debilitating debuffs to enemies, and increase your attack speed to cancel animations to deal as much damage as possible in a short time. Like the Reaper, the Viper has a healthy selection of single-target and AoE attacks, meaning you can reliably build up your Vipersight and Serpent’s Ire gauge. Final fantasy 14 has remained a game where you build up your meters to take down enemies within very specific time windows, and Dawn trail does not seem to deviate from this path.

However, the Pictomancer does offer an extra bit of support in battle, beyond the fact that it’s a damage-focused job class, through buffs, which is honestly quite refreshing. Using spells brought to life by the strokes of a multicolored paintbrush, the Pictomancer hastily paints areas of color on a canvas to manifest a hammer or the wingbeats of a Moogle to damage enemies. As you continue to color the world with vibrant paint spots and pain, collect color on your palette in the form of highly saturated colors or pastels. Filling out your palette gives you access to more powerful spells, like Holy in White or Comet in Black, which you’ll need to balance channeling the abilities of more powerful creatures and objects through your artwork. Overall, Pictomancer is a very complicated job class that provides the aforementioned team support in the form of the Starry Sky Motif ability, which increases a party’s offensive capabilities. Where it will stand when it comes to Savage Raids and other endgame content like Ultimates will be interesting.

In addition to the addition of the Pictomancer and Viper, Creative Studio III will make changes and updates to several feature classes as part of Dawn trail. This included a shift in the way Monk is played, in addition to adjustments to Black Mage. What I noticed with jobs like White Mage and Gunbreaker was that skills like Presence of Mind or Bloodfest now turn into an extra skill as soon as they are used. Presence of Mind became Glare IV and Bloodfest became the full Renzokuken combo Final fantasy 7, Includes Lionheart finisher. Job classes will definitely get more skills, as I noticed the White Mage has a dash similar to Dancer, but at least this tweak has prevented further button bloat for those playing with controllers. The UI also indicates which skills will change as they are used more clearly, meaning no more accidentally putting two of the same skills on your hotbars.

But above all, Final fantasy 14 is a beautiful game and perhaps one of the most beautiful MMORPGs on the market. Dawn trail doesn’t just expand on this via the texture update, which got a new benchmark after the first one seemingly disappeared wrong, and through the lush environments of Tural. Creative Studio III wasn’t shy about hiding its inspiration for this expansion, labeling it a “holidays‘to the warmer climates of Eorzea’s version of Latin America. The dungeon of Ihuykatumu is full of vibrantly colored plants and other similar creatures, even though it’s just a trip across the Amazon (in Final Fantasy form, of course), and the mountainous area where the Pelupelu are found is just as visually saturated. . Tuliyollal, a major port city, is decorated with strips of brightly colored fabric with intricate patterns, and houses are made of a healthy mix of wood and stone.

When asked about obvious nods to Latin America in Dawn trail, producer Naoki Yoshida (aka Yoshi-P) said that the team had had discussions about what would appear in the expansion. This included input from Square Enix’s global team and translation team members. However, Creative Studio III chose to ask for further input regarding the representation of the cultures they would be portraying Dawn trail. Yoshida also said that even with consultation, there is always a potential risk.

“Of course, our team is very careful about taking risks, and they advise, for example: So this might be a bit too riskyor You may want to avoid this thing, but we didn’t stop there. We tried to understand why they would consider it a risk, and how we could avoid any possible situation,” Yoshida said. “How do we understand it, and how do we deepen our understanding so that people aren’t offended by the way we portray them and what they interpret as offensive? We looked very deeply into what is considered appropriate or inappropriate, even down to the textures we used in wall patterns or even the curvature for specific symbols. If that symbol was representative of something a certain culture might find sacred, we don’t mean to offend. Sometimes we might do research and understand that meaning for ourselves.

“So we can make the decision that, Okay, this is what it represents, this is what it symbolizes, and this is how we want to use it. Or if it’s too much of a risk and we don’t want it to be misinterpreted by our audience, we instead try to figure out how to adjust this to avoid offensive content and make sure we symbolize something similar, but be careful of the culture we are trying to portray. We don’t want to make this one-sided. It was definitely a learning experience. But at the same time, we didn’t want to let go of certain elements just because someone would find a potential risk in them. I feel like the fruits of our labor are very clear, and people will see what we’ve tried to do and appreciate it. We hope that the different cultures represented will be respected, and that this will also be appreciated by the players.”

When asked about possible official support for Latin American countries such as Brazil and Mexico, it was given Dawn trailThanks to the heavy dose of inspiration, Yoshida said he is aware of latency issues for players in that region. He said having a physical data center for Latin America is “technically possible, and not that difficult to do, so to speak,” but the lack of specific language support makes it more complicated. “We don’t have a dedicated Latin American language specialist,” Yoshida explains. “We therefore always rely on outsourcing for translations of the Spanish and Portuguese languages. And consider Final fantasy 14 is a live service game and needs constant support. The lack of that dedicated person does create a bottleneck.” But he went on to say that Square Enix president Takashi Kiryu is a strong supporter of more language support for other regions. “I traveled to Brazil myself last year,” Yoshida concluded. “I met a lot of passionate players there and there is definitely a desire.”

This article is based on playing an in-development build of Final Fantasy 14: Dawn Trailand the content in the final version is subject to change.