Transcript of Square Enix's Final Fantasy XI & XIV PAX East panel

This is a transcript of the Square Enix panel at PAX East that just ended! The main topics of the panel were Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV.

Final Fantasy XI: Seekers of Adoulin:

  • Briefly discussed both new classes: Geomancer, which uses Lipons to buff and debuff areas of the battlefield and Rune Fencer, also known as Mystic Knight, a tank class that utilizes magic and specializes in defending against magic
  • Showed off some of the new monsters that will be appearing in the expansion when it releases next week including a firey dinosaur, grasshoppers and giant land sharks.
  • Announced that all pre-orders of Seekers of Adoulin from the Square Enix store will come with a Final Fantasy XI Musicbox mini-album which can be ordered here

Final Fantasy XIV:

  • Square Enix thanked those that played 1.0
  • Stated that Realm Reborn will be a new game from the bottom up, including a new graphics engine, combat system, jobs, zones and more.

Went over the story of 1.0 that lead to 2.0:

  • Nael Van Darnus (The White Raven) was a Garlean judge that summoned meteor to help the Garleans invade the three main cities.
  • Meteor actually turns out to be a prison for Bahamut, who is then unleash and he starts destroying everything.
  • The sages, a group of guardians trying to protect Eorzea, try to seal Bahamut again which proves to not be effective.
  • Sages then decide to send the player heroes forward in time, which is where A Realm Reborn takes place.

2.0’s story will revolve around the crystals, the lifeblood of the planet.

  • The primals, free companies and Garleans all tie into that story. The primals are the ancient gods of the beastmen, and drain the planet’s life force each time they are summoned.
  • The Garleans, with their magitek devices, are trying to stop the beastmen as well as conquer the free companies that the players belong to.
  • Free companies are the factions players belong to, and the objective of the story during 2.0’s arc will be to stop both the primals and the Garleans.

Misc. Notes:

  • They next showed off concept art for the three new cities, as well as in game screenshots of both Ul’dah and Gridania.
    Summon concept art shown: Odin, Garuda, Leviathan
  • Flexible job system, can switch from Warrior to White Mage to Bard and then Black Mage all rather quickly on the same character.
  • One of the goals of the new character creation system is letting players create their own unique character.
  • Showed concept art of armor, weapons and zones
  • Square Enix is pulling in concepts, characters and locations from other Final Fantasy games, including the Warriors of Light from Final Fantasy 1, Cait Sith from Final Fantasy 7 & 11 and the Golden Saucer from Final Fantasy 7.
  • The community rep for Square Enix hinted that more Final Fantasy content will be coming too.
  • Showed more concept art for the new job, Summoner, as well as airships.
  • Chocobos can wear armor and fight alongside the player and players can subsequently have their chocobo fill a tank, healer or DPS role.
  • Moogles will be in the game and are the game’s mail delivery system. Postman moogle wears a hat and has a mail delivery bag over their shoulder.
  • Showed concept art for new enemies: Chupon/Typhon from Final Fantasy 6 and 7 as well as a Hydra that looks like its Final Fantasy XI incarnation

Gamepad: Square Enix showed off a gamepad UI video which showed how the game is played with a gamepad

  • Trying to make it so PC/PS3 version have similar combat
  • Trying to match gamepads and keyboard and mouse so they can handle same amount of action
  • Action bars layout are the main difference between two control schemes, cross action bar
  • 8 icons mapped to control pad
  • Square is jump. L2 + face buttons activate first set of actions, R2 + face buttons activate second set.
  • Can cycle through multiple pages of actions, which can include macros and emotes
  • Gamepad layout will be fully customizable
  • They did their best to keep response time to a minimum, so there is no input lag

They then showed off some gameplay with a gamepad:

  • Summoned a baby chocobo, a non-combat companion pet that follows you around
  • Fighting a Malboro, demonstrating how you can lock on to a mob during combat with a gamepad, but still move freely

Closing notes:

  • Beta Phase 2 starts early April, this weekend is last for Phase 1

They then showed off the Final Fantasy XIV: Exploration benchmark as a video and briefly touched on limit breaks. The meteor spell in the video is Black Mage’s party limit break and when engaged in combat the party will slowly fill a limit break gauge, which can then be used by different jobs for different effects.

 


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