The Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn Fan Festival in Tokyo just got off to an amazing start with a large amount of new and exciting information.

The Keynote started with a recap of the information that was revealed at London and American’s Fan Festivals which you can find here, and here.

Yoshida swiftly moved onto brand new information, revealing that Final Fantasy Composer Nobuo Uematsu will be composing the Main Theme for Heavensward, similar to his previous works on Answers. Nobuo Uematsu iterated via Video Message that the Main Theme will be slower and different from Answers, featuring a more thorough focus on Piano.

Shortly after, Yoshida finally revealed the long awaited race “The Au Ra”. The Au Ra are defined by the horns protruding from their head in various lengths and sizes, their bodies are partially covered in scales. The male variant of The Au Ra are much more muscular and built than their female counterparts who sport an elegant yet athletic build shrouded by mystery; Yugiri was confirmed to be an Au Ra. Lore-wise the Au Ra come from the Great Eastern Continent of Othard, one of the great three that we currently know about.

Dark Knight combat gameplay was briefly shown on stage, showing a wide range of animations and actions sported by the Job. There seemed to be a heavy focus on magic-imbued sword countering and stance-based play, with extreme explosive dark VFX to match the job’s look.

The next announcement was the brand new Raid Dungeon that will be seen by end-game players in Heavensward; “Alexander”. Alexander (based upon the classic Final Fantasy Creature/City/Summon) is an all-new high raid dungeon that will have both normal and hard modes, normal will be much more accessible to players who wish to complete the game for story purposes and will sit around the difficult of Echo-Buffed Coil. Hard mode Alexander will be more difficult than the current Coil but will also be as fun as the original Binding Coil of Bahamut. Alexander is a Primal worshiped and summoned by the Goblins, but instead of fighting the Primal itself, the players will journey inside Alexander in order to battle it.

A brand new job followed the previous announcement; Astrologian. Direct from the slideshow “Tap the power of the stars to cast potent healing magicks, while drawing energies from constellation-based diving cards to support your party”. From the animations shown in the short video they wield a very intricately moving “Star Globe” along with a set of Diving Cards that spin around the player, not too dissimilar from Corsair in Final Fantasy XI. Much like Dark Knight there will be no base-class involved.

Following the Astrologian, Yoshida went into detailed on the fantastic looking Collector’s Edition that will be coming with Heavensward. The large box features exclusive artwork from famed Final Fantasy artist Yoshitaka Amano. The Collector’s Edition will come with:

• A large and beautiful box to host the Collector’s items
• Expertly Crafted Dragon Mount Figurine
• Heavensward Art Book
• DVD featuring a set of Videos
• Exclusive In-Game Mount: Flying Griffin
• Exclusive In-Game Item: Dark Knight Cecil-Themed Baron Helm
• Exclusive In-Game Minion: Wind-Up Kain
• And even more to be revealed in the near future

Finally, just before the stream ended, the long awaited Gun-slinging class was revealed. “Machinist”. An acrobatic DPS class that wields a large double barreled Firearm whom “Deals damage from afar using a combination of firearms enhanced with various attachments, and mechanical turrets deployed on the battlefield”. Much like the previously announced jobs, there will be no base-class involved, perhaps this Expansion Pack will push towards the removal of the somewhat limiting armoury system.

This is everything from the Opening Keynote of the Fan Festival at Tokyo, it’s exciting times and expect even more information from Tokyo’s Fan Festival over the coming two days.

I urge you to browse our Gallery below to see pictures from the event of the new race, raid, collectors edition and jobs.