Final Fantasy 14 Online’s next expansion, the summer-vacation adventure Dawntrail, will officially launch on July 2, producer and director Naoki Yoshida announced Sunday. Early access to Dawntrail will go live on June 28, for players who have pre-ordered the expansion.
Yoshida announced Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail’s release date at PAX East during a panel that revisited the history of the online role-playing game and the journey to its new expansion. He noted that Square Enix wanted to start early access to Dawntrail a week earlier, but “we figured that everyone would be interested in playing the Elden Ring DLC,” Shadow of the Erdtree, which launches on June 21. Yoshida’s announcement was met with laughter from the audience who were no doubt well aware of the highly anticipated releases of both add-ons.
“I’ll give you one week!” Yoshida said, laughing, “Enjoy Elden Ring DLC, then just go into your summer vacation in Dawntrail.” He added, “I just want to make it clear, it’s not because I want to play Elden Ring DLC and then play Dawntrail, although I am looking forward to it.”
Elden Ring’s original release in 2022 coincided with the launch of another massive open-world game, Horizon Forbidden West. Guerrilla Game’s sequel to Horizon Zero Dawn was released one week before Elden Ring, and FromSoftware’s game wound up dominating the discourse at the time, leading to a more muted response to Forbidden West. (The Horizon sequel has sold about a third of that of its predecessor, Sony says.) Square Enix is seemingly hoping to avoid a similar fate with Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail this summer.
Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail will give players of the MMO a brand-new story, two new playable jobs (Pictomancer and Viper), new dungeons and encounters, and an increased level cap to 100. For more, you can catch up on Yoshida’s Final Fantasy 14 panel from PAX East 2024 in the video below.