Stormblood, the next major expansion of Square Enix MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, is set to come out in less than a month and along with a slew of significant changes to some of the game’smechanics, it’s also introducing a large amount of new content including new dungeons, new raids, new zones, and two new jobs. GameSpot recently sat down with Final Fantasy XIV Director Naoki Yoshida to discuss some of the new things Stormblood is bringing in.
On the the topic of size and scale as well as the amount of quest content Stormblood will be featuring, Naoki Yoshida had this to say:
The overall geography is comparable to Heavensward, so it’s about the same in terms of scale. However, in the new areas that do open up, you still have to unlock the ability to fly, which means you’ll be traveling on land for a while until you unlock a zone’s wind currents. As a result, you might think the maps feel large because you’ve grown accustomed to traveling all over the place on a flying mount for the past two years.
Of course, as you progress through Stormblood, you’ll unlock flight capabilities, but we encourage players to explore every nook and cranny of a zone by walking, by ground mount, and then eventually by flying mount as well.
We tried to pare down or lesson the number of subquests to put more emphasis on the main scenario quest. That said, the overall volume of quest content shouldn’t be too different. But if we start to include the different job and class quests into the discussion, then there is much more content in Stormblood than Heavensward.
So while the size of Stormblood’s geography may be similar to Heavensward, it will feature more content than its predecessor when job and class quests are considered. It looks like both new and veteran players will definitely have quite a bit to do in the new expansion apart from the new dungeons and raids.
Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood is scheduled for release on June 20, 2017, for the PlayStation 4 and other platforms. Watch out for our own interview with Naoki Yoshida coming out soon.
[Source: GameSpot]
