Final Fantasy XIV's Shadowbringers expansion will bring Nier: Automata crossover in July
Fairy fight
Final Fantasy XIV’s Shadowbringers expansion will launch on July 2nd, Square Enix have announced in a keynote at the Paris fan-festival.
Game director and producer Naoki Yoshida also spoke about many new details, including announcing a crossover raid that will draw on the world of Nier: Automata, called YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse.
A new trailer, helpfully grabbed by YouTuber Giuseppe's Gaming, teases many of the expansion's additions, including story beats and the new job class, known as gunbreaker:
NieR: Automata’s game director, Yoko Taro, and executive producer Yosuke Saito made a recorded appearance to talk about the new raid. It’ll be an Alliance raid, the kind that 24 players run together, but the pair mostly cracked jokes about the unexpected crossover rather than giving any details away. Saito did point out that Automata’s story wrapped up quite neatly, so it seems it’ll instead pull from the wider world.
Yoshida spoke about a flurry of other content, including nine new dungeons, a new high-end raid series, and a reworking of the battle system that will change and merge some character abilities. Shadowbringers also introduces a new tribe, the pixies, and players will face off against their regent, Titania.
The MMO is also getting a new playable race, the bunny people of the Viera, as hinted at back in November when the expansion was first announced. Yoshida mentioned that they’re having to edit how helmets work to account for the Viera’s ears, though he didn’t mention getting them a tailor to sew their extremely holed clothing back together.
The keynote also detailed the collector’s edition, and a New Game+ mode that will allow players to replay past story missions and job quests with their current progress and items without causing any changes to their current character.
Yoshida wrapped up by promising yet more information, like the new job class and village that are yet to be revealed, at Tokyo’s fan-festival in March – though he did tease that more details might slip through at other panels during Paris's celebration. You can watch the keynote in full via the Final Fantasy XIV Twitch channel.