The Next Final Fantasy XIV Expansion Story Has Been “Finalized”

Ever since the launch of Endwalker, Yoshi-P has been heavily teasing the future of Final Fantasy XIV, looking forward to the next decade of the game. Of course, from the player perspective, that’s a lot of looking forward – probably about five expansions worth. And, now that the last decade’s worth of story has come to a close it’s left players wondering where exactly we will be going next.

Obviously, with the current updates – and some things mentioned by other characters – we have some idea of where we’re going for now. The Thirteenth needs some love, after all. But after that? Who knows? Apparently, the XIV team does, as Games Radar reports that the story for the game’s next expansion has been finalized and that Yoshi-P confirmed as much on the ‘From Eorzea with Love’ radio show hosted by Krile voice actor Nanjou Yoshina. That doesn’t mean 100% completed, but rather that they’ve spent a lot of time together working out the finer details of the story. That said, it does appear that Krile may have a bigger part in the upcoming story.

Speaking of story and the future… The patch 6.2 Special site has been updated again. There’s honestly nothing new there. If you’ve played through the new content, you’ve seen the trial and the bosses in the raids. If you haven’t and want to see it, the images are there now. If you’d rather not see, don’t click the link.

In other XIV news, a friend of actor Stephen Critchlow – the voice of Count Edmont de Fortemps, spent nearly 200 hours in the game just to be able to hear his old friend’s performance. When Critchlow passed away last year, he left a space in the hearts of Final Fantasy XIV players around the world who came to love his character Count Edmont de Fortemps. At the time, many came together to celebrate the man who played the head of one of the high houses of Ishgard and made the Warrior of Light a part of his family with vigils near his manor.

Of course, the XIV community wasn’t the only group affected by the loss. But the vigils and tributes posted by the community on social media apparently brought those of us who loved Count Fortemps together with friends of Critchlow outside the game. One such individual is Robert Harper, a fallow actor who met Critchlow doing radio dramas for the BBC.

A longtime gamer, Harper had avoided playing Final Fantasy XIV simply because the amount of players overwhelmed him. According to Games Radar, Limsa Lominsa was just a bit too busy for him. (That’s not incredibly surprising. Limsa is Limsa.) But, as the anniversary of Critchlow’s passing neared, Harper decided it would be worth dealing with all that, just to see what it was about Count Fortemps that made the game’s players so fond of him. It took 194 hours – with some getting sidetracked, but eventually he made it to Heavensward and heard his voice for the first time in the game during the opening narration. He then shared his experience on Reddit and Twitter. And, well, we know how that goes everyone was lovely and supportive – even if some inadvertently dropped a few spoilers.