Grace Horizon

Intro

• Urianger definitely deserves that pina colada, he's done so much work healing me
• Krile as new magic job, very colorful. Pictomancer, that's a bit of a surprise!
• Female Hrothgar, of course, at long last! Chunkier than I hoped, but quite acceptable.
• Gigantic all-Japanese intro, I almost bailed because I thought I wouldn't be able to understand what was being presented
• Release date not to be announced yet. I'm fine with that, honestly the later the better for me because I plan to be doing other things in the summer. Yoshi-P jokes about October, and I would be fine with that, though we're assured it will actually be "summer."

Pictomancer

• This new magic job will go well with the Splatoon paint emotes I snagged a while back
• Oh no, it has a moogle in one of its animations
• Can paint a lot of things, okay, that doesn't actually mean anything yet...
• Oh come now, Yoshi-P, you can absolutely be a magical painter as a 50-year-old man. Though I suppose your bare midriff might not be as appealing as a model's.
• It's sure going to be funny to see a Pictomancer in the drab Cryptlurker gear
• Unusual job quests, all right, might be fun
• Got some instant-casts, that's good
• Sounds like a supporting caster, not a full "support caster" but carries buffs & isn't full-on attack-focused
• No rez :(
• Interesting to see the note on different German terminology than in FF6. Glad to see languages other than English & Japanese getting some love.

Dawntrail story and patch 6.55

• Helping in a rite of succession. Why is the WoL being asked, anyway? Will we find out in 6.55?
• Female Hrothgar character from Tural, cool enough
• FemHroth isn't quite what I want to be, but nice enough
• Division among the Scions is being played up. I wonder if it's really serious, or if it's overblown? And I hope (though don't expect) to at least get some cosmetic consequences to one or more player decisions with that division...
• Patch 6.55 releasing January 16, just as I thought!
• 24h maintenance, no great surprise I guess. Since I'm winding down my play time, I probably wouldn't be playing on the 15th anwyay.
• I hope I can get the new world map as a wall poster for my in-game apartment. I'll replace my old world map.
• Going the whole length of Tural in one expansion? Well, I guess we did Othard in half an expansion, plus a little supplemental material. Still there will be a lot of room for further adventures after we're done.
• Two-part structure for North & South Tural? This really is starting to sound like Stormblood Version 2. Which I don't mind, I liked Stormblood, although I thought it was half a great expansion and half an okay expansion, smooshed together.
• Game footage is pretty enough but I'm not really excited by it. It's just more FFXIV, and it's an okay-looking game but not great-looking. I care more about what I'll be doing in these areas.
• Leaking ceruleum pipelines do have some implications though about natural resource exploitation. Also we need to bring Cid & especially Nero out here.
• Oh hello, high-tech city Solution Nine. You have my attention. Something interesting must be happening here! Hypothesis: this is the endgame hub, like Radz-at-Han and Eulmore, while Tuliyollal will be the starting hub analogous to the Crystarium and Sharlayan. (Yoshi-P says a few minutes later that it's a player hub with things there, really sounds like the endgame hub.)
• "Heritage Found" area ... I'm guessing it's a town in a zone like Mord Souq or Twine. Someone is excavating their ancient civilization. I wonder which Calamity destroyed it, and how long ago?
• Oh yay, more people of the same species as the Vanu Vanu. I never could be arsed to finish their tribal quest line.
• Variety of Mamool Ja, that's good, they're an entire species, they should have variety

General game additions

• Level 100, sure, nbd
• Viper & Pictomancer are mildly interesting. I'll of course withhold final judgement until I actually play them, but I think I will not be much of a fan of Viper, and like Pictomancer's play style well enough but be unhappy with its damage output as a support-oriented job. (Pls buff Red Mage damage, SE!)
• Dungeons: barge reminds me of the truck in Lapis Manalis or the ride on Bismarck's back in Anamnesis Anyder. Cool to see the purple-glowing dungeon that looks like Solution Nine, presumably it's related to that (I hypothesize ancient, being-uncovered) civilization.
• To be quite honest, I'm a lot more interested in the glowy sci-fi-looking stuff than the rest
• Burly cactuar, haha!
• New glam is vaguely interesting, but nothing special to me. Very detailed & fiddly. Reaper hood is interesting to me, but not really my thing.

Further content updates

• What's this thing on the Moon? Oh it's not the Moon, it's planets, plural! Well that will be interesting! "Cosmic Exploration," fascinating, Captain!
• Working on a different star each update? Interesting. Time-gated content?
• Alliance raids from FFXI, yes. I've never played FFXI and I have no desire to, so these will have to stand or fall on their own merits. The Ivalice and NieR raids both had their problems, but they were quite different problems from each other; hopefully this will be better.
• Normal raids, the Arcadion: new story, not saying much yet. Concept art looks like it ties into the cool neon scifi stuff. Name & context make me think of a deadly arcade.
• Normal raids start a month after 7.0, nice. Don't have to rush to get top-notch gear.
• Zenos Ultimate? lol. No, Eden Ultimate. All right. Good to see them getting some love, but I don't play that stuff so it's not super relevant to me. Gotta admit, I like the Eden story, but I still dislike the raids themselves.
• Glad to see there'll be Inconceivably Further Hildibrand Adventures!
• Also glad to see there'll be new variant dungeons, I think they're cool even if I don't play them much
• New Field Operation analogous to Eureka & Bozja, don't really like the sound of that given the reputation of Eureka & Bozja
• Likely the relic weapons will be grindy too. I'll bid a sad farewell to the easy-breezy relics of Endwalker.
• New limited job: Beastmaster, as I'd heard a lot of people speculating. Should be interesting, I guess.

Software, graphics, etc.

• Graphical update in progress of course
• Divided up -- "First Graphical Update" on slide. I'm in favor of incremental development like that. Not surprising they're smoking out a lot of bugs.
• Player character model updates do look nice though. Grace is getting a makeover at the aesthetician when 7.0 drops to take advantage.
• Shadowing from bangs is pretty nice. I don't use those hairstyles currently, but they are more appealing now.
• Lots of deep shadows around the eyes. It'll give rise to a lot piercing gazes.
• Gosh the Elezen female is pretty. That was a close runner-up on character creation. Not sure I want to fantasia and I definitely don't want to make an alt, but wow.
• Yes, the leather definitely looks nicer. It doesn't look like rubber now.
• I actually slightly dislike the change to the male Miqo'te graphics. I thought the old one had more of a rough-and-ready tomcat feel.
• Female Miqo'te: bare teeth, pounce! :D But seriously, not really a big difference. Good to see better support for shininess on the dark skin of the particular model they showed, though.
• Huh, goodbye to the sharply squared-off Roegadyn nose!
• Cloth improvement is really nice, though. Again, it doesn't look like rubber or satin any more.
• No, I do not think that Magnai will find his Nhaama, even with the graphical upgrade
• Au Ra females no longer necessarily have that unsettling blank stare
• Free Fantasia? I will love to see that. I still haven't used my first one, but this would be some nice room to experiment.
• Improved fur shaders for Hrothgar? Yes that's a good thing.
• Male Viera are even prettier prettibois
• And female Viera are even more the most precious hyper-beauties
• This is running pretty long, jeez
• Two dye channels! Glad to see an update on this!
• Improved dyeing might be really really nice. Just depends on what it affects for each individual gear piece. So far so good!

Additional Updates before Dawntrail

• System requirements -- check it out if you run on PC. Doesn't affect me personally as a PS5 player.
• Expanded free trial -- didn't that already drop? It's old news, though still good news.
• Xbox -- open beta late February, nice! Glad to see the game become playable on more platforms.
• FFXVI crossover on the way for April. I'm mildly interested.

Final notes

• Female Hrothgar trailer, nice. Shows her off to good advantage, nice & muscly. Good complement to female Miqo'te. Well done, dev team! "The last race," which I'm fine with, it must be a nightmare to add a new race any more because of all the gear model tweaks. I will probably experiment with a retainer fantasia to see what kinds of appearance are possible for FemHroths.
• Splash art for the expansion, nice enough. Wonder who the woman is at the top of the stack? Didn't get a close look at her. Presumably a new character for the expansion.

All told, my interest in the new expansion continues to be mild-to-moderate. The most intriguing thing is the sci-fi turn the story seems to be taking. That might actually grab me.