One of the most highly-anticipated parts of the upcoming Final Fantasy 14 expansion, which we now know is titled Dawntrail, is the graphics update announced not long after Endwalker’s hype died down.
While the game’s pretty gorgeous as it is, it’s gorgeous in a 2013 MMORPG sort of way, which is because that’s exactly what FFXIV is. There are great new environments, glamours and characters being released but not really being done justice due to existing within old limitations. Even areas painted in gorgeous, bright colors suffer from the game’s outdated lighting and coloring parameters.
Luckily for everyone (including the very excited development team), next summer will see an overhaul of the graphics in many aspects of the game, from materials to entire character models. We’ve got a summary of what we were shown during the Fan Festival keynote, including before-and-after pictures.
Materials, Textures & Lighting
Put bluntly, the biggest update in FFXIV: Dawntrail will be to overall textures throughout the game.The new areas’ screenshots feature not only beautiful new settings, but lighting that seems to do their bright coloring plenty of justice. Prior areas may take some time to see similar quality, it seems, but it’s mentioned that they’ll catch up eventually — though a banquet chamber of Ul’dah and a Doman Castle area are shown as the previews.
As for gear, metals will likely see the best upgrades with their similar texture and lighting change. The Endwalker Paladin gear was shown to demonstrate this to pretty solid effect.
Foliage And Landscapes
Yoshida seemed very, very excited to talk about this, and just from the initial previews, it feels justified.
Many of the fields in FFXIV look gorgeous in theory; if you were to put one out as a painting (or look at the concept art), it’d make for a gorgeous imaginary picnic. The reality is… a little less exciting. Luckily, it looks like the new update adds some volume to the flowers and bushes, as opposed to the fields feeling like a bunch of pixely sticks.
It also seems like this specific update will apply to the entirety of the game upon release, so that’s definitely a reason to re-explore your favorite areas when Dawntrail hits.
Character Design Upgrades
In regards to updating and improving characters without drastically changing them, they seem to have hit the mark. FFXIV has a bit of an iconic look, and the updates provide a little more visual appeal. More specifically, the skin, eye, and hair textures look far more detailed, and some of the shaping feels a little more realistic. It was mentioned that many NPCs will be updated as well in this overhaul.
We’ve included the before and afters for all the character races that were shown during the live stream—which is your favorite?
Au Ra Character Graphical Update
Elezen Character Graphical Update
Hrothgar Character Graphical Update
Hyur (Midlander) Character Graphical Update
Hyur (Highlander) Character Graphical Update
Lalafell Character Graphical Update
Miqo’te Character Graphical Update
Roegaedyn Character Graphical Update
Viera Character Graphical Update
FFXIV System Requirement Changes
For better or worse, with this upgrade comes a bit of a cost. FFXIV has been able to run on pretty low-powered PCs, but the graphical upgrade does require a bit of extra power to get things looking good, with 7.0 requiring a higher bar for minimum requirements.
The main system requirement changes are as follows:
- CPU before: Intel® Core™i5 2.4GHz or higher CPU after: Intel Core i-7 6700 or higher
- GPU before: NVIDIA Geforce GTX750/AMD Radeon R7 260X or higher GPU after: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970/AMD Radeon RX 480 or higher
- Memory (RAM) before: 4GB or higher Memory (RAM) after: 8GB or higher
Unfortunately, this may gate a few people out of playing. It’ll also be harder to run multiboxing activities such as roleplaying or troupe barding, though I suppose sacrifices, again, do need to be made for the glam fans.
