News

Many new shows were announced for the Distant Worlds concert tour back in December, but many more have joined the tour for the celebration of Final Fantasy's 30th anniversary. The expanded tour dates span 8 total days across North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

• Sydney, Australia: July 1
• Chicago, Illinois: September 16
• London, England: November 4
• Lyon, France: November 18
• Toronto, Canada: December 2
• Osaka, Japan: December 8
• Tokyo, Japan: December 9-10

The larger list of tour dates intrigues me as a citizen of Chicago, so I'll be getting my tickets as soon as they go on sale tomorrow, 14 February. It was well worth my time the last time I attended and I can't wait to go back, especially since I now know that there should be abundant 3DS StreetPass opportunities. Anybody else going to get tickets for one of these shows, or one of the earlier-announced dates?

Source: Distant Worlds

Part of the Final Fantasy 30th Anniversary in Japan is an "Escape the Room" game with a Final Fantasy XIV theme. I never commented on it in a news post, I don't think, because I didn't expect such a niche part of the experience to ever make it over here... turns out I was wrong, and a game called "Trials of Bahamut" will be made available in at least eight American cities: Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Phoenix, Houston, Orlando, Chicago, and New York. Specific locations and dates are not yet available, nor any information about other cities possibly being added to the mix.

I'm not sure if this is the same game as set up in Japan and just localized, or if it's a brand new experience, but it's really of no consequence unless you're planning to travel to do both, right? If you're not familiar with the rapidly-growing escape-game genre, it's pretty simple. The game in this case will be set up for six players to solve puzzles against a sixty-minute timer. Players will need to solve all the puzzles to "escape" within that window, or they lose the game; escapees then compete with other teams for the fastest escape time. This particular game is built around Bahamut's escape from a dungeon; teams that complete all the puzzles will defeat the King of Dragons before he is fully revived, and teams that fail will be, presumably, destroyed by the creature.

The game will be put on by Scrap Entertainment, known for standard Escape the Room games in the US as well as a new Legend of Zelda-themed game that has just opened in San Francisco and is planned for expansion.

Source: Polygon, Real Escape Game: Trials of Bahamut

The Final Fantasy 30th Anniversary opening ceremony wrapped up a few hours ago, with a number of games receiving notice. A large number of the reveals are release dates and/or patch content for upcoming games:

• Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age, the remake of XII for PlayStation 4, will be out July 11 in the West and July 13 in Japan.
• Dissidia Final Fantasy: Opera Omnia will be out in Japan on February 1 for iOS and Android. There will be a further livestream about this game later today.
• World of Final Fantasy will get Balthier as free summon DLC at the same time as Patch 1.03, which is not yet confirmed for release.
• A series of Final Fantasy XV DLCs have been scheduled. First, on February 21, the "Booster Pack" will be released, containing a Magitek Exosuit to give you a once-a-day window of invincibility for 30 minutes (and also make you a better fisherman). On March 28, there will be a story where Gladiolus is the playable character, not Noctis. Same for Prompto, though his DLC is sometime in June.

There have also been two new marketing screenshots released as part of the meetings today, and they're pretty cool. One is from Final Fantasy VII Remake, and shows Cloud in Midgar with a giant, looming Seraph Sephiroth in the background; the second is from Kingdom Hearts III, made to emulate the famous Final Fantasy VII artwork where Cloud looks up at the Shin-Ra Building. The VII Remake image would make a fantastic desktop wallpaper, too, click through to see it full-size.

Source: Gematsu

As mentioned in CoN news earlier, Square-Enix's new partnership with Marvel is confirmed and will clearly be this huge, big-budgeted Juggernaut™ with multiple collaborative releases expected over the next several years. Marvel's stories and characters in a Square-Enix graphics engine? The possibilities are endless! What's not to love?

Well for one, this could potentially be responsible for a possible setback in the schedules of one or several big titles Square-Enix slated to release over the coming years. FF7 is already rumored to be pushed back, possibly into 2018. According to express.co.uk (source below), game director Tetsuya Nomura indicated that they have a full schedule for the year including a priority on Kingdom Hearts 3 over all else, and that the FF7 Remake delay is highly likely. While they did not explicitly state that the Marvel collaboration had any connection, more details (and hopefully the release date!) should be coming when the director attends the Monaco Anime Game International Conference (MAGIC) on February 18th.

If true, does this make you feel any less thrilled about the FF7 Remake? We know what happens when this company begins to delay games...!

Source: express.co.uk

And soon! On February 6, the game released in 2015 in Japan and 2016 elsewhere will be released on Steam. Mobius is a Final Fantasy game that, unlike most mobile titles from Square Enix, was developed for higher-end systems using Unity, which should make it a more interesting visual experience on desktops; this version of the game was released in Japan late last year, so one would assume that it will be a relatively trouble-free version for gamers to play. The game's director, Naoki Hamaguchi, told the English Square Enix blog that the game will support resolutions up to 4K and that many players will be able to expect framerates of 60 to 120 FPS, which would certainly be a departure from some PC games the company has released in the past.

Though the release over here is only a week away, the game does not appear available for pre-order in the Steam store currently, so it's not possible to confirm pricing at this time.

The release is timed for a global event in-game. Starting the next day, February 7, a tie-in to the Final Fantasy VII Remake will begin that will feature Cloud arriving in Mobius' world, Palamecia, to fight alongside the game's protagonist Wol in a yet-unannounced scenario. Hamaguchi explained that the assets used to build Cloud and any other Final Fantasy VII-related assets used in Mobius were drawn straight from the assets built for Final Fantasy VII Remake, so Mobius will be the first opportunity for most players to see any live glimpse of what could be coming in Final Fantasy VII's future.

Source: Siliconera, Square Enix Blog

Square Enix, through Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Montreal (the folks you might know from, say, Tomb Raider and Deus Ex), just showed up in the world of Marvel. Yesterday, the company teased a reveal for today; right in line with the company's profile, that reveal showed up on Marvel's Twitter account this morning in the form of a fifty-one-second trailer. In it, Hulk, Thor, Iron Man and Cap all appear as wrecked versions of their accouterments, with a broken pair of Banner's glasses, Thor's hammer, a discarded arm from Stark's suit, and Rogers' vibranium shield, all in rubble.

The theme of the video is "#reassemble," which implies to me that the plot of whatever game this might be could slot in to the Marvel Cinematic Universe somewhere between last year's Captain America: Civil War and next year's Avengers: Infinity War, but to be honest, I'm a little behind on the MCU movies and given the fact that we have no idea where the game is in development, it could well take place after Infinity War but before the fourth scheduled Avengers movie, or even later. I mean, I'm no insider - maybe it's not MCU at all, but frankly they'd be crazy not to figure it in there somehow.

That's all we know right now, but that's one heck of a teaser - one of the largest game developers in the world working (in theory) with what is probably the hottest global IP in entertainment right now. Pretty wild stuff, speculate away.

Source: Marvel Entertainment Twitter