We’re only a couple of days away from the early access launch of Dawntrail, Final Fantasy XIV’s latest expansion and first in over two years since the climactic Endwalker.
As the summery story expansion prepares to drop, Square Enix have run down everything else arriving in the MMO’s 7.0 patch, which notably includes its long-awaited graphical overhaul along with several other nice-to-have improvements whether you’re playing Dawntrail or not.
As well as Dawntrail’s story quests, locations, dungeons and new jobs - we won’t spoil anything here - 7.0’s headline feature is a total visual overhaul of the now decade-old game.
Comparisons in the 7.0 patch notes show just how much sharper we can expect environmental textures to look, with other polishes including more fluid animations, better hair and skin textures on characters, softer shadows and more light sources, and various other additions down to more subtle eye movements, glasses lenses, and effects for water and wind.
There’ll be some technical additions too, including support for FSR and DLSS upscaling for AMD and Nvidia users respectively, TSCMAA anti-aliasing and an alternative SSAO using GTAO.