Do You Have To Beat FF16's Main Story To Unlock Rising Tide DLC?

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With the release of 's second DLC expansion,, the game received all of its planned content — but newer players may not get to experience the DLC until significantly later portions of the game. As a more story-oriented package than 's previous DLC, focuses heavily on under-explored aspects of the original game's story and lore, centering primarily around the mysteries of Leviathan, the only Eikon to be mentioned, but not seen, during the base game's main story.

As a more story-focused DLC, expands greatly on 's lore and world, providing explanations for one of the base game's biggest hanging plot points — the Eikon Leviathan, who only receives small mentions and brief cameos in the main story despite ostensibly being a major power in the world like the other Eikons. To that end, wraps up many of the game's remaining loose ends, providing additional explanations and backstory. While it might not have an effect on some of 's major deaths, it does meaningfully add to the game's world.

However,isn't available right from the start of the game — to make sense with 's story, the events of can only happen after most of the main plot has already been established. As a result, players will only be able to access the DLC content of after completing the quests "" and "" and unlocking Origin as a travel point on the map. Notably, these are the same unlock conditions as, meaning that fresh playthroughs of the game will unlock both DLCs at once.

" " and " " are the two parts of a small side quest chain that can be started during the main quest " ." This places both DLCs very close to the end of the game, as " " is the second-to-last main quest in the game, with the final boss coming shortly after.

So, while players don't need to have completely beaten the game to access ,it only unlocks very close to the end of the game, practically right before the string of final boss fights that lead into the ending. This makes sense plot-wise, as many of 's story reveals would otherwise