‘Return to Ivalice’ Raid Announced for Final Fantasy XIV

The popular MMO Final Fantasy XIV keeps delivering new content for its users in every update, but one of the upcoming additions in the Patch 4.1 might be much more interesting than usual. Today it’s been revealed that the massive multiplayer RPG will hold the long-awaited return of Final Fantasy Tactics creator Yasumi Matsuno to the world of Ivalice, as the producer has been revealed as the writer of a new alliance raid that will be set in the city of Rabanastre. Matsuno directed legendary RPGs such as the Tactics spin-offs, Vagrant Story, and the recently remastered Final Fantasy XII, and the fans have been longing for a new RPG project from him for years.

The raid is appropriately named Return to Ivalice, and it implies introducing the Royal City of Rabanastre, as well as the Kingdom of Dalmasca inside the world of Eorzea. According to the producers these locations will be found near Othard. Rabanastre will be introduced as a legendary place, origin of stories about peasants becoming heroes, taking inspiration in the Camelot of the legend of King Arthur. Matsuno will be in charge of writing the scenario, which will use the liberation of liberation of Doma and Ala Mhigo from the Garlean Empire as story context. After those events, the population of Othard and Dalmasca starts to rise up in rebellion against the Empire, which is a very similar situation to the tales from Ivalice that Matsuno is used to write. Bosses will be designed by Keita Amemiya, while the gameplay will be developed by the regular FFXIV team.

It is not clear how exactly the new scenario fits into Matsuno’s earlier creations, as the artwork features the characters of Ramza and Delita, from the original Final Fantasy Tactics, but the locations that have been mentioned so far belong to Final Fantasy XII. It seems like the portion of Ivalice introduced in Eorzea will act as a sort of theme park of Ivalice, and it is said to be created by longtime fans of the games.

The Return to Ivalice raid will be included in the upcoming The Legend Returns Patch 4.1 launching in October, although the producers said that wrapping everything up might take them “into Patch 4.6 or 4.7.”