Nobody likes airports, not even airport’s Mums. All of the unpacking and packing of your bag, the fear that, despite the labels, your deodorant exceeds 100ml, and furtive looks as your hands are swabbed for hell only knows what, renders the whole experience deeply upsetting. Of course there’s the light at the end of the tunnel, but when yesterday’s tunnel was in essence twelve hours long, it’s more like a Wilko’s torch with leaking ‘D’ cells, in a blizzard.
But that distant light slowly turned into the Final Fantasy XIV Fan Festival in Frankfurt – location presumably chosen for excellent alliterative purposes – which is liable to be a weekend of immense colour and superfluous belts, barring any monochrome Noctis cosplayers, that is.
I have already been instructed to gather as many pictures of Luna’s and Rikku’s as possible, though I’m expecting/hoping that there’s going to be an epic number of people cosplaying as their FFXIV characters. Admittedly the frivolity may come to a slight halt if there are too many hempen robe-wearing blacksmiths about, but we’ll have to see!
The keynote speech this morning at 10:30AM will be the faithful’s first opportunity to learn more about the upcoming Stormblood expansion that’s due in June. We know one or two little things, but here’s presumably where we’ll be given details about new classes and jobs, and hopefully we’ll get to see more of the forbidden land of Eureka, and what the city of Ala Mhigo has in store. Director Naoki Yoshida will be on hand to tell us all about it anyway, and I’ll be sure to let you know what he says!
Besides that, there’s a bevy of Final Fantasy XIV panels across the weekend – see the schedule here – with artist Yusuke Mogi talking about the game’s fantastic art as well as sound director and composer Masayoshi Soken and a ‘special guest’ who’s going to talk about the music. If it’s not Nobuo Uematsu, I’ll eat my Chocobo shaped hat.
Music’s going to be a big part of the weekend either way, with concerts on both days featuring German pianist and composer Benjamin Nuss and vocalist Susan Calloway, while Masayoshi Soken’s band the Primals will be closing out the show on Sunday night.
Then, of course, there’s PvP tournaments between those at the apex of their Final Fantasy XIV game, and perhaps most crucially, the deeply competitive cosplay contest. The world of Final Fantasy has probably provided more opportunities for the cosplay scene than any other franchise so I’m expecting the level of cosplay game to be strong. As long as nobody tries to go one step further and recreate any of the more annoying aspects of the series – Tidus’ laugh, for example – then things will go swimmingly.
If you haven’t been able to make it out to Frankfurt you can still follow all of the action from the expo by purchasing access to the live stream that’s happening here. See you in Eorzea!
