Pre-release trailer and Open-Beta information for Final Fantasy XIV

After an exciting amount of screenshots and interviews at GamesCom last week, Square Enix surprised us yesterday by sharing the Tokyo Game Show trailer of Final Fantasy XIV on their YouTube channel. The trailer is dubbed as a pre-release trailer and is quite possibly the last trailer we’ll see before the game releases next month. The trailer is a mix of Square’s high-end CGI (created by their Visual Works studio) and in-game footage (Believe it or not, 0:57 to 1:05 is gameplay). The trailer does a good job of showing the various starting city-states and showing how Final Fantasy XIV, despite being an online game, is a story-driven MMO.

Square Enix also announced that Susan Calloway will be performing the theme song of Final Fantasy XIV. She caught the attention of Nobuo Uematsu and has done several covers at “Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy” including “Suteki Da Ne”, “Melodies of Life” and “Memoro De La Stono”. You can hear this themesong, called “Answers” in the first part of the trailer.

Square Enix has also announced that the open beta will start on September 1, next week. Unfortunately the details aren’t so exciting because the Open-Beta doesn’t seem so open-open. Testers who were already in the closed-beta will get an email from Square Enix with a new Open-Beta key. It is unknown if other people who didn’t participate in earlier beta testing will be able to play the Open-Beta but we’ll find out soon.

Square Enix already admitted that there’s still a lot of work to do and that some things (like mini-games/colosseum in desert city Ul’Dah) won’t be ready at retail. While there has been a lot of discussion lately on a so called “fatigue system”, clumsy/laggy main menu and cooldown time for quests, keep in mind that Square Enix is still balancing those things. Know that, if you play the open-beta, your feedback is crucial and will be read and reviewed by Square Enix.

You will need a Square Enix account to download and play Final Fantasy XIV. The Square Enix Account system will undergo some changes when Final Fantasy XIV launches on September 22^nd (Collector’s Edition). You can read more about those changes here

Final Fantasy XIV launches on September 30 (September 22, Collector’s Edition) on Windows PCs and March 2010 on PlayStation 3. At Gamescom, Final Fantasy XIV producer Hiromichi Tanaka said that the PlayStation 3 delay was because of “memory issues”. They’ve also admitted that they’re hard at work on the PS3 version so with a bit of luck it might release earlier than March 2010 (Certain sites write “early 2010” although Square Enix hasn’t officially confirmed this yet)