In an interview with Famitsu yesterday, Final Fantasy 14 director and producer Naoki Yoshida (aka Yoshi P) revealed that a second starting point for new players is being prepared. This will allow players to skip most of the story in the new Final Fantasy 14 expansion, Dawntrail.

This was confirmed and translated by aitaikimochi on Twitter, where he wrote:" The team is preparing an in-game feature that will allow you to read the lore and background of characters and worlds up to [patch 6.0], saying that technically you can start your adventure from [patch 6.1] onwards."

This hypothetical skipping is currently only possible through microtransactions from the game's online store, but not by getting off the ship at Dawntrail. Patch 6.1 marks the start of Endwalker's post-release storyline, and players will need to play patches 6.1 through 6.55 before starting the new expansion.

However, Yosi-P recommends that players should start at the beginning anyway. He states in an interview that the earlier expansions of the game have been an improvement. It is true that several patches in the Endwalker cycle are dedicated to refurbishing old dungeons and allowing solo play. He used the metaphor of a TV drama, saying it would be more unnatural to start watching the show after "season 6."

In any case, the proposed skips may not enter the game in next year's Dawntrail release; Yosi-P said in an interview: "We are preparing them, but it is still undecided if we will actually implement them in 7.0" (from Google translation)

I am not sure if I will be able to play the game.

I have drunk deeply from the giant narrative cup of Final Fantasy 14, and I think anyone who skips to 6.1 is depriving Final Fantasy, and perhaps the entire RPG genre, of one of its best stories, but there is something to be said for a game that buckles under the weight of its own narrative.

Currently, it takes most players several hundred hours to complete Final Fantasy 14. I would venture to say that even if you were to skip the cutscenes, it would still take you a long time to catch up with your friends. The longer an MMO like "Final Fantasy 14" lasts, the less plausible such forced homework becomes. Even if it makes sense to read the Discord messages of a panicked friend whose heart was ripped out of his chest for the first time in "Heaven's Word".

Endwalker also completes a decade-long story arc, and Dawn Trail promises the beginning of a new adventure. In other words, if there was ever a time to include a second entry point, it is now. Still, half the reason to play "Final Fantasy 14" in the first place is the story. Don't get me wrong, the game is a great MMO, but it is also five well-crafted single-player RPG experiences. Skipping that journey means missing out on most of what makes this game special. [Endwalker's dungeons are challenging in terms of difficulty and may be too much for new players to handle. On the other hand, when I recommend this game, I need to include the caveat, "Do you think you'll have 500 hours to spare in the next few months?" I need to make the caveat that "I'm not sure I can afford to do this. This is a difficult thing to do. Also, I've been waiting for such a skip for a long time because I want to be able to make alts without having to play 5 expansions worth of games at once.