Highlights

  • Final Fantasy 16 surprises players with shadow-dropped DLC expansion "Echoes of the Fallen" during The Game Awards.
  • Expansion takes place before the climactic battle against Ultima, featuring a confrontation with the recurring super boss Omega Weapon.
  • The second paid expansion, "The Rising Tide", will launch in Spring 2024, taking players to the land of Mysidia for a showdown with the Eikon Leviathan.

During the 2023 edition of The Game Awards, Square Enix surprised Final Fantasy 16 players by shadow-dropping the first of two paid DLC expansions. Titled "Echoes of the Fallen," the first expansion for Final Fantasy 16 will see Clive and the party uncover a mystery surrounding ancient technology and the black crystals associated with them.

The news of Final Fantasy 16's first expansion arrived as The Game Awards drew to a close. Final Fantasy 16 was nominated for four awards during the show, including Best Narrative, Best RPG, and Best Performance for Ben Starr's portrayal of Clive Rosfield. However, it took home one prize, as it claimed Best Score and Music at The Game Awards, to the delight of Final Fantasy 16's lead composer, Masayoshi Soken. Fans congratulated Soken and Creative Business Unit 3 on social media for their efforts. But the good news did not stop there for FF16 fans.

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The setting for this expansion takes place before Final Fantasy 16's climactic battle against the godlike entity called Ultima. In Echoes of the Fallen, Clive is given a black crystal by Charon, who claims to not know much about it. Eventually, Clive and the party come across some black market traders, which leads to an investigation into some Fallen ruins. This excursion will ultimately lead Clive into a confrontation with the Omega Weapon, one of the Final Fantasy series' recurring super bosses. It remains to be seen how the latest conflict with the Omega Weapon will compare to past iterations. The price of Echoes of the Fallen is $9.99.

However, Echoes of the Fallen requires a new Final Fantasy 16 patch to access. Between the patch and the expansion, players will need to make an additional 18 GB of space on top of the 90 GB that the game takes up. In addition to Echoes of the Fallen, Final Fantasy 16 confirmed that the second paid expansion, "The Rising Tide," would launch in Spring 2024. In that expansion, Clive and the party will travel to the land of Mysidia, which is a recurring location in the Final Fantasy series. The second DLC will culminate in a showdown against the watery Eikon called Leviathan the Lost. Only time will tell how the confrontation with the Eikon of Water will play out.

Both Echoes of the Fallen and The Rising Tide are available as an Expansion Pack for $24.99 Given the fact that both the stories of The Fallen and the Eikon Leviathan are among the long-standing mysteries surrounding Final Fantasy 16, it remains to be seen how players will react to these new tales.