Final Fantasy XIV’s narrative extends to media outside of just the MMO’s main scenario questline, and Square Enix is reprinting a popular collection of its short stories that add to plot threads you may have missed. The Chronicles of Light, a collection of 25 tales following heroes and villains, is up for pre-order again with an October release—and it’s definitely worth it for the lore fiends.
Back in 2019, Square Enix released its bound version of Tales from the Calamity, Tales from the Dragonsong War, and Tales from the Storm in a hardcover collection. All 21 of those stories are published online through FFXIV’s Lodestone, but there’s an additional four chapters in the book unavailable anywhere else. Those extra pieces of the puzzle include The Hunt Begins, a dive into Zenos’ early life; The Players and the Pawns, following Tataru and Hancock through Kugane; Ever After, explaining Hien’s efforts in Doma; and The Samurai Who Couldn’t Die, which fills in the blanks on what happened to Gosetsu.
The stories included from the Lodestone cover beats from A Realm Reborn, Heavensward, and Stormblood. Plenty of those adventures provide context the game may only gently point at or not really explain at all, but all of which pay off in big ways if you’ll spare the time. Chapters like In Louisoix’s Wake include some of the earliest mentions of big Endwalker players like Fourchenault, while the first Heavensward chapter, Through Fire and Blood, gives a little more background on Aymeric and Estinien’s history together.
We are excited to announce that the FINAL FANTASY XIV: Chronicles of Light will be back in a new reprint edition in Oct 2022! A collection of 25 short stories expanding upon the rich lore of FFXIV and featuring exclusive illustrations by Toshiyuki Itahana. https://t.co/y7denNMFLA pic.twitter.com/MIiIUaWVaG
— Square Enix Manga & Books (@SquareEnixBooks) March 4, 2022
Localizations from Japanese include English, German, and French, and the Chronicles of Light looks like it’s already up for pre-order on Square Enix’s official site and other online retailers. If you aren’t keen on grabbing a physical edition, there’s also a Kindle version launching at the same time on October 18. Final Fantasy artist Toshiyuki Itahana, known for his work on IX, XI, and Crystal Chronicles, contributes to the collection with illustrations for each chapter, so it’s still worth it for the artbook aficionado.
Those side stories continue to hold some of my favorite details from FFXIV. While they aren’t in this collection, Tales from the Shadows wound up delivering a couple of moments that caused me tremendous emotional damage by the time Endwalker was all said and done. Through His Eyes was made for all of us shameless Emet-Selch likers, and I’ll sob every time I read through that Shadowbringers collection. Anyway, it’ll be a while before we see any from 6.0, but to tide us over there’s still the upcoming 6.1 patch in April, and Yoshida even shared deets on what we can expect beyond that in 6.2. I’ll settle for a whole new adventure, I guess, but don’t make me wait for Tales from the End, or whatever we’ll call the next batch.
