FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn The Art of Eorzea - Another Dawn

Final Fantasy XIV Official Art Books #1

by Square Enix, Yoshitaka Amano (illustrator)

The official FINAL FANTASY® XIV: A Realm Reborn art book collects illustrations created by Akihiko Yoshida and the FINAL FANTASY XIV art team for the development of the groundbreaking online game.
This book boasts over 1,000 pieces of art spanning 300 pages and includes an in-game bonus item code for the Wind-up Enterprise minion.

Genres: Art, Fantasy, Gaming, Video Games, Reference

300 pages, Paperback

First published October 17, 2014

About the author

Square Enix Holdings Co., Ltd. (株式会社スクウェア・エニックス・ホールディングス) TYO: 9684 is a Japanese video game and publishing company best known for its console role-playing game franchises, which include the Final Fantasy series, the Dragon Quest series, and the action-RPG Kingdom Hearts series. Its headquarters are located in the Shinjuku Bunka Quint Building in Yoyogi, Shibuya, Tokyo.

Reviews

[Kristin]

Beautiful artwork and concept art. Really love the commentary from the designers (some of them are really funny), sad they took it out in recent books and basically shoved a small snippet of it in the back.

[Cretin Workshop]

I'm a big sucker for art books. I love seeing how my favorite films or video games were conceptualized from the very beginning of pre-production to the far ends of post-production. Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn is a game I have been absolutely obsessed with for nearly two years now and while I have my issues with it as everyone does, an aspect of the game I find little to no flaws with is its art direction. Square Enix has always had an incredible art team and tends to go all out on their mainline Final Fantasy titles and XIV is no exception. The art is presented in high quality and it's incredible stuff. Absolutely immaculate attention to detail with the expected sections, such as character designs and creature designs as well as an intimate look at the game's architecture and locations. I also appreciated how Square went into detail about areas you may not have expected, such as the designs for random gear, environmental props, and the like. It makes you appreciate just how much thought goes into every aspect of designing a modern AAA game. My favorite section however was probably the section at the beginning focusing on promotional artwork; these massive, sprawling paintings depicting large-scale battles, the different primal bosses, etc with insane, meticulous detail and bold colors are a sight to behold. Not to mention, the book itself looks great, with a beautiful minimalist cover design and slipcover. However, the slipcover is extremely susceptible to getting scratched, so take great care. My only real complaint is that the book could have stood to be longer. To some extent, physical limitations play a part in this, but some of the art pieces are scaled down to be extremely small and it's clear some pieces were given space prioritization than others. While this is fine for the basic sketches, some detailed artwork is reduced to barely discernable sizes at points. While I thought the commentary from the artists was interesting and much appreciated, it's usually no longer than a maximum of two sentences and I wish they were allowed to go into more detail. These are minor nitpicks at the end of the day; The Art of Eorzea -Another Dawn- is an absolutely exceptional art book that anyone who considers themselves a fan of FFXIV or video game art, in general, is required to check out. GoodReads only lets you rate out of 5, but consider my rating a 9/10.

[Serena W. Sorrell]

The artist comments under each piece are both insightful and hilarious. And the art—simply fabulous.

[wbforeman]

Solid collection of art from cover art, dungeons and weapons.

[Megan☾★]

NICHE AND BIASED, BUT
A must-buy/must-read for anyone remotely interested in a visual deep dive into the concept art. This volume contains artwork from patches 2.0-2.4 (A Realm Reborn release to Second Coil of Bahamut/Shiva release). Beautiful illustrations of all sizes.

YES this is copy/pasta of my review of other volumes with updated patch notes. Same feelings, same wonderful work.

[Amanda Setasha]

Code Claimed

Ironically I bought this artbook last and waited for it to arrive so I could read it first. I love the style they went with for the original art.

Design Favorites:
Weapon Sets: Garuda Set, Serpent Elite's Arms, High Allagan Arms
Armor Sets : Teffeta Shawl
Enemies: Garuda, Shiva, Twintania, Tiamat
Furniture: Sylphic Set, Vortex Couch, Wavesoul Fount

[Garrett Ballendine]

The blurbs for each piece really help sell the direction of the game and make you appreciate each piece of concept art.
You can feel the creative passion in each piece, accented by the creators thoughts.

It's a real shame they quit doing this for the later books past Heavensward.

[Jade Jampolski]

Having an insight to all of the design for the base game gave me a whole new appreciation for it. Can't wait to look at what went into the expansions.