Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker — The Art of Resurrection -Beyond the Veil- review — Voidsent, voidreceived

I’ve talked a lot about Final Fantasy XIV artbooks here, especially about my general dissatisfaction with how they’ve changed over the years. With that said, the art is always pretty and any fan of the game will still enjoy it. They’re still good artbooks, just not exceptional without artist commentary and well planned page layouts. This is why I’ve mostly swapped to impressions pieces about these books. It’s hard to write a proper review when I say basically the same thing every time. But with this one, The Art of Resurrection -Beyond the Veil-, it feels like the end of an era. The graphics update coming in Dawntrail will no doubt change the way this behind the scenes work is done in some way, so let’s give it one last hurrah (with slight boos).

Beyond the Veil covers the patch cycle for Endwalker, which means we get to see artwork depicting the thirteenth shard, or The Void, as well as the Myths of the Realm and Pandaemonium raid series. I may not have enjoyed the patch MSQ, but the places we visited along the way felt new and innovative for the game. From the artwork, you can really feel how big The Void is supposed to be, yet empty and dangerous at the same time. It’s some really exceptional artwork with incredible detail.

For the Myths of the Realm section, it’s great to see all of Eorzea’s gods get their own artwork. For some, you even get to see concepts for their arena’s, I especially like Nophica’s as it has an interesting pattern dividing the fields of flowers. I feel like there’s a bit more actual design work here rather than just collecting all the final artwork, as there are some pieces showing how clothing is supposed to look from a few angles and how some weapons transform.

Outside of environment and character art, there’s the usual section showing gear sets and weapons. This section does feel like they just kinda dumped any equipment art here all willy-nilly. It’s not well organized, overall jumping between outfits and weapons at random. For most of the art the model is a male Hyur, with a female Hyur occasionally jumping in if there’s a difference between genders. In previous books you’d sometimes see how headgear would adapt to fit Miqo’te and Au’ra ears or outfits to make room for tails. You don’t really get any of that here, which leads me into my usual complaints.

All the artwork here is the final versions of each piece, there’s no sketches or alternate drafts aside from a single image of a simply drawn character holding an umbrella (which is adorable). Some artwork also spreads over two pages, either forcing you to damage the binding to see all of it or just pretend it’s not there. Finally, while the general artist commentary in the back is great I’d always love to see their thoughts and process on individual pieces. Still, I think the artwork itself in this book is exceptional and puts it slightly above similar books.

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