Are Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail's bonus items hinting at a FF9 Remake? Maybe! But Yoshi-P says the reason behind them is a secret for now

Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail finally has a release date, but some Final Fantasy 9-themed items are raising some eyebrows.

Yesterday at PAX East, Square Enix finally confirmed that Final Fantasy 14's next expansion, Dawntrail, will be arriving July 2, a week after Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree (which yes, does seem like it was on purpose). That's exciting enough for Final Fantasy fans, but one of the more subtly interesting parts shown off by Square Enix is that Dawntrail will feature a number of Final Fantasy 9-themed items. One such item is a pre-order bonus of a wind-up Zidane minion, and there are other in-game bonus items like a wind-up Garnet Minion, and an Ark Mount, all from Final Fantasy 9.

During the panel, producer and director Naoki "Yoshi-P" Yoshida didn't ignore the inclusion of the Final Fantasy 9 items, but he did play coy about them, saying "You may have noticed a lot of Final Fantasy 9 references here… but the reason is a secret." Now, that obviously raises some questions. What secret could there possible be behind such a secret? There could always be a Final Fantasy 9-themed raid planned for the expansion that hasn't been revealed yet. Or, perhaps that long-rumoured remake is finally actually happening.

Our own Alex says that it is happening, even if he doesn't want one, so these items could just be laying the groundwork for such an announcement. E3 might be dead, but early summertime still is the big season for announcing games of that ilk, so perhaps we could see a Final Fantasy 9 remake announcement this June. The remake did also appear in the Nvidia leak from a few years back, which contained several unannounced titles that later went on to be proven real like Kingdom Hearts 4 and Helldivers 2. Or, perhaps it's not the remake at all, and it's that animated series instead - but we'll have to wait to find out either way.