An Interview with the People behind Final Fantasy XIII

During E3, one of the most anticipated news was the release of Final Fantasy XIII for the PS3. We’ve given you a load of news about the game and here we are offering you more.  Indeed, the short trailer we’ve received of the game was enough to make hearts flutter. Yes, we love the Final Fantasy franchise. And yes, here they are with another game that would make us lovelorn and vespertine. The full title of the new Final Fantasy Game is Fabula Nova Crystallis : Final Fantasy XIII. To give us more information about the game, Dengeki Online has decided to interview the people behind FFXIII: Yoshinori Kitase (Crystallis producer), Motomu Toriyama (Crystallis Director), Tetsuya Nomura (FFversusXIII Director), Hajime Tabata (FFFXIII Agito director), and Masashi Hashimoto (FFversusXIII Producer). In this interview, they talked about the production of the game, its graphics and gameplay.

This interview discusses the the three games concerned with the FFXIII franchise, what keeps them together and what keeps them apart. The three games are definitely on a roll but don’t expect them to come around the day that the PS3 is slated to be released. The boys reveal to us that they will be revealing more in the next E3, so perhaps we could expect that at least one of the games will be ready for us to enjoy sometime next year.

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During E3, one of the most anticipated news was the release of Final Fantasy XIII for the PS3. We’ve given you a load of news about the game and here we are offering you more.  Indeed, the short trailer we’ve received of the game was enough to make hearts flutter. Yes, we love the Final Fantasy franchise. And yes, here they are with another game that would make us lovelorn and vespertine. The full title of the new Final Fantasy Game is Fabula Nova Crystallis : Final Fantasy XIII. To give us more information about the game, Dengeki Online has decided to interview the people behind FFXIII: Yoshinori Kitase (Crystallis producer), Motomu Toriyama (Crystallis Director), Tetsuya Nomura (FFversusXIII Director), Hajime Tabata (FFFXIII Agito director), and Masashi Hashimoto (FFversusXIII Producer). In this interview, they talked about the production of the game, its graphics and gameplay.

The interview begins with the sudden shift of development for the FFXIII game. It was supposed to be set for the PS2, however, it so happened that the development for PS3 was on its way hence they felt that it was appropriate to develop this game to another level by bringing it to this new engine. Hence, as they were ending Kingdom Hearts II, they decided to take the game into two directions. First is the carrier title which is FFXIII and the other is the FF Versus XIII. FFXIII Agito was something that they decided later on, as a reaction to the success of Before Crisis-FFVII. According to Toriyama, although these are three different titles, they are all based on the same title, hence they are placed under the same FF Franchise. One thing they’re hinting is that this game’s story involves a myth which is integral to your gameplay. When asked about the logo of the new Final Fantasy game and its relation to this myth, Kitase says “It’s a secret.” They added that the new logo was the result of Yoshitaka Amano’s creative mind, hence this was how he had interpreted the new concept for the FFXIII.
What was truly remarkable about FFXIII was the graphics and gameplay that we have previewed during E3. Dengeki had to ask them whether what people were seeing was merely an FMV or the actually gameplay. Toriyama had to say that for FFXIII, they had to give up the Active Time Battle which has been predominant in other FF titles. Instead, they used a modified version of the old ATB, making your character more reactive allowing you to enter easily in and out of battles. It seems that speed will play a key role in your game play as your game is decided by how fast you input choices for your character. I guess the ‘Wait’ option is a luxury for those who are playing the released FF games. One more thing that the producers takes pride of is how it can maintain the graphics seen in FFVII-Advent Children even during gameplay. They said that even if the graphics are nice, the gameplay isn’t entirely taken down. You can still involve yourself in team battles, hence you can employ strategies whenever you are participating in battles. According to them, with speed and strategy in mind, you can truly experience the greatness of this game. More so. spells have a greater effect with the new graphics engine. For once, players will finally have a greater grasp on what a gravity bomb can do. For this game, magic and mechanics will definitely come together. Could this mean that you now must gas up first before you can fly a Ragnarok? Toriyama stresses that in this game, this attention to detail is very much possible. The world of FFXIII may appear more science fiction than it is a fantasy, but because of the ruling myth that governs the game, it still lives within the realm of fantasy.

The next part of the interview involved the other two games with Final Fantasy XIII: FF Versus XIII and FFXIII Agito. With FF Versus XIII, the science fiction backdrop of Crystallis is dropped for something more familiar to us, a modern cosmopolitan city fused with magic. With FF Versus XIII, the idea of bringing in a more recent view of The World into the gameplay shows us a little bit of magical realism wherein our reality cannot escape the possibility of fantastic things happening to it. FF Versus XIII will have a male lead character and has a darker story compared to Crystallis. As Nomura puts it, if FFXIII is the light, then its shadow would be FF Versus XIII. Because of this aspect, Nomura and his crew find it more difficult to put the story for this game. He added this game was more dark than it is cool as the main character was not built to impress but rather made to tell his dark tale. In FF Versus XIII, the main character encounters tragedy, and according to Nomura and  Kitase, nothing is more painful than a tragedy because it often involves the loss of a loved one. By using the word ‘versus’ in the title, they were hoping to show the contrast of the game to people. The gameplay of 13 would be similar to Kingdom Hearts, nonetheless, its story is deeply entrenched within this said FFXIII myth.

Lastly, FFXIII Agito was discussed by Dengeki Online. Although this is a mobile phone game, its scale is no different from that of its PS3 brothers. For this game, their first concept was to put it in the world of mobile technology. They had to make sure that the game was designed only for the phone and nowhere else. It will be an RPG, but not in an MMORPG scale. There are 12 (not including the Moogle) characters available for play. You may choose a character to play with and the others will remain as NPCs. As to the games connectivity, the game does encourage multiple player modes, yet they do not particularly explain how. They said that what currently troubles them is whether the commands to be used in the game will be visible or not. They said that a change in mobile technology might help them out a bit, but as of now, they are still currently working their way around the system.

The three games are definitely on a roll but don’t expect them to come around the day that the PS3 is slated to be released. The boys reveal to us that they will be revealing more in the next E3, so perhaps we could expect that at least one of the games will be ready for us to enjoy sometime next year. In the meantime, I guess we have just to satisfy ourselves with some screenshots and trailers.

Via Dengeki Online