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Perhaps the biggest news for the hardcore gaming
audience at this year’s E3 that doesn’t concern delays, to the great
annoyance of this market sector, was the fact that one-time
 PLAYSTATION3 exclusive Final Fantasy XII will be arriving on
Xbox360 simultaneously in the US and Europe.
Immediately blamed for the issues concerning Final
Fantasy Versus XIII,
Electronic Theatre
endeavoured to get the facts direct from the source. Firstly, we’ll
cover the technicalities of the release. When discussing the issue
of the Xbox360 release having a smaller capacity than that of the
PLAYSTATION3’s Blu-ray disc, it was noted that SquareEnix currently
are unsure as to how many DVD discs the game will arrive on, but the
team are confident they can port Final Fantasy XIII to the
Xbox360 without having to make cutbacks, looking into ways of
compressing the audio and pre-rendered scenes without affecting the
quality of their presentation.
The Xbox360 will not receive a release of the title in
Japan. Instead, it was announced that the team are “ready to start”
developing the title for Xbox360. This has been taken by most –
including ourselves – as a case of the company wishing to finish the
PLAYSTATION3 version for release in Japan, before moving onto
PLAYSTATION3 and Xbox360 localised versions for the US and Europe.
You may believe this would delay the title quite considerably – and
with SquareEnix’s reputation of often having a whole year between
the Japanese and European releases of a
Final Fantasy title,
it’s likely this would cause quite a stir amongst European
PLAYSTATION3 fans eager to get their hands on the game. However,
SquareEnix insist that the Xbox360 port will not delay the
arrival of the PLAYSTATION3 version outside of Japan. Separate teams
will be working on each version and, with the Xbox360 version being
a port of the PLAYSTATION3 release, the quantity of content will be
identical. In-fact, SquareEnix are so committed to shortening the
gap between releases on different continents that the European
release will not feature any additional content that was not present
in the original Japanese release.
While the title was not playable at the show, SquareEnix
was showing an extended version of the Trailer seen at Microsoft’s
Press Conference behind closed doors. A handful of characters
featured, but the SquareEnix representatives present were only
prepared to comment on one, Lightning. Featuring prominently in the
video – and, perhaps, a more-than-slight resemblance to the girl
that featured in the video for Final Fantasy XIII’s original
unveiling – Lightning isn’t actually her real name. Appearing mainly
by herself in the Trailer, this was apparently a conscious decision.
In a brief question-and-answer session with the game’s Producer,
Yoshinori Kitase commented that, at first, Lightning refuses to
fight alongside other, but then builds relationships as time goes
on. Apparently, the Trailer was crafted around the themes attributed
to the characters shown.
Details on the Battle System are still
thin-on-the-ground. Perhaps the greatest revelation came from the
fact than enemies would be on-screen as with Final Fantasy XII,
as opposed to randomly-generated. However, it’s been stated that
Kitase believes he’s taken the best from the Battle System seen in
both Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XII and
“created something entirely new”.
When explaining how Final Fantasy XIII continues
the bloodline of the Final Fantasy series, Kitase reminisced
with many of the press members present – during each of their
elected sessions with the designers – about a discussion he once had
with the series creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi. When asking what it was
that made each new game in the series a true Final Fantasy
game, Sakaguchi jokingly stated that “as long as you have white text
on a blue background, you should be fine.” Final Fantasy XIII
is a title moving with the times, and doesn’t feature white text on
a blue background, yet still retains the look of a true Final
Fantasy game. And, for the fans at least, right now that’s more
than enough. |
