Considering its confirmed lack of presence at this year's
E3, we were pretty much expecting a long summer of waiting until a new
Final Fantasy Versus XIII trailer of some kind to be revealed at the
Tokyo Game Show this coming September (16th to 19th), however, the Japanese press this week have managed to get their grubby hands on new pictures from the game, as well as an interview from its director
Tetsuya Nomura, as well as some comments on the game's soundtrack by composer
Yoko Shimomura.
Before showing the scan we have, I'd like to point out that all three shots used in the magazine run on the in-game graphics engine, and is actually currently running perfectly on
Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3) hardware. The two pictures on the left are taken from exploration sequences, whilst the bigger picture on the right comes from a battle sequence, and I'll go into more detail about all this after the scan. The screenshots themselves have been doctored by
Square Enix to hide anything they don't want showing yet, for example the exploration screenshots have had a form of HUD removed that features Noct's head. More details on other edits further on after the scan.
So, first of all the bad news. Nomura has confirmed, following rumours a the beginning of the year, that
Final Fantasy Versus XIII will feature no world map, as originally promised. Whilst a world map/overworld system had originally been planned, and even programmed, in the long run the director felt that the switch to an overworld with a "little Noct" running around just didn't feel right with the rest of the game, and so its been replaced with huge explorable "linking locations" similar to those used in
Final Fantasy XII. These locations are supposedly incredibly vast and you can explore every inch of them, and there's even destructables for Noct to hack at on the way.
Using the first screenshot as an example, Nomura explained how you can visit every part you can see on that landscape, other than climbing the mountains in the background, which act as the location's border. He even points out that you can climb onto the roof of the service station in the second screenshot, just because you should be able to in real life! He also states that that "dusty landscape" is actually a/the road out of the city resembling
Shinjuku in
Tokyo, which has been the focus of much of the game's released screenshots so far, and that following that road leads to the gas station you see in the second screenshot, and which eventually leads to the sunken roadway we saw in the last trailer revealed way back when in the mists of time. Nomura uses this to explain that what we've seen of the locations so far all come from the opening sections of the game, a similar strategy employed by press releases for
Final Fantasy XIII which nearly all covered the opening Chapter of the game.
On the battle screenshot, Noct is fighting a Behemoth-style creature (whether a "generic" Behemoth, or just a member of the Behemoth family hasn't been specified yet), and this is a pure picture taken from the game's battle sequence, and is indicative of what things look like. The battle menu has been edited out, however, as they're not yet revealing aspects of how the system works, and whilst Noct is usually accompanied by partners in battle, they haven't been pictured here as their weapons and clothing haven't been shown in the press yet. The Behemoth shown in the battle screen is apparently a monster who's been harnessed for military purposes, which has led me to wonder whether the aspect of featuring "feral creatures" as well as technologically enhanced monsters like in
Final Fantasy XIII could be making its way into its other-universe-counterpart. Tetsuya Nomura also points out that this paticular Behemoth has a blade on its back, possibly a hint to the fact that it may be able to use it to attack with? This could also be something taken from
Final Fantasy XIII, as the Behemoth-class of
Final Fantasy XIII may stand up and pull out a blade-like weapon when they lose half of their HP, though sword-wielding Behemoths did first appear in
Final Fantasy XII.
A technical point to make now is that the clouds and lighting effects of
Versus XIII are generated on-the-fly by the engine, and that this process has allowed them to generate incredibly real-looking clusters of clouds that change and move as you watch them. And speaking of the lighting effects, locations of the game have been designed with specific colour-palettes and lighting effects to really try and give
Versus XIII the feel of a "road movie". This may be just conjecture, but it seems as if the
Fabula Nova Crystallis -Final Fantasy XIII- is being influenced a lot by media other than video games. Whilst Nomura is asserting the road movie feel of this game,
Final Fantasy XIII director
Motomu Toriyama recently talked about how serialised dramas, particularly American ones influenced the storytelling of his game, specifically citing
Lost as a major source of inspiration in its mixed use of flashbacks to explain present-day events.
Returning to battle information, although we already knew that the game would be more action-oriented like Nomura's
Kingdom Hearts series, this is confirmed once more as he states that there are no transitions from normal "walkabout" sequences and battles. Nomura also went on to speak about how you will be able to see some monsters on the map as it is, thus allowing you to try and avoid them should you not wish to fight them, but there will also be instances where monsters will surprise you by suddenly appearing out of nowhere, which in effect is a sort of simulation that will probably feel much like the random encounter battles of the older
Final Fantasy games.
I mentioned battle transitions above, and this is something is Nomura talked about during his interview. The development team are trying to make transitions as seamless as possible in
Versus XIII, and so far whilst there is a bit of lag between in-game sequences and pre-rendered sequences (which they're currently working on reducing), in-game transitions are much fluider, with the only real transitions happening when you move from one major area to another.
Finally, a brief blurb came from the game's composer
Yoko Shimomura, who is probably most known to people for her work on the
Kingdom Hearts series. She commented that she hasn't actually started real work on the game's composition yet, and that she's currently at the stage where she's discussing what kinds of themes the game will need, and as a result she's conferring with her team as to the direction and style the soundtrack should go in. This hints that the game would seemingly still have quite a while to go before we get to consider a release date for it.
Speaking of music, I'd like to point out a little something I noticed. The one track we've heard for this game, used in its trailers, is called
Somnus, which is Latin for "sleep", the game's logo features someone apparently sleeping, and in the scan above, on the right-hand side of the battle screenshot, you can see that the street is named "West Insomnia", with insomnia of course being a condition in which one finds it hard/impossible to sleep. Thats three very prominant references to sleep so far, although of course I could just be overthinking a wee bit.
Final Fantasy Versus XIII so far has no projected release date, but with the current state of development as we know it, particularly its music section, I would estimate that late-2011 would seem the earliest possible release date for Japan.
Source:
FF-Reunion,
Final Fantasy World
