TeamXbox Interview: Final Fantasy XIII Development Leads
Most of the game industry has its sights set on March 9, when Square Enix will unleash the next chapter in the Final Fantasy series on an RPG-hungry audience. And for the first time, Xbox owners will get in on the adventure when everyone else does, thanks to development of the project for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 for simultaneous launch.
At a recent demonstration to the gaming press, we not only had a chance to get some hands-on time with the game, but also to sit down and talk with a few of the development team. We asked a few questions about the game to Yoshinori Kitase (producer), Motomu Toriyama (director) and Yuji Abe (battle director) to get some insight into what they thought about when they were crafting the title. What follows is an edited transcript of our queries and their translated replies during the session.
TeamXbox: What did you set out to accomplish with this game?
Yoshinori Kitase: Since this is the first time that Final Fantasy is coming to hi-def consoles, we really wanted to take the series to the next level…a step further and showcase the evolution of the graphics as well as the gameplay system.
Another goal was that we wanted to take the story to the next level, to depict the human drama—the staple feature of the Final Fantasy series has always been a focus on the characters and having realistic relationships there. To portray that in the ultimate way was one of the goals of Final Fantasy XIII.
TeamXbox: What was it like working with the Xbox 360 as a launch platform for the game?
Yoshinori Kitase: It was more a challenge for the engineers and programmers to create something that applied to both systems [Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3]. With the Xbox 360, the programmers got to work on it starting about a year ago, and focused in a six-month period just purely on the development, the engineering of the Xbox 360 version.
Once that was done—even though that six-month period was the challenging part—development moved on from there.
TeamXbox: Is it an engine that you basically write it once and it spits out each system’s version or do you have to write each version separately?
Yoshinori Kitase: There are certainly engines that are specific to each platform, especially when it comes to the graphics, so those are worked on separately. The core engine that controls the game’s functions is a single one that’s applied to both platforms.
In terms of the character data and the planners’ workload, they only create a single set of data that can be used.
TeamXbox: As the series has progressed, they’ve obviously gotten more complex—some of it is the hardware capabilities, but part is the evolution of the game. You don’t want a new game to be too difficult that only the veteran players are good at it. How do you create a game that caters to the fans, but continues to draw in new players?
Yoshinori Kitase: With every Final Fantasy game, the battle system is created anew. Even though item names and things like that remain constant throughout the series, the experience is different every time.
Especially with Final Fantasy XIII, it’s something very different from what fans might be used to with previous titles. We were very careful to implement steps along the way so that the battle system is taught to players in little pieces, and they will get a hold and be able to control the system fully. Even though it’s very complex when it’s fully available to the player, newcomers and fans of the series alike will be able to gradually get into the battle system. That’s been something we’ve been really careful about throughout the series, always to have a solid tutorial system in place, and then unveil the complex, challenging battle system towards the latter half of the game, so that core fans can get into it as well.
TeamXbox: Speaking of the battle system, what did you feel you had to work on with this game…what did you want to introduce with the game’s battle system? The Paradigm system is an interesting way of handling things, so I’m curious what your approach was.
Yuji Abe: The main concept behind the battle system is being speedy and tactical, so the Battle Team took that and created a battle system that fit their overall goal. The main reason it’s speedy—they’ve evolved so much to the point that there’s so much movement going on onscreen, so they wanted to create a system that could keep up with that movement, but also keep the strategic side of it alive.
With Final Fantasy XIII’s battle system, we really shifted from more of a micromanaging the commands of each character to overseeing the flow of the battle and changing the tide of the battle accordingly.
TeamXbox: You don’t want the battle system play for the player, but at the same time, because of its complexity, you don’t want to hammer the player. How do you balance the complexity of the battle system with this lessening of the micromanagement?
Yuji Abe: It’s really up to the player how much effort they want to invest into the battle. As long as you have the functions of the battle system down, it’s not overwhelmingly complex.
The main focus of the Final Fantasy XIII battle system is definitely the Paradigm system and shifting the Paradigms. Players will have enough to do just managing the Paradigm system, and if the players want to take it a step further and also want to micromanage the commands while they’re also controlling the Paradigms, that’s more of an expert level type of style in the battle. People who want to focus on the Paradigm system can use the Auto-Battle command. The Auto-Battle availability set the line for players of different skill levels.
TeamXbox: Does the battle system change the Auto-Battle command based on the situation and what you’ll most benefit by?
Yuji Abe: The actions in Auto-Battle mode depends on what role they’re in first of all. If they’re in an offensive role, there are a lot of attack moves available to them. If they’re in a healing role, they’ll have those available to them.
The way they function, they could continuously attack in the way that AI characters do, but if you choose to use a “Libra” to get enemy information—such as their weaknesses; for example, if they’re weak against fire attacks and things like that—when you choose the Auto-Battle command in that state, characters will select moves that are specific to that enemy if they’ve “learned” and implement the attack that are necessary for that particular situation.
TeamXbox: So, if you use “Libra,” the battle system adapts with different attacks?
Yuji Abe: If you’re not using “Libra,” the characters do use random attacks, but then they do learn within the battle. For example, if they use a fire attack and it doesn’t work on the enemy, the character will know to choose a different attack the next time around. They’ll gradually learn the enemy’s stats.
If you use “Libra,” then they’ll know all that information up front so they can use it in the battle system.
TeamXbox: Where do you take the series from here? Surely, you take each game separately, but you have to be thinking ahead. How do you approach the future of the series?
Motomu Toriyama: All we can really say is that the Final Fantasy series keeps evolving. Depending on what hardware the title goes to next, the team will always try to pursue the best quality and try to utilize the technology to the fullest. We can’t say what direction it’ll go into specifically, but everything that we’ve always worked on with Final Fantasy—the technology, always having an immersive storyline and a new battle system…those three things will definitely will be present in any future Final Fantasy title.
TeamXbox: What are your feelings about Project Natal and what seems to be an evolution of game controllers among all the game companies to use motion control?
Motomu Toriyama: With the RPG style of the game, you have to spend so many hours in there, so a motion-control type of controller might not be best suited for especially a Final Fantasy…but it might be fun to have like dancing summons at some point and everyone could use the motion control to dance in the battle.
TeamXbox: In the course of development, there’s almost always something that developers throw against the wall to see if it sticks. Can you tell me one thing that you wanted to put in the game that didn’t make it because it didn’t work or you didn’t have the time to do it?
Motomu Toriyama [after one says something and all laugh]: Earlier in development, we did try in the field…right now, in the final product, there are certain places where the characters can go there and jump into different parts of the field. Early in the game, we tried a version where the players could control the jumping action, like in a Super Mario game.
That was ultimately cut because exploration of the field isn’t really the main focus of the game. The speed is something we wanted to keep up, and in order to keep the story flowing at a good pace, we felt that the extra actions in the field wouldn’t be essential to the final game, so it was cut.
http://interviews.teamxbox.com/xbox/2535/TXB-Interview-Final-Fantasy-XIII-Development-Leads/p1
