Yahoo! UK: Final Fantasy XIII preview
We attend the UK premier for Final Fantasy XIII, playing the game on Xbox 360 and PS3, and talking next generation gains with both the producer and director.
The unveiling of each new Final Fantasy is always a grand and significant occasion. But in the four years since Final Fantasy XII, which have seen the advent of Xbox 360 then PlayStation 3, the gaming world has waited with baited breath to see how the top role-playing franchise would make the transition to high-definition.
The Final Fantasy role-playing game (RPG) series is one of the most popular and influential gaming franchises of all time, having sold a staggering 85 million units worldwide over the past 20 years. Make no mistake, Square Enix has a lot riding on the success of Final Fantasy XIII; the stakes are higher than ever because expectations have never been greater.
However, as the success of Avatar the movie has shown, now might just be the perfect time for Square Enix. People are more willing than ever to lose themselves in a make-believe world, welcoming grand tales of hope and defiance. From what we’ve seen so far, Final Fantasy XIII certainly has all of that and more, and intentionally so, according to game director Motomu Toriyama.
“In Japan at the moment as you know, there’s a long economic stagnation and slowdown – lots of people are actually living without hope. Therefore we wanted to describe the kind of life that, even if you’ve got all the cards stacked against you and you’re living in adversity, you still can be strong and you can live in hope, and with hope, and that’s the kind of message that we want to get across.”
For us, the most breathtaking moment during our first play of the game was when we stepped into the game world for the first time and explored a living, breathing landscape populated with an entrancing menagerie of strange creatures. Familiar enemies from the Final Fantasy universe such as Flans look more vibrant and life-like than ever before, like we believed they always should have looked. It was truly a magical moment for any Final Fantasy fan, and now we can’t wait to see more.
Earlier Final Fantasy games used powerful computer-graphics driven, non-interactive cut-scenes to elaborate on the plot. However once the cut-scenes ended and you stepped into the game world it was often a bit of an anticlimax. Not now; the story-telling interludes are barely distinguishable from the in-game action.
Of course it’s not just existing fans that Final Fantasy XIII must appeal to if Square Enix is to enjoy worldwide blockbuster success. The game must also convince the action-centric Modern Warfare generation. With this in mind, producer Yoshinori Kitase says that he and his team devised a real-time battle system that can be as complicated or as simple as you want it to be.
“What we set out for was a battle system which can present tactics, and also speed and action elements. Obviously you give commands to the main character, whoever it is, and the other two characters in the same party are basically AI, but it’s not as simple as that. The situation on the battle field actually develops differently in real time, so you should be able to adapt to that and make the right selections to employ different formations that are best suited to the particular situation.”
What this means in practice is that Final Fantasy veterans who want to spend hours tinkering with the battle system will certainly be able to do so, but those who just want to get on with the action can also sit back and let the game’s AI do all the tinkering for them. The end result is that the battles are as compelling, thrilling and ultimately satisfying as the rest of the gameplay.
Our hands-on time with Final Fantasy XIII showed enough to convince us that it deserves recognition as become one of the games of 2010; not just in terms of sales fuelled by global critical acclaim, but valued for its ground-breaking artistic merit.
Final Fantasy XIII is released for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on Tuesday, 9 March.
http://uk.videogames.games.yahoo.com/55/final-fantasy-xiii-0c9655.html
