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Fighting Fantasy
FFXIII's reductive design philosophy means that the entire package consists almost entirely of two elements: Combat and story.
Like so many other things about the game, the battle system is a new take on RPG combat that nevertheless calls back to previous Final Fantasy titles. As in FFXII, players take direct control of a single character; the other party members operate via artificial intelligence. As in FFX-2, much of the strategy of combat revolves around changing party members' roles in the middle of battle. As in FFX, summoned beasts -- Eidolons -- replace the AI-controlled party members when called, battling alongside the lead character.
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Yet there's much about FFXIII's combat mechanics that's completely new to the series. There are no magic points, though the spell-charge system of the original Final Fantasy isn't used, either. Instead, all actions -- melee attacks, spells, and special skills alike -- cost a certain amount of each character's Active Time Battle meter, which is divided into segments and recharges rapidly over the course of the fight. Different skills have differing costs, and it's possible to execute an attack before the ATB meter is completely full.
Specialized skills, including summoning Eidolons and high-damage spells like Quake, deduct their cost from a special five-point bar called the Technical Points meter. TP are recharged only after battle, and the amount recuperated after each fight is based on the party's battle rank, which in turn is a function of how efficiently the team performs. Dispatch a group of foes without stopping to heal -- which is less hazardous than in previous Final Fantasy games, as your HP regenerates completely between battles -- and you'll probably rank highly, earning lots of TP. Chip away at a foe without exploiting its weaknesses while turtling up with defensive or healing roles and you'll rank poorly, forcing you to wait longer until your next opportunity to execute TP-based actions.
It's a streamlined battle system to be sure, placing players in more of a tactical role. Speed is the essence of this battle system, from the almost overwhelming rapidity of everyone's overlapping combat actions to the game's emphasis on efficiency-based post-battle rankings.
"The base concept when we first started building the battle system was that it had to be tactical and speedy," says battle director Yuji Abe. "So, we advanced from there, and one of the main challenges the team faced in creating the battle system was the lack of magic point in the battle system. This makes it really easy for healer characters to just cast cure magic on party members and never have to worry about losing. So balancing that to keep it fair and yet challenging was the key to the final form of the battle system as it exists now.
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"Players should always keep in mind that the Paradigm system is the key to success in FFXIII," he says, referring to the class-change ability that becomes available in the game's third chapter. Paradigms are preset combinations of character classes; each of the three party members can serve in one six different roles (attacker, offensive mage, healer, defender, ally buffer, and enemy debuffer), and it's possible to enter battle with six different class combinations at the ready. Changing your party configuration is as simple as pressing the L1 button and selecting a different Paradigm. In any battle, players are limited to six combinations they've predefined through the main menu, though it's possible to cancel out of a battle at any time to adjust the presets to choices that better suit the current situation.
"Moreso than inputting specific commands and micromanaging on that level, it's important to look at the overall flow of the battle," says Abe. "Look at the enemy, look at their properties, and customize actions based on that. There are parts where the player could easily get stuck against certain enemies, and simply tweaking the Paradigm just a little bit can make the battle a lot easier. It's a simple difference, but studying tactics and enemies is essential.
"There's so much going on, and in a realistic-looking situation, that we had to ask how much micromanagement is really possible on the player's part. After the team played through the game, we felt we were better off having AI take care of actions on the other party members' end, leaving the player to focus just on the actions of the lead character."
Story-Driven
Of course, "realism" is a relative term; one of FFXIII's more notable elements is the rather fantastic nature of summoned creatures. Each character is bonded to a single eidolon, and each eidolon is capable of transforming into a vehicle for its master in a process called Gestalt. "We wanted to emphasize the combination between characters and summons," says Abe. "In contemplating this union, we came up with the ride concept. From that, we came up Gestalt mode -- it began with our wanting Snow to ride a bike, and everything else followed from there."
"It's a one-on-one character/summon relationship because we really wanted to emphasize the unity between them, especially because they transform in Gestalt mode. We really wanted the characters and these summons to fit together. We chose the pairings through simple inspiration. For instance, Snow and Lightning have names with specific properties. Snow was a natural match with the Shiva sisters because of their association with ice, and Lightning made a natural match for Odin. For characters like Sahz, who have new summons, that was simply inspired by the fact that we wanted Sahz to ride a red car!"
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"The art team was actually very adamant about making this realistic and to make it really work," Toriyama says of the Gestalts, which actually function mechanically; Square Enix will be selling a pricey toy of Snow's Eidolon, Shiva, which can transform from a pair of biomechanical goddesses into a working motorcycle. "Once it was decided that the summons would transform, we knew we have to take it to the next step. If there was going to be summons merchandise later on, we really have to make it work."
Characters are the heart of any story, and the story arcs for each of FFXIII's cast members will ultimately determine the true impact of the game. A compelling tale can justify a strictly story-driven game; at the same time, though, a dud of a story can undermine even the most inventive play mechanics.
FFXIII's plot revolves around a planet divided into two worlds: The insular Cocoon, and the forbidden underworld of Pulse. The former society has grown more closed over the centuries, with tales of Pulse's horrors fueling a fear within its citizens of venturing beyond Cocoon's safe environs. Cocoon's leaders particularly fear contamination of its people by powerful Pulse-borne beings called Fal'Cie, which can enslave and corrupt humans and turn them into L'Cie, agents of unrest against the ruling order of Cocoon. The merest hint of a Fal'Cie presence will prompt Cocoon's military to exile any potentially infected citizens -- potential L'Cie -- to the wilderness of Pulse.
The story of FFXIII begins in the midst of one of these purges, and its main cast consists of a party of people drawn from all walks of life who find themselves drawn together when they stumble across a Pulse Fal'Cie. "We wanted to create a wide range of characters," says Toriyama, "both in personality and in age, so that many different people could relate to the characters. With Sahz, he's not a hero -- there's no big save-the-world sort of motivation. Instead, his son has been turned into a L'Cie, so it's his determination to save him and love for his family that drives him. On the other end of the scale is Hope; where Sahz is the oldest character in FFXIII, Hope is the youngest. He doesn't start as a hero, either, and he doesn't have any courage. He's the most shaken up to have become a L'Cie, and he begins the game in a sort of depressed state after losing his mother early on. Just moving forward is his motivation."
Click the image above to check out all Final Fantasy XIII screens.
Much of FFXIII's plot plays out similar to the TV series Lost, with a heavy emphasis on character-specific flashbacks (some playable, some not). These flashbacks flesh out the events of the 13 days leading up to the purge and offer glimpses of the characters' lives before the calamitous events that bound them together. And, of course, there's the duality of Cocoon and Pulse, which is highly reminiscent of Final Fantasy's VII's divided city of Midgar. It's one of many seeming FFVII references in FFXIII -- though Kitase denies a deliberate connection.
"This duality isn't really a running theme," he demurs. "It wasn't our intention to create a connection [between the games], but I can definitely see the similarities. In both FFVII and FFXIII you start off in a sort of restricted world and are eventually thrown into an open world with a lot of freedom. The difference would be that in FFXIII there's a lot of monsters roaming in that world, flying in the sky, and so on. But the duality is the sort of thing that simply develops from the work of the game's scenario writer." He pauses before admitting, "I do personally like the theme, though."
It will be interesting to see if American gamers will be more accepting of FFXIII's highly reductive approach to RPG design; it was received with sharp criticism in Japan. Despite the game's flamboyant Tetsuya Nomura character designs, one gets the impression in talking to its developers that FFXIII was designed with western audiences in mind. Its structure was largely inspired by popular Western hits like Modern Warfare, Half-Life 2, and other highly focused, story-driven, cinematic game experiences. But will that make a difference, or will the series' longstanding role as the poster child of the fading Japanese RPG genre inspire gamers to pass it by... even though its creators don't consider it an RPG?
