The director of Final Fantasy XIII-2, Motomu Toriyama, has been speaking about the game and has revealed an unexpected influence in the shape of Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption.
"Among the millions of games that came out last year, Red Dead Redemption was adored by a lot of Japanese developers, including ourselves. Our game is not as open-field as that game, obviously. We did take some inspirations, however.
For example, missions can happen anywhere rather than having to go to a certain shrine, or base or something, and that’s from them. In this game you see lots and lots of chocobos and you can ride them.
The kind of feeling you get as you ride the chocobo, it’s a bit like the way you ride a horse. It’s a really refreshing feel good experience, and that’s one thing we learned from the game."
Producer Yoshinori Kitase has also discussed the graphical differences between the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of Final Fantasy XIII and why XIII-2 will not suffer the same problems.
"What we believe is even with Final Fantasy XIII there wasn’t an awful lot of difference when it comes to real time graphics. It’s about the same. When it comes to actual movie files, which was very heavy, the compression capacity of the two consoles was quite visible.
In the meantime, we are now capable of event scenes/drama scenes as real time graphics rather than movies."
source: http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2011/06/10/ffxiii-2-influenced-by-red-dead-redemption/
“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”
- George Orwell, ‘1984’
