After many many rumours, Square Enix has again reiterated that Final Fantasy Versus XIII will be released as a PlayStation 3 exclusive title.
This will be greeted with a warm reception amongst Square Enix fans, but it was also the only piece of information that they could really ingest from the Square Enix 1st Production Dept. Premier Event.
A new trailer was shown for Versus XIII, but we learnt nothing else aside from how Noctis now sounds in the Japanese version of the game - very useful, I'm sure you'll agree.
Square Enix's 1st Production Department Premiere event is underway and rumour has it that the company is set to announce three new games!
According the show listings reported by FF-Reunion.net, Square Enix has at least one mysterious title related to the Fabula Nova Crystallis Project. The other two titles are as good as anyone's guess. They're listed under the New and Other Works category.
Final Fantasy Versus and Agito XIII are listed as well and will most certainly be showed at the event. What could Square Enix possibly do next for the FNC project? We'll just have to wait and see.
Square Enix have released the Tokyo Game Show trailer to the public. It contains what was previously leaked in obviously better quality. Check out the gameplay segments from Agito and Versus, it's quite impressive.
Square Enix will also be holding a media event in January 2011 specifically for the Fabula Nova Crystallis project, presumably to re-reveal each remaining title.
Tetsuya Nomura, legendary character designer and director of Final Fantasy Versus XIII has recently been posting on twitter. Unfortunately, he does not have his own Twitter account, if he did, we'd be all over it; Instead has been answering questions via the Square-Enix Members account.
When asked how far along Final Fantasy Versus XIII was in development, Nomura replied with:
"Not everything is connected together, so the various areas have different levels of progress. However, you can fly across the world map in an airship."
Airships are quite the tradition in Final Fantasy titles, so thats not really the biggest news here. The big news is the fact that they are controllable across the world map. That one sentence suggests a lot more exploration in Final Fantasy Versus XIII than it's older brother, and should make traditionalists of the franchise happier.
Final Fantasy XIII has been out for less than a week, but Square Enix are already talking about a possible sequel for the title - and yes, by sequel, we mean direct sequel.
Speaking with a Dutch publication, Kitase said "In the past three years we worked both on the world and on the various systems. Creating these systems isn't very glamorous and can frankly be a bit boring. If we could do a XIII-2, we could direct all our attention to the story and refine what we have already built."
For a company that likes to keep information very tight-lipped, recently, Kitase really isn't doing much to stop rumours starting up.
In an interesting interview with GameInformer, Yoshinori Kitase, producer of Final Fantasy XIII, basically confirmed that there are more titles in the Fabula Nova Crystallis compilation, besides Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII.
Yoshinori Kitase's exact words when asked about future titles in the compilation were, to "please look forward to future announcements." Just how many teams of staff do Square-Enix have to be working on all of these titles?
Speaking to GameInformer in a post Final Fantasy XIII release interview, Yoshinori Kitase, producer of Final Fantasy XIII, has revealed that creating the Crystal Tools engine for Final Fantasy XIII was a mistake.
Kitase stated that due to the amounts of refinement an engine has to go through, it would have been a lot easier and quicker if they had just worked with existing technology. With the game being in development for 5 years, it certainly hinders Square-Enix as a company.
With the Crystal Tools engine being made for multiplatform games, extending the development time of their titles by a substantial amount, it's a wonder whether Square-Enix will continue to use this method in the future, or whether they will use existing engines as Kitase has suggested.
One thing's for sure, the development time for Final Fantasy titles needs to be cut if Square-Enix are to attain a more reliable profit. It's also not a bad route to take if fans of the series are getting the games faster in future.
With the release date of one of the industry's biggest and most anticipated titles drawing ever closer, gamers just can't help but fidget in their seats as they endure the excruciating countdown. Fortunately, there's been a rather huge media blowout this week with plenty of video interviews, previews and the like to satiate the hungry masses.
Interviews with producer Yoshinori Kitase and designer Motomu Toriyama reveal a wealth of information about Final Fantasy's story and gameplay. Many have asked the question if players were only capable of controlling the main character at any given time, but as it turns out, they'll be given the option of who to control as well as who to put in their party. They also speak about the history of Final Fantasy XIII, its technology and the development process which, as Kitase stated, the developer wished they could have "brought the game out a little sooner to players."
Read the rest and check out the media after the jump.
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