Scans are beginning to surface on the internet of the latest issue Famitsu, which has more of their interview with Final Fantasy Versus XIII’s director, Tetsuya Nomura. In the page we have, Nomura speaks of announcements being made at this year’s E3, but more significantly, mentions that they’re looking at releasing Versus in three separate parts as a way of bringing forward the release date.
Nomura explains that Square-Enix are aware of the frustration of fans with regards to the length of Versus’ development time. He also says that, after experimenting with DLC in Final Fantasy XIII-2, SE are keen to make regular use of downloadable content and are looking at releasing the last two thirds of Versus as download-only. He does not mention how much these will cost.
If we’re being told this much now, E3 is definitely going to be a big event for Versus fans. Thanks to forum member BlankChocobo for the translation!
This week’s Famitsu has some interesting comments from Versus XIII director Tetsuya Nomura regarding the game’s progress.
According to him, he has some news on the project and is almost ready to reveal a lot of info for us (finally) – but some some “totally unrelated” reasons, he can’t. He’s also not allowed to talk about the situation stopping him, and all he can do is “continue discussions” – with who, it isn’t said.
Is he being pushed for Multi-Plat maybe? Or do Square want Versus on the down-low to stay out of the spotlight for another game? Maybe it’s being cancelled after all these many years. Who knows? Hopefully, we’ll know very soon. Until then, we’ll have to keep waiting for our next Versus XIII update.
You can discuss the lack of news in our forums here.
In a recent interview with Famtisu Magazine, Nomura has spoken about Final Fantasy Versus XIII while basically saying nothing. He also confirmed that the development of Square-Enix’s remake of the excellent Final Fantasy X in HD is underway.
The graphics have evolved beyond the fairly impressive trailer shown last year and have improved considerably. A few scenes which do not require much ‘player control’ have been remade in CG to wow audiences with Square’s famous prerendered CG prowess, including the scene where Noctis meets Stella for the first time. Square decided to drop the amount of CG in the latest iteration of the series, Final Fantasy XIII-2, so it’s nice to hear the tradition will continue with Versus.
Said trailer was not previously running on Playstation 3 hardware, however the next time we get a glimpse of Versus it will be running on an actual PS3, giving a better idea of how the game will actually look.
Finally, the event known as the Square Enix 1st Production Department Premier which was held last year will not take place again, which isn’t much of a surprise considering Versus is the only Fabula Nova Crystallis game at the moment.
While we’re all hoping for a full blown public display and perhaps even a release date for Final Fantasy Versus XIII, we can only sit and wait as these announcements have no specific event or date attached. Let’s hope when they actually do show something it will live up to our increasingly heightening expectations.
Ready for your yearly dose of Versus news? Tetsuya Nomura pops up in an interview in the recently released Final Fantasy Type-0 Ultimania. In it, he says that the design for Moogles in Final Fantasy Versus XIII will be close to what we’ve seen in Type-0. There you have it. Announcement of Moogles in Versus. Not exactly world stopping. He doesn’t go into any more detail of how the adorable creatures fit into the much darker world. Maybe they’ll all be dying.
Source: Andriasang
As well as the FFXIII-2 details, Famitsu has also interviewed Tetsuya Nomura in their latest issue. He mostly discussed Kingdom Hearts 3D but he did give a few development details on Final Fantasy Versus XIII.
Nomura told Famitsu how he performed a walkthrough of the entire world map recently, checking out the towns and dungeons on the way. He said he was amazed at how wide and impressive everything was. A slightly subjective opinion which isn’t much use to us but he does confirm the use of a new lighting engine. Previously, he stated that the games lighting was being improved and that he was aiming for Versus to be photo realistic. Today he confirmed that an entirely new engine was being used just for it.
The Luminous Engine which was announced back in August is Square Enix’s next generation tool kit and parts of it are being implemented into Versus. The engine does have a small tech demo showing what it can really do (not constrained by specific hardware however). Below is a photo and a screenshot from the tech demo. The left is the photo and the right is the render from the engine. A slightly unfair comparison but it still looks impressive. The 15 second walkthrough video of the scene is available here but only works on some browsers (IE). Youtube however, doesn’t do it justice.
Nomura also says another engine (seperate to Crystal tools) is being utilized for action. The fact that the games engines are still a major talking factor does douse any expectations of an upcoming release. With in-engine trailers already released though, there may have been a lot of work done to what we’ve already seen.
Tokyo Game Show. One of the world’s major gaming events and Japan’s biggest. Every September, gamers and their representative media swarm to get a dose of upcoming gaming awesome. Unfortunately for some, Final Fantasy Versus XIII won’t be a part of the sweet gaming formula pumped directly into the veins of the gaming world this year.
Speaking to Dengeki and doing them a little art favour as part of their 500th issue, Tetsuya Nomura said that Versus wouldn’t be appearing, but the next showing of the game has been set. When? He didn’t say, but they know and they will hopefully stick to it.
May this year marked five years since the game’s announcement.
Source: andriasang.com
As promised last week, Tetsuya Nomura has released new details on Final Fantasy Versus XIII in the form of a short interview with Famitsu in their latest issue. Unfortunately, a lot of the new information given is difficult to understand without actually seeing what Nomura is talking about or the screenshots he showed the editors but that didn’t stop him.
Cutscenes were a major topic in the interview. Final Fantasy has always had cutscenes in 3 flavours. CG, pre-rendered and real-time. Historically, they’ve never been controllable but Nomura wants to end that. He says that all real-time cutscenes in Versus will be controllable in order to keep the game from stopping. How it’s been implemented it is unclear but we can assume it could possibly involve NPCs talking while the character you’re controlling is still able to explore. If that’s the case, it doesn’t sound incredibly revolutionary but we’ll have to wait and see.
Nomura goes into more depth about cutscenes, this time concerning facial expressions which he claims will be much more natural, unlike the “game-like” expressions of past games. Although what he means is unclear, he also mentions a new system in that area which he thinks hasn’t been done before. We’ll have to wait to see what he means.
Three screenshots were shown to the editors, all in real-time, and all apparently stunning. They include shots of an Italian like city, an afternoon shot of a highway, and the same but at night. Nomura says the real-time looks so good because the low quality and high quality models are almost identical, apart from the hair which is slightly better looking on the pre-rendered models. Takeshi Nozue is responsible for the near pre-rendered look of the real-time shots thanks to his knowledge on lighting and other pre-rendered tricks. While the editors noted that the screenshots looked like photos, Nomura also said that you can take photos in-game with Noctis’ cellphone. The screenshots won’t be available to the public yet but when they are, he says they’ll look even better thanks to an improvement in the lighting technology.
Concerning development itself, Nomura says that they’re preparing to enter full production. Voice acting is being slowly recorded now so hopefully our next trailer could be fully voiced.
Source: Andriasang
Nomura has apparently claimed that there will be a “little followup” to this weeks issue of Famitsu which will include new information on Final Fantasy Versus XIII and will all be featured in next weeks issue.
This weeks edition already contains over 70 pages of Square Enix content which is all, just about, making it’s way online. It isn’t clear why Versus will be featured in next weeks issue but apparently, Nomura has also hinted at a new title being announced.
Source: FF-Reunion
Famitsu has released it’s interview with Final Fantasy Versus XIII director, Tetsuya Nomura, and it turns out to be rather lengthy. Andriasang have once again taken on the mammoth task of translating and summarising the interview and they’ve done a great job.
Along with the interview also comes the artwork of Noctis featured in both the magazines released so far but unfortunately in a rather small size. See it and the interview below.STORY AND CHARACTERS
The 1st Production Department Premier event trailer, which offered us our first true look at Versus XIII gameplay (ignoring the few seconds from the game’s brief Tokyo Game Show trailer) was almost all in-game. The opening section, which showed Noctis and his driver driving down a freeway was CG (not live action footage, Famitsu confirmed),
but everything from the conversation scene between Noctis and Stella was real time running on the PlayStation 3. This includes the flyby scene with the masses of buildings that precedes the combat part of the clip. (Nomura didn’t say this, but the end of the clip does appear to have a short CG sequence.)
The trailer, Famitsu noted, allows us to better get a grasp of the characters, as we get to first hear Noctis, and his allies. Furthermore, the ally clothing has been redone.
These areas appear to be final designs, although Nomura said that he’s playing around with the hair a bit. Even the voices that you hear for the allies during the combat scenes is from final voice actors, chosen via auditions…
Read the rest of the interview at Andriasang
Source: Famitsu
The exclusivity status of Final Fantasy Versus XIII is a long debated and overly drawn out one. It doesn’t help that Square Enix’s development teams put out one message to keep fans happy and the executives put out another to keep share holders happy. With Nomura sticking to his guns and assuring fans that the game will remain a Playstation 3 exclusive and Yoichi Wada saying Square is looking into a multi-platform release, you can probably guess who’s going to win the debate.
Potential proof that Xbox 360 development may have already begun lies in a job listing posted on Square Enix’s careers page asking for a Battle Planner for the game. The job asks for experience in developing a 3D action game, level design and battle design as well as the clincher – “development experience on a PS3, or Xbox 360 package title”. It certainly isn’t definitive proof that an Xbox 360 version is planned and it could be simply a mistake by the recruitment team but it’s certainly some food for thought.
Source: Kotaku
Final Fantasy XIII Japanese Commercial 1 HD
Final Final Fantasy XIII Trailer (Translated)Final Final Fantasy XIII Japanese TrailerFinal Fantasy XIII Release Date Announcement Video
Japan: December 17th 2009
NA: March 9th 2010
Europe: March 9th 2010 Japan: December 15th 2011 NA: January 31st 2012 Europe: February 3rd 2012 Japan: TBA NA: TBA Europe: TBA Japan: October 13th 2011 NA: TBA Europe: TBA
