FFXIII-2

[Insanecyclone]

http://www.siliconera.com/2011/06/17...ma-and-kitase/


Siliconera’s Final Fantasy XIII-2 Interview With Toriyama And Kitase

After playing Final Fantasy XIII-2 and seeing a behind closed doors demo of the game, Siliconera sat down with Motomu Toriyama, Director, and Yoshinori Kitase, Producer, to discuss Serah’s story.


Serah, Lightning’s sister, is the main character and while Lightning is in Final Fantasy XIII-2 everyone believes she is dead. In addition to changing protagonists, Square Enix peppered areas with hidden items you can reveal with Serah’s moogle, made monsters allies in battle, and designed the game with branching paths. Everyone caught up? Good.



The theme of Final Fantasy XIII is fighting your destiny. What is the theme of Final Fantasy XIII-2?

Motomu Toriyama, Director: Rebuilding or playing through the revival [of Cocoon]. At the end of Final Fantasy XIII, Cocoon collapsed and the world was destroyed. In Final Fantasy XIII-2 you will rebuild the world from scratch.



Why did you decide to make Serah the main character?

Serah is Lightning’s young sister who turned into a crystal in an early point in Final Fantasy XIII and Lighting goes on a journey to rescue her. In XIII-2, it’s the other way around; the two characters switched places. Lightning still plays an important role in the story, but the main character you play as is Serah who is looking for Lightning.



In the demo, I saw Lightning was playable. How often will players be able to use her in Final Fantasy XIII-2.

I can’t tell you exactly how playable to use Lightning in the final game. I can tell you – you will mainly be playing as Serah and Noel.


Can you tell us more about Noel, how he fits in the game and why you wanted to make him a main character in Final Fantasy XIII-2?


If you looked at Noel and his costume, it suggests he is a native resident of Gran Pulse. In Final Fantasy XIII the story is about Serah and Lightning all took place in Cocoon. Noel who has always been in Gran Pulse has no idea what happened to the sisters, the main characters in XIII. If you haven’t played XIII before you can find yourself almost like Noel because he’s detached from what happened in Final Fantasy XIII. These players can enjoy the events as a new experience.



Will there be any other characters aside from Serah, Noel, and occasionally Lightning.

At the moment, I can tell you Serah and Noel will be the main characters you play, with Lightning coming in sometimes. There will be over 150 types of monsters you can recruit and you can control these monsters, as well.

Almost all of the main characters from Final Fantasy XIII will make an appearance in some way or another.

Will there be any new playable characters aside from Noel… and the monsters?

[Laughs] We can’t disclose anything at the moment. Please be patient and you will find out.



How did the reception of Final Fantasy XIII affect the sequel? Did you incorporate any fan feedback into Final Fantasy XIII-2?

Yoshinori Kitase, Producer: We made Final Fantasy XIII with the concept of a story driven game. So much so, some gamers were not very happy with it and criticized XIII and said the game progression was too linear and the world could be more populated. With Final Fantasy XIII-2, we wanted to present a completely different experience with this game. There is more exploration and elements in the environment to interact with.

Another change is Final Fantasy XIII-2 has multiple objectives. How do these effect the gameplay, will we perhaps see different endings?

YK: I can’t say much about story branches, but what I can say is we are incorporating lots of replay value. We envision players won’t just play the game for a single playthrough, we want you go through many laps. Each time you go around leading towards another completion there are a lot of discoveries you can find. This leads into the game’s multi-ending system.



For the new hardware, PlayStation Vita and Wii U, are you planning on working on any Final Fantasy titles for those platforms?


YK: For now we are focusing on the three titles to come – Final Fantasy XIII-2, Type-0, and Versus. While we have no plans at the moment, we’re going to come to a point when we have to decide how we’re going to do our best with these new consoles.

[Kuya]

That's a lot of "I can't" in an interview.

[miokomioko]

I can’t say much about story branches, but what I can say is we are incorporating lots of replay value. We envision players won’t just play the game for a single playthrough, we want you go through many laps. Each time you go around leading towards another completion there are a lot of discoveries you can find. This leads into the game’s multi-ending system.

Ugh. If there's no New Game+ type shit going on and you have to start from scratch each time, I am going to be bummed.

[samalis]

Spoiler: show

http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o...8363644517.png

[Eaglestrike]

That's a lot of "I can't" in an interview.

...

This is SE...

[LinktheDeme]

This is also a game that is going to be launched in less than 6 months, not an MMORPG where revealing something will alter the dynamic of the game. Also I'm late to the party but insanecyclone survived the tornados? :D

edit:

In the demo, I saw Lightning was playable. How often will players be able to use her in Final Fantasy XIII-2.

I can’t tell you exactly how playable to use Lightning in the final game. I can tell you – you will mainly be playing as Serah and Noel.

Will there be any other characters aside from Serah, Noel, and occasionally Lightning.

At the moment, I can tell you Serah and Noel will be the main characters you play, with Lightning coming in sometimes. There will be over 150 types of monsters you can recruit and you can control these monsters, as well.


Will there be any new playable characters aside from Noel… and the monsters?

[Laughs] We can’t disclose anything at the moment. Please be patient and you will find out.

What they mean to say in this question is no, aside from the occasional "guest" character(which i believe they said you can't control?) there won't be any and they don't want this information to stop people from buying the game. The above interview answers pretty much indirectly give this answer. This makes me sad that I am most likely right

[Kurokikaze]

[/I]
What they mean to say in this question is no, aside from the occasional "guest" character(which i believe they said you can't control?) there won't be any and they don't want this information to stop people from buying the game. The above interview answers pretty much indirectly give this answer. This makes me sad that I am most likely right

^ this. It's actually sad how painfully obvious that was.

[miokomioko]

Preorders are everything! Who waits for a review before they spend $50+ ?!

[Nevex]

They'll still have to reveal that info before the game is released. I don't think there has ever been a playable character that wasn't revealed before the release of a FF game since FFVII or VIII.

I still think that FFXIII's battle system is completely wasted on 2-3 permanent characters, so that claim sounds fishy.

On top of that I can't picture Lightning fighting all her battles solo simply because the battle system wasn't made for that. Ok she has Odin but she also has a sword to swing around so she has to fight battles without her Eidolon.

Maybe I'm just being optimistic but I think they're not saying more about the other playable characters because they don't want to reveal crucial plot points.
I think it will be Lightning who actually gets the larger party, while Noel and Serah keep playing beastmasters until they find her.

Personally, I think it would be amazing if we get to play as the original six in that new world with their new appearances and everything, but that's just wishful thinking.

[miokomioko]

The only thing that makes me iffy about it at all is the available jobs revealed for Noel and Serah. They seem to have too many in common to make a decent spread, but with too big of a job spread, you won't even be able to do paradigms like Cerberus/Tortoise/Tri-Disaster for a long time... So, unless they eventually can perform all jobs decently well, they are kinda' limiting your realistic monster choices as you're probably going to use them to fill roles you're missing most of the time.

[Eaglestrike]

I would like the game to "end" with Lightning successfully rescuing Fang and Vanille and then you can control Lightning, Serah, Noel, Fang, Vanille and Cid and do all sorts of sidequests and endgame stuff.

The reason I mention Cid is because wasn't it Lightning + Cid in the first screenshots and articles about XIII-2?

[Gokulo]

The reason I mention Cid is because wasn't it Lightning + Cid in the first screenshots and articles about XIII-2?

That's not Cid ^^; At least as far as we know - just some enigmatic dude from the other dimension.

[miokomioko]

Lightning's mysterious antagonist is very likely an alternate-reality version of Noel, or someone related to him (Pulsian garb and all). Think something along the lines of Lilisette/Lilith from Wings of the Goddess.

[Alkar]

^ this. It's actually sad how painfully obvious that was.

Or they simply don't wanna use all their bullets this early? Are you guys seriously implying that SE has nothing left to reveal? lol.
Remember how long it took to actually know Snow and Vanille's names? or when Fang was actually revealed to be a playable character?
We still have TGS on the way before the game comes out and that's usually a good place to reveal extra characters or details.

[Tyrath]

Or they simply don't wanna use all their bullets this early? Are you guys seriously implying that SE has nothing left to reveal? lol.
Remember how long it took to actually know Snow and Vanille's names? or when Fang was actually revealed to be a playable character?
We still have TGS on the way before the game comes out and that's usually a good place to reveal extra characters or details.

Just remember, FFXIII had a lot more development time to actually make the reveals. FFXIII-2 is coming out later this year. Thats not to say we wont get anything new at TGS. Just don't expect as much as XIII had for a slow buildup.

[Nevex]

Regarding the ability (or lack of it) to change party leader during battles, while the MC dies = game over feature might suggest that it won't be implemented, what about these screenshots though?

http://www.andriasang.com/e/gallerie...ns/2132451697/

http://www.andriasang.com/e/gallerie...ns/2132451694/

Serah is the party leader in both instances, yet the camera is obviously focusing on Noel, as if he's the one being controlled.
Why would the game zoom on a character who's not being controlled while he's using regular attacks?

Now let's take a look at this other pic:
http://www.andriasang.com/e/gallerie...ns/2132451699/
This time Noel's name is the one on top, so the fact that you can change the order of your party members might be an (admittedly weak) hint that there will indeed be more plyable characters.

[Gokulo]

That has been brought up a couple of times already. But I'd say the answer is: we can't know atm. It might be because of some new battle mechanic, or just how the camera will work now, anything really. I think it's better to wait for an confirmation rather than rack you brain off with speculations on this

[ArchDizzle]

One of the playthrough videos the SE guy playing talks and shows that you can change the camera angles during battles so maybe thats it. I dont know why you would zoom in on a character you werent controlling other than getting a close up of their move set but who knows at this point.


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[Spira]

I was fully expecting all characters other than serah/Noel to be guests. 4 less characters to upgrade weapons for... 150 more to grind crystarium for? Lol
But I kid.. I think I'd like it more honestly. As if people playing XIII actually use all 6 characters regularly when given a choice..

[ArchDizzle]

If noel and serah are badass then that will be fine, they have a good chance dual wield swords + bow + beastmaster is nice on paper, however i expect noel to be good but its hard to see serah being worth a shit at least at the start if they hold true to her character from XIII.


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