Lightning Returns XIII-3

[Katlan]

removed

[RPGTyrant]

Website and facebook are up, website has videos of the stage presentation stuff, except of course the trailer shown to attendees only.
http://www.square-enix.co.jp/fabula/...ReturnsFFXIII/

[Greedouw]

most secretive company in the whole industry... ugh

[Alkar]

I'm excited.

[Fievel]

I'm excited.

Same

[Cichy]

throwing money at the screen

[Alkar]

I'll throw this here: http://www.1up.com/previews/lightnin...ii-first-looks

I really like what I'm reading, this has so much potential.

[Kiarax]

So... they're making this an action RPG now? Sign me the fuck up. The closer FF gets to Tales, the better.

[Lonely]

Ugh, a little upsetting with the direction they are taking now. I love lightning but throwing away the rest of the cast? Shit sucks. Majora's Mask doomsday elements could be really fucking awesome if they play this right especially with mechanics that toy with it. Need way more videos and stuff, sounds like one of SE's huge gambles.

[miokomioko]

Oh man... Dragon Quarter made a lot of people fangry. If that part is truth, this will cause quite the ruckus.

[Datonare]

I'm a little nervous about the time aspect, but if done well, it could be really cool. Other than that, everything else is sounding awesome.

[Insanecyclone]

Dawn of the Final Day: 13-3 edition.

[RPGTyrant]

Oh man... Dragon Quarter made a lot of people fangry. If that part is truth, this will cause quite the ruckus.

That mechanic turned me and everyone I knew off from Dragon Quarter initially. Years later though, I went back to it and must say that if LR:FFXIII is going to be anything like that system, I am excite. Was a nice writeup by 1up, should get people excited.

[Kurokikaze]

Action... RPG?? Um... I'm sold!

In before they canceled Versus for this. lol

[Cichy]

some more drawings and stuff

The Nico Nico live stream of Square Enix's Lighthing Saga presentation cut off just before the best part: an actual first look at the gameplay in Lightning Returns Final Fantasy XIII.

After high level introductions to the game from Motomu Toriyama, Yuji Abe, and Isamu Kamikokuryo, which you can see here, Square Enix turned off the cameras, told everyone in the audience to do the same, then showed a first trailer. This was followed by a gameplay demonstration.

Famitsu.com delivered a summary of the trailer and demo.

The trailer provided an introduction to the game's world and its time progression system. One sequence showed a time counter: "00/02:54:23." Famitsu speculates that by clearing quests, you can increase this timer.

Another sequence showed Lightning, dressed in a new outfit, in pursuit of the criminal in a murder incident. She pursues a group of suspicious people, making use of cover actions -- hiding behind walls, for instance. During the presentation, Toriyama explained that you can perform some sneaking actions using simple controls.

The demo play segment showed a battle sequence. You can customize Lightning's weapon, shield, costume and abilities. These customizations can be stored and switched between as you battle. The combinations also have names -- Blast Witch, or Holy Liberator for instance -- and there seems to be a visual transformation sequence. All this makes the customization combination system sound like the Paradigms of past XIII games, but it's not clear if the naming is the same.

Like your typical FF game, the battle system has an ATB gauge which fills up as time progresses. But there are some action-style elements here, as you can now assign skills to buttons. Famitsu also says that you can assign some actions, including an evasion action, to a button.

Larger enemies appear to have multiple "break" states. The earliest such state is "Knockdown." This lets you steal from the downed foe. The final break state is Overclock. This freezes time. The demo play demonstrated Overclock by freezing a Behemoth that Lightning had launched into midair. Lightning then pummeled it with attacks.

As we reported earlier, the demo version was based off an alpha build. The textures and voices were all placeholder (the voices were from the development staff).

Famitsu says that it will have an exclusive interview with the development staff in its September 6 issue.

[Tyrath]

So Action RPG that will probably come out before Versus? Excited and pissed that its not Versus, but I'll take it.

[Nevex]

I suppose once again SE "listened to the fans complaining" and chose to throw away every character not named Lightning. Thanks again complainers.

On the positive side, I'm curious about the countdown aspect of the game. I've never played Majora's Mask or any other game with a similiar system so it will be the first time I experience something like that.

[Alkar]

I suppose once again SE "listened to the fans complaining" and chose to throw away every character not named Lightning. Thanks again complainers.

On the positive side, I'm curious about the countdown aspect of the game. I've never played Majora's Mask or any other game with a similiar system so it will be the first time I experience something like that.

Lightning being the only playable character does not mean that everyone else was removed (see XIII-2 or X-2).

[Nevex]

I know, but going from "fully-fledged party member" to "cameo" isn't that far away. I was looking forward to have Vanille and Fang in my party again after FFXIII-2, guess it's not happening.

[Vaspinne]

Count me in. KH style battle system with elements from the 2 previous FFXIII games, with an added TWEWY/Majora's Mask end of the world timer, sounds like fun!