An Interview with the People behind Final Fantasy XIII

During E3, one of the most anticipated news was the release of Final Fantasy XIII for the PS3. The full title of the new Final Fantasy Game is Fabula Nova Crystallis : Final Fantasy XIII. To give us more information about the game, Dengeki Online has decided to interview the people behind FFXIII: Yoshinori Kitase (Crystallis producer), Motomu Toriyama (Crystallis Director), Tetsuya Nomura (FFversusXIII Director), Hajime Tabata (FFFXIII Agito director), and Masashi Hashimoto (FFversusXIII Producer). In this interview, they talked about the production of the game, its graphics and gameplay.

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Final Fantasy XVI’s Success Proves FFXIII Never Deserved the Hate

The black sheep of modern Final Fantasy shares the most DNA with 'Final Fantasy XVI’s successful design choices.

-Foxtrot83d ago

Huh? XIII was just terrible

Even something singular like characters in XVI are better

luckytrouble82d ago

Even as someone that actually kind of likes 13, probably helped by the fact I expected to absolutely hate it, man it could not be more different from 16. There isn't a single element I can more than loosely correlate between the two titles.

banger8883d ago

The main difference for me is the characters. I love the characters in FFXVI, I HATED the characters in FFXIII with a passion. F****** hated them. Every. Single. One.

RpgSama83d ago

100000%

Every single character sucked.

babadivad82d ago

I liked Lightning, didn't mind Zhaz and Vanille. I HATED that kid. I don't even remember his name. I never bothered touching his stats to upgrade him. I hated him.

Flawlessmic83d ago

I really dont get this comparison at all, outside of them being linear that's where the comparison starts and ends for me really.

Ff13 is a weird one for me, it's actually one of the only mainline ff games I havent finished and didn't even bother with the sequels.

I don't remember even hating it at the time, like i thought it was ok, just yea never got into it like I normally do with a ff game.

Ff13 isn't on the same level as 16 not even close though.

Even if you hated 16s combat the story, world and characters are so fantastic you will push through just to see the story's end

SegaSaturn66983d ago

FF13: Mash X button - win battle. Walk thru straight corridor, repeat.

Harkins172183d ago

I remember 13 having some thinking involved and not just mashing X.

jwillj2k483d ago

The FF 16 demo was similar in that aspect. “Smash square to win” it’s why I didn’t buy the full game.

MrBaskerville83d ago

I wouldn't go that far, battle system does have it's moments. But maybe mainly in later boss fights. Start of game is pretty braindead though.

goldwyncq83d ago

XIII also has setting up paradigms in advance and switching to the most appropriate one during battles, but of course people who haven't played it think spamming Auto-battle is the only thing you ever do in combat.

MrBaskerville83d ago (Edited 83d ago )

@goldwyncq
While the paradigm system was cool, I do think it takes long before it amounts to more than spamming auto battle. And while I remember a great deal of good fights, there's also an awful lot of auto-battle spam fights in between which is easy to forget because of the more memorable moments.

Same might be said about older FF games, but I still think they had a little morr flavour in basic fights. XIII has the issue that you can choose between a couple of actions, but they all feel like they amount to the same outcome.

+ Show (2) more repliesLast reply 83d ago
shinoff218383d ago

Flawless
Even if you hated 16s combat the story, world and characters are so fantastic you will push through just to see the story's end

Me in a nutshell

andy8583d ago (Edited 83d ago )

@jwillj2k4 it doesn't work in the full game though, have to remember that's the very start of the game and all final fantasies are the same. If you do that throughout it'll take 10x longer to finish the game, the combos and eikon abilities are what's used

jwillj2k482d ago

I’m sure there’s more you can do. My issue is that unlike FF7R there’s no reason TO do it. In 7R the game creates a feeling of making you want to do other moves since you’ll die if you just spam. In 16 winning just takes longer which makes it feel broken.

Hofstaderman83d ago

No, it does deserve the hate. This game left with such a hollow feeling after I first booted it up. The ONLY Final Fantasy game I have never replayed.