esterday I had a chance to sit in on not one, not two, but three Square Enix roundtable discussions. Each of the intimate chats involved up and coming titles from the publishing powerhouse, including talk about Final Fantasy XIII, Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope, Infinite Undiscovery, and The Last Remnant. Below is a bit of an appetizer as to what you can expect next week, when we will share the fully transcribed discussions with you.
Roundtable 1: Final Fantasy XIII
Yoshinori Kitase: Producer, Final Fantasy XIII
“The core of the Final Fantasy XIII series centers around the Fabula Nova crystals, so there is this basic mythology at the center. As you know there are other XIII titles in the works, such as Versus, and what each director did with these titles is take this myth that is at the core and create a game based on their own interpretation of this mythology. So for example for XIII director Toriyama gives his interpretation, and for Versus XIII Nomura is the director of that. But all the games are based on the same myth.”
Roundtable 2: Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope, Infinite Undiscovery
Hajime Kojima: Producer, Infinite Undiscovery
“In the world of Infinite Undiscovery, at the center of the story is the moon instead of the sun as in real life. And in this game world, the moon bestows magical power to the people and they thrive on it. In this story, with the moon in the center, there are foes that chain down the moon to the earth. There is a hero, who is trying to liberate the moon from those chains. He is not the hero (protagonist), the hero is Capell, who is a spitting image of this hero. So this hero and Capell meet, and Capell joins the heroes’ journey to free the moon, and along the way Capell grows as a person.”
Roundtable 2: Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope, Infinite Undiscovery
Yoshinori Yamagishi: Producer, Star Ocean 4: The Last Hope
“In the world of Star Ocean, the humans have World War III and they are on the verge of extinction. So as the subtitle says, this is their last hope, and the humans decided to move on to the universe and outerspace. After the success of the first warp drive, this is where the world of Star Ocean starts. This is their first voyage into outerspace, and they will encounter foes that are looking to cause trouble.”
Roundtable 3: The Last Remnant
Nobuyuki Ueda: Producer, The Last
“So, as you can tell from the title, Remnants play a key role in this title. The people in this world don’t know who created these remnants for what reason or when, but they do know that they possess a power. Some of the characters in this game use this power. The game begins with Rush, the main character, living on an island, with no relation to remnants whatsoever, when his sister is kidnapped and he embarks on a journey to find her.”
“There are many different uses for the Remnants. A specific example is with the character David, who appears early on in the story. He uses a weapon-like remnant called the Gaebolg, and this is used much like a gun shaped weapon. Also, in the city David is from there is a massive remnant that looks like a sword in the middle of the city. There is no specific power mentioned with this remnant, but they do know that around this sword remnant the city thrives, and they have built the city around this power.”
Tune in next Tuesday for the full transcription of all three roundtable discussions