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Nomura: Final Fantasy Versus XIII Scenario Is Complete
Game director Tetsuya Nomura told Japanese magazine Dengeki PlayStation that the game's storyline, character designs, and clothing designs are finished. Maybe we'll see it yet in our lifetimes?
Though the project has been under tight wraps since its 2006 reveal at Square Enix's E3 press conference, the timing makes sense if you look a little deeper. We can safely assume that Final Fantasy XIII and Versus XIII share engine tech, though Square hasn't positively confirmed it – who wastes millions of dollars building two next-gen RPG engines? In an FF XIII post-mortem interview, FF XIII producer Yoshinori Kitase admitted that the White Engine (renamed Crystal Tools mid-development) that powers FF XIII was a tricky piece of tech. "I think that instead of developing something new, we would try our hand at improving upon existing technology," he told GI's Joe Juba.
Developing a game while the tools and technology under the hood are in development themselves is tough. If getting Crystal Tools to a state where artists and designers can dig into their portion of the game's creation took longer than anticipated, it could easily have set the entire stupidly named "Fabula Nova Crystallis" set of projects back.
As great as it is to hear of any kind of progress on Versus XIII, we still haven't seen any gameplay footage outside of a brief conversation. Where's the battle system? Where's the world exploration? Hopefully September's Tokyo Game Show will have answers.
Props to fansite ff-xiii.net staffer Oji for translating the Dengeki interview and warming the hearts of all English-speaking Final Fantasy fans.
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