*New Versus XIII information from 4 page interview at Famitsu!

[Goli]

Tetsuya Nomura promised a brief update on Final Fantasy Versus XIII for this week's Famitsu. He provided a bit more than that, devoting a full one page of his four page interview with the magazine to the game. Here's some of what he said, as summed up at FF-Reunion.

Much of the discussion was about the game's event scenes. As with most games, there are two types of event scenes in Versus: pre-rendered and real time. The difference about the Versus real time scenes is that they're all controllable. They decided to get rid of the non controllable real time cut scenes in order to keep the play from stopping.

Regarding the controllable cut scenes, Nomura said to expect more natural expression as opposed to the game-like expression of past games. He also mentioned some sort of new system for this area, something that he feels has never been done before.

(The FF-Reunion summary says that Nomura said something about the cut scenes being more like an FPS than an RPG, but the context of the statement is a bit unclear so I'd suggest waiting for a more detailed summary.)

Nomura debuted three new screenshots for Famitsu's editors -- just for the editors, as Square Enix apparently won't let screens be shown to the general public. Famitsu was impressed, saying that they couldn't believe what they were looking at was real time.

The three screenshots included a scene of an Italy-like city showing Noctis looking up at a behemoth, an afternoon shot of Noctus on what appeared to be the side of the highway, and the same highway shot but at night. The signs on the highway apparently say "Meguro," which is a region of Tokyo (As far as I know the game doesn't actually take place in our world, although this isn't the first time a real world name has been found in the game).

One reason the game may look so good is because there are only minimal differences between the game's high and low quality models. According to Nomura, they've kept the high and low quality models the same, with exception to the greater hair detail in the high quality versions.

The inclusion of Takeshi Nozue on the staff also helped, said Nomura. Nozue was able to apply use his pre-rendering knowhow on the game's real time scenes, specifically with regards to lighting technology.

Famitsu noted that the screenshots looked like real photos. Nomura replied with an aside that you can take pictures in the game. Noctis has a cell phone, and you can take pics wherever you like.

Regarding when we'll get to see the images that Famitsu's editors were shown, Nomura just said we'll have to wait a bit. He also noted that areas we've already been shown now have the new lighting technology, so we'll have to wait to see these as well.

Moving on to a general development update, Nomura siad that because they're trying out a lot of new challenges, the development staff is still focused on the core members. However, they're making preparations to enter full production.

They're also gradually recording the game's voices. Regarding the recording, Nomura said that there are many scenes where the four male characters are engaged in realistic conversation, with their voices overlapping. These scenes are being recorded by having the four voice actors together on the recording session simultaneously.

So when will we get our next bit of Versus XIII info? Nomura said that the timing for the next reveal has been set, but he would not say when. For the next update, though, he said that they'd like to deliver it along with some good information.

Source (Andriasang)

Source (FF-Reunion in Japanese)

FF-Reunion twitter feed
At this point I just hope Versus XIII is released before the end of the world ):.
sonothappening

 

[Slyakin]

This is amazing information!

I really want to see some of these pictures now, though...

:yay ff13:

The source's picture also looks so amazing. Best looking PS3 game? Probably.

 

[Goli]

Yeah... that's CG though.
But still, if they really are trying to keep CG-Event-Battle-Field looking more cohesive, I'm sure the game will look close to that.

 

[machomuu]

Man, I still need to beat FF13.

 

[Deadmon]

Man, I still need to beat FF13.

FFv13 isn't really related to FF13, but yes, go finish FF13 if you want to play FF13-2.

 

[ChuckBartowski]

MFW this game will be better than the main game. XD

 

[Nathan Drake]

I'm excited about Versus XIII, as it is being made with nothing really in common with XIII except for "Final Fantasy" and "XIII" being in the title (as far as I'm aware - I haven't been keeping up too well). This game really needs to be finished though. I remember seeing this announced years ago.

 

[Hyro-Sama]

So pumped. I will get a PS3 just for Versus and FFXII-2.

 

[Fudge]

No offense, but I think it's kinda dumb that Goli has to put some message about "no hate or spam" in every FFXIII related thread he makes. Thats like if I made a thread called "New MW3 Info - No saying it sucks!". It just wouldn't happen.

 

[Nathan Drake]

No offense, but I think it's kinda dumb that Goli has to put some message about "no hate or spam" in every FFXIII related thread he makes. Thats like if I made a thread called "New MW3 Info - No saying it sucks!". It just wouldn't happen.

You sir, have a point. You can't just say "Those who have a different opinion than I do, GTFO!" If anything, you attract the flamers rather than warding them off like you may be trying to do.

If you can't accept that other people don't share the same love in a game that you do, you yourself need to GTFO, not the haters.

 

[prowler]

go finish FF13 if you want to play FF13-2.

It's looking like you don't need to know anything about FFXIII to play FFXIII-2.

They even spoiled the ending in the first trailer.

 

[Goli]

No offense, but I think it's kinda dumb that Goli has to put some message about "no hate or spam" in every FFXIII related thread he makes. Thats like if I made a thread called "New MW3 Info - No saying it sucks!". It just wouldn't happen.

You sir, have a point. You can't just say "Those who have a different opinion than I do, GTFO!" If anything, you attract the flamers rather than warding them off like you may be trying to do.

If you can't accept that other people don't share the same love in a game that you do, you yourself need to GTFO, not the haters.

I usually don't post in threads of games I don't like, unlike, well, PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE HERE.
I don't like MW for example, but I don't go around every thread about it saying "omgggit sux!!" like many people do here for so many other games (and other non-gaming things too).

Putting those warnings generally has worked well, so no, it doesn't attract them, and the reason I put them is because generally SOMEONE goes and says something that derails the topic into:
A) Saying SE sucks for things every company does.
B) Complaining about KH's story even if the topic HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH KH.
C) Saying something about SE losing their touch, then someone mentiones FFVII, then people talk about a remake, nd some people are like "omg remakes give me nao!!1" and others like "omg gtfo PRE FFVII FINAL FANTASIES ARE THE REAL FINAL FANTASIES" and then they go back and forth.

QUOTE(Deadmon @ Jul 13 2011, 06:08 AM)

go finish FF13 if you want to play FF13-2.

It's looking like you don't need to know anything about FFXIII to play FFXIII-2.

They even spoiled the ending in the first trailer.

And even if you didn't, assuming the auto-clip/datalog is still there, I'm sure it'll have a summary of all of FFXIII's events.

 

[shakirmoledina]

amazing details and it seems they are inventing new ideas that prev games did not have and this is what i call creativity unlike portal/valve (lol, kidding)

 

[ZAFDeltaForce]

Lets hope the dubbing actors employ the same recording system.

The dialogue in FF13 feels so... Static and dead. It didn't really feel like the characters were actually talking to each other