Interview With Kitase And Toriyama From Final Fantasy XIII

We're only a month away from the release of the highly anticipated Final Fantasy XIII in areas outside of Japan, and many people are clamoring for all the news that they can get on the game while it's hot. Luckily the folks over at the PlayStation.Blog in Europe got a nice interview with both the game's producer, Yoshinori Kitase, and director, Motomu Toriyama, about what we can expect with the worldwide release of the game, upcoming plans for the FF XIII universe, and why there might never be another game like Final Fantasy XIII to come from Square Enix.

The biggest question on people's minds is the statement posed by Yoichi Wada a little while back in which he states XIII would be the last game of its kind from Square Enix. Many were confused by the statement, and apparently even the people there are still somewhat perplexed by what exactly he meant; however, Kitase and Toriyama try to shed some light on the subject:

We don't know exactly what he meant by that. We don't really know what he meant by this style of game. If you consider that during Final Fantasy XIII's development, at peak time the team consisted of over 300 people. It was a huge team, plus it took a several long years to get the game finished. So, if Mr Wada meant that we would never make another Final Fantasy title with the similar number of people, taking as long as FFXIII did, we would agree. Obviously in the future we want to be much more efficient. Having worked on XIII, we feel that we have got much better at making good games for high definition consoles. In the future our teams will be smaller and more effectively run. We suspect that is what Mr Wada meant by his statement.

With Final Fantasy XIII Versus in the works, many people are wondering just how long Square Enix will be developing titles in the FF XIII world and how interrelated these games will be, apparently we can expect at least three games altogether:

Will Final Fantasy Versus XIII have any links to Final Fantasy XIII?

Final Fantasy Versus XIII is part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis series, but XIII and Versus XIII only share the same basic mythology. The fal'Cie and l'Cie are just a small part of this mythology, but the story and the characters are completely different.

Are there any games within the Fabula Nova Crystallis series that have yet to be announced?

At the moment we are concentrating on releasing Versus XIII and Agito XIII. At the moment we have no other specific plans to release any other titles as a part of the Fabula Nova Crystallis series.

Perhaps the one of the question I found most appealing about the game is what lies out there for the player once the main story is over, and apparently there is quite a bit:

When you finish the main quest there are some growth elements of the the characters which will unlock once you've defeated the last boss. After this is done, you'll be easily able to return to Pulse and take part in the many missions available there. There is no way to start the game again with your current character stats, however.

I have to admit, despite my recent wanning in all things Final Fantasy over the past few years, all the hype and info on this upcoming and "HD" child of the venerated series really does have me interested in picking up the game, even if it is to once again stop playing halfway through the story.

Check out the full interview over on Europe's PlayStation.Blog.

An Interview With Final Fantasy XIII's Kitase And Toriyama [PlayStation.Blog]