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Final Fantasy XIII is an upcoming role-playing video game developed and published by Square Enix. It is the 13th installment in the Final Fantasy series, and will be the first game of the series to be released on the Sony PlayStation 3. Unveiled at E3 2006, the game features a high-tech futuristic world, and a heroine who wields a gunblade-type weapon. Motomu Toriyama is the director of the game. According to Square Enix President Yoichi Wada, the storyline will focus on “those who resist the world”.

Final Fantasy XIII will run on the “White Engine“, a proprietary engine built for Square Enix’s next-gen games. The game was originally planned for the PlayStation 2 but was later moved to the PlayStation 3 after the development team discovered the power of the platform.

Gameplay

Combat in Final Fantasy XIII

From the footage shown at E3, battles in the game appear to be in real-time, similar to Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XII, but without the colored target arcs linking player to target. Square Enix has also confirmed that the game will feature real-time battles.

In a developer interview, Motomu Toriyama stated that the E3 Trailer shows what is known as the ‘Gravity Bomb’, known as the spell ‘Gravity’ in previous games. Presumably, it refers to the electrical energy field that surrounds the young woman shown in the trailer. She can use it to defy gravity or to attack enemies.

In the upper right-hand corner of the battle screen, a circle-shaped gauge is visible. Once the number inside this circle and other conditions have been met, the protagonist can enter a so-called Overclock status. This status has a slow-motion effect, slowing down everyone but the player. It has been suggested that this Overclock system would replace the traditional limit break system found in previous Final Fantasy games. Overclock seems to resemble the Trance mode in Final Fantasy IX. Once Overclock is activated a number appears inside the meter and decreases, probably signifying the duration of the Overclock mode.

While players will still be able to experience Final Fantasy XIII as an offline game, Yoshinori Kitase has stated in the developer interview that players will also be able to take advantage of special online features.

Battle System

Motomu Toriyama (Director of FFXIII) comments on Final Fantasy XIII’s battle system: Final Fantasy XIII took on the challenge of seeing how much of the battles in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children can be recreated in a game. The battles that were impossible to be presented in current Final Fantasy games were shown in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. In reverse, Final Fantasy XIII will show how much of that can be represented in the game.

Characters

The only confirmed main character as of yet is the young woman featured in the E3 trailer. It is uncertain at this time what role she will play in the game. Some people believe she is called Lightning, as this word is displayed in the trailer gameplay footage occupying the spot which would normally feature the active character’s name. In previous installments where Tetsuya Nomura had been involved, the characters were named after natural phenomena: Cloud from Final Fantasy VII, Squall from Final Fantasy VIII, and Tidus from Final Fantasy X. “Lightning” would follow this pattern.