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Trailer Review: Final Fantasy XIII Looks Disturbingly Interesting

Posted by Bob Mackey


I'll admit that the creative direction of Final Fantasy XIII always bothered me a little--I was never a fan of Tetsuya Nomura's Japanese pop culture aesthetic--but after seeing the new trailer for Square's upcoming RPG (thanks 1UP), my tune's started to change a little. Only recently I've realized that I've begun to grow a little bored with the typical medieval trappings of JPRGs; I'm currently yawning my way through Tales of Vesperia, hoping something outside of swords and sorcery will eventually grab my interest. It's actually pretty exciting to see something from the JRPG extend far beyond the limitations of J.R.R. Tolkien and Gary Gygax, despite what my snotty 17 year-old self whined about FFVIII.

"It's supposed to be Final Fantasy," indeed.

Many of Nomura's games (or at least the ones he's had a hand in) have been slowly grasping at imitating the American blockbuster movie, and so far, Final Fantasy XIII seems to be the most extreme--or, according to some people, egregious--example of this mentality in action. Hell, when compared to the ninja acrobatics, machine gun fire, and exploding sky trains of XIII, Final Fantasy X almost seems like an art film. But, flashiness aside, perhaps the most notable feature of this new trailer is the actual gameplay on display; I'm not exactly sure what the hell's going on, but all of those numbers flying around certainly look exciting.



Suddenly, the 15+ month wait for Final Fantasy XIII just became much more painful.

Related Links:

Every Day is Better With Two Scoops of Final Fantasy XIII
Final Fantasy XIII Delayed to 2010--Wait, Where Are You Going?
Screen Test: Final Fantasy Versus XIII


+ DIGG + DEL.ICIO.US + REDDIT

Comments

Roto13 said:

There are still people out there who think "fantasy" means elves and lutes.

I'm really not a fan of Nomura either, and I think the characters in XIII look ridiculous, but I never let his designs get in the way of my enjoyment of Final Fantasy games. (He's directing Versus XIII, though, so my hopes for that game are really low.)

I've heard the battle system works like this: You have a certain number of action points allotted to you for your turn and each action takes a certain number of them. You can either use a bunch of weak, simple actions or fewer, stronger actions. Apparently they're trying to make it flow as well as possible, which sounds good to me.

January 28, 2009 3:16 PM

John Constantine said:

The battles really do look sweet. That description sounds very very similar to Chrono Cross' battle system actually. If it's like that and flows at the speed it does in this trailer, it's going to be tres rad.

January 28, 2009 4:41 PM

About Bob Mackey

For a brief period of time I was Bull from TV's Night Court, but some of you may know me from the humor column I wrote for Youngstown State University's The Jambar, Kent State University's The Stater, and Youngstown's alternative newspaper, The Walruss. I'm perhaps most well-known for my bi-weekly pieces on Something Awful. I've also blogged for Valley24.com and have written articles for EGM, 1UP, GameSpite and Cracked. For all of my writing over the years, I have made a total of twenty American dollars. It's also said that I draw cartoons, which people have described with words such as "legible." I kidnapped the Lindbergh Baby and am looking to do so again in the future.

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John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

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Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.


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