Kitase on Final Fantasy XIII-2
With Final Fantasy XIII-2 just a few months away from release we sat down with long time Final Fantasy developer and producer on Final Fantasy XIII-2, Yoshinori Kitase, to discuss the game, the franchise in general and the future of Final Fantasy.
How do you feel personally about the feedback you received after releasing Final Fantasy XIII?
We made Final Fantasy XIII a very story driven title, in consequence we understand lots of users thought that the gameplay was quite linear at places, and they would have liked to have seen more opportunity for exploration. So we took that view fully on board, in order to make Final Fantasy XIII-2 the kind of game they would be satisfied with.
Given the increasing development costs of games such as Final Fantasy, have you given a ready made engine any consideration for your next project, such as Unreal Engine, for instance?
One of my colleagues at Square Enix has used Unreal Engine, and his post mortem analysis on Unreal Engine says it's a great engine, but it does take a lot of customisation. So all in all it takes much the same effort, the same cost. I think Unreal Engine would be better suited to games such as a FPS, but with an RPG we would have to adapt it to lots of different types of needs. So I think it doesn't necessarily allow us to cut down on costs really.
The hero of Final Fantasy XIII-2, Noel Kreiss, seems like a confident and light-hearted character. Very different from say a Cloud or a Squall, or for that matter a hardened warrior such as Lightning. What was your reasons for designing him in this way?
Lightning was the main character in Final Fantasy XIII and she was a very cool and strong minded girl, who didn't show much emotion. For Final Fantasy XIII-2 we wanted to add a male character on top of Serah, and Noel, he looks quite mainstream and boyish type of character, but I want him to be a strong character in a different way compared to Lightning. And so we came up with this character.
How would you say he is strong in a different if you'd care to elaborate?
Let's look at the character of Final Fantasy XIII-2. Serah is Lightning's younger sister and in the beginning of the story Lightning has disappeared so Serah has to go on a journey to look for her sister. Even though she is very determined to find her sister she's very anxious, very apprehensive, she doesn't know what's going to happen next. So she has to be accompanied by a quite strong male character who can sort of offer her emotional support and who can sometimes lead her in the right direction. So it's that kind of strength.
There was talk of content that had to be cut out of Final Fantasy XIII for various reasons. Did any of that content make its way into Final Fantasy XIII-2?
The unused content issue has been quite badly misinterpreted. Obviously for any game or project you have to come up with lots of ideas and concepts to start with. And some of them made their way into the game, and some of them where just not taken up or deleted or whatever. After finishing Final Fantasy XIII we didn't have any of these ideas in "useful data" as such. We didn't recycle anything we had originally made for Final Fantasy XIII. Even if we had good ideas, some ideas obviously, I mean it's a sequel so lots of things are duplicated - characters, parts of the in-game universe. However, many of the ideas or suggestions we decided not to use in Final Fantasy XIII, rejects if you like, only very few of them are used in Final Fantasy XIII-2.
I've just said some characters and locations are duplicated, but the locations for example, some locations appear in both FFXIII and FFXIII-2, but even if it's the second appearance it has been quite dramatically adjusted or processed. For example, one location in FFXIII is now very wet, wetland it is always raining or it's always covered in snow or something like that. So it's quite dramatically different. None of them have been as I said "recycled".
We noticed that chocobos appear at the completion of an area, to allow you to go back through the level without challenge to a time gate. Was this something you designed with player feedback in mind, or was it just to encourage a bit of exploration after the player completes a mission?
When you visit a particular location for the first time, I'd rather the player didn't use the Chocobo. I want them to explore and walk about to find all sorts of different types of terrains and in-game environments. And then obviously you're meant to find a time gate and go through to the next dimension, but after you've been through this area you might think - "oh there was some area I didn't see in that particular dimension" or "I couldn't quite manage to defeat this boss monster" or even "I think there are more treasure chest to get hold of", maybe you can go back there. But when you explore the same area for the second time, third time you don't want to be hindered by lots of insignificant monsters so in that situation the option of riding a Chocobo is quite useful. So you can explore more thoroughly without having to worry about encountering unwanted monsters.
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- System:PS3, Xbox 360
- Genre:RPG
- Developer:Square Enix
- Publisher:Square Enix
- Offline players:1
- Release date:03 February 2012
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