News

Final Fantasy XIII-2 inches ever closer, so it's no surprise that the week's news is primarily related to the sequel inbound. Kotaku posted not one, but two articles this week with nothing but new screenshots, and it seems that the hottest thing revealed within (no pun intended) is the new merchant, Chocolina, who dresses up like a chocobo on fire - if the chocobo wanted to show some skin. I'm hoping that getup is all faux chocobo, or else PETA will be on Squenix' case now that they're done with Mario.

The sequel also changes up the battle system a bit, as well as the excellent battle music, from its predecessor. It looks like the changes are subtle - to me, the battles in the video seemed a little faster-paced from what I've seen so far in Final Fantasy XIII, and the addition of quick-time events with chained combos from different party members looks good. It appears that you might be able to change the party leader during combat as well, which perhaps will also mean a change in the "hey, your leader's dead, no reason to keep fighting now game over hahahaha" aspect of the first game.

Also, for some reason, there will be DLC to allow Noel to dress up as Assassin's Creed's Ezio. This paragraph is short because, really, what else are you going to say about that?

An interview by Destructoid with Yoshinori Kitase and Motomu Toriyama has been making the rounds since being published last week, and it seems to have caught a lot of people's attention for the fact that it seems to indicate the possibility of a Final Fantasy that is a first-person shooter. Naturally, this has a lot of people up in arms (again, no pun intended), but if the quote is correctly written, the interview really says nothing more than "anything could happen at any time." There could just as easily be a FPS Final Fantasy as there could be a cart racer set with Final Fantasy charact... okay, well, that's a bad example.

Last news of the week, breaking just today, is that there actually will be a new action-RPG IP coming from Square Enix in the near future, once they can finish all the hires they want to build the game out. The first image representing this game was released today, and it means very little. If you presented the image without content, I would have guessed Devil May Cry at first. Not sure what that means, to be honest, but, hey, there's a big white owl.

Source: Kotaku, Destructoid

In what must seem like breakneck speed relative to the development of Final Fantasy XIII (or, of course, Versus), Final Fantasy XIII-2 is about to be released; it's almost exactly a month away in Japan, and it's due in the West in about twelve weeks. As it approaches, news of preorder bonuses collector's editions has broken, as seems to be the way with all blockbuster releases these days. In Japan, the Xbox 360 version will come bundled with a calendar showing stills and character renders from the game - just the kind of awesome bonus that is good for forever exactly a year. That's all the news from the land of the Big Red Dot, but, here in the United States the collectors editions are getting to be a bigger deal.

For an MSRP of eighty dollars, American gamers will have a crack at a pretty solid collection of goodies. The box art will have some very classy silver-on-white Amano artwork, and inside the package will rest an artbook and a four-CD soundtrack set. Beyond that, there are pre-order incentives being offered (it's not yet clear, but I assume these will be for both standard and collector's editions) at various retailers. I'll ignore for the moment that I really hate the idea of offering different bonuses for different retailers, and I'll just tell you what you can get: At Best Buy, you'll get a hardcover book that tells the story of the time between Final Fantasy XIII and its sequel; at Gamestop, you'll get a code for a DLC costume for Serah; at Amazon, you'll get a bonus boss battle against Omega - no indication if it's a similar Omega to a past Final Fantasy game, but this Omega can also become a playable character. Odds are that everything but the book will be available for free or as paid DLC eventually, though, so it would seem on the surface that Best Buy is the way to go.

Elsewhere, Final Fantasy Type-0 sold a half-million copies in its first week of Japanese release. That puts it roughly on par with some of Squenix' other big-time PSP releases, such as Crisis Core and the first Dissidia. That half-million number made Type-0 the best selling game on the market last week. And it still doesn't have a Western release date.

For those still excited about Dragon Quest X, the first MMO bearing the Dragon Quest name, we got beta details this week. If you're reading this, well, you're not in the beta. At least not yet. This initial round is only for Japanese players, and you must have a Japanese Square Enix Members account. The application process is kicking off soon and is competitive, not first-come, first-served. Also, since there's no such thing as a WiiU yet, this beta will be taking place solely on the current Wii.

Last, for the business-minded folks, Square Enix revised their projected earnings for the first half of the current fiscal year. The net sales only went up a bit, but the FY operating income and net income saw their projections double. Perhaps all is not yet lost for the company that seems to have lost its shine over the last five years or so?

Source: andriasang, Kotaku, 1up

Seriously. It's Halloween weekend, I've been working my butt off all day, and I have a pumpkin to carve. Let's just get through this as fast as we can.

At Nintendo Direct last weekend, a new video of Kingdom Hearts 3D debuted. I understand absolutely none of it, since it's in Japanese and I've never played a Kingdom Hearts game. Sora (and Neku from The World Ends With You) is there, though, and there's some gameplay and a large bouncing hamster-looking thing. And there will be 3D involved. Let your imaginations run wild!

Final Fantasy Type-0 released in Japan yesterday, too, ending months of infotrickle. andriasang gave a helpful final rollup of the most recent information, including details on the growing cast of characters, information about the Chocobo Breeding functionality, airships, and a lot more. They also detailed the odd way in which you'll have to swap UMDs. Essentially, you'll get to play the prologue and the last chapter on the first disc, and everything else on the second disc. The reason appears to be tied somehow to the multiplayer component. If you want to see a chunk of that opening sequence from the first disc, they posted that too.

Finally this week came the announcement that Squenix are teaming with Japanese mobile platform Mobage again. We've talked about their partnerships before, but this one is conceivably a bigger deal, because it involves the company's signature franchise, Final Fantasy. There's not much known about it yet, other than it will be an RPG that connects with your friends, or "where you fight for your friends," which could be construed a number of ways. Square Enix also says that it will connect to Type-0 in some way, and will be available this winter.

There, done. Candy time!

Source: andriasang

Long Roman numerals carry the week this week for Squenix tidbits, with a bit of Arabic thrown in for good measure.

The biggest news coming today is that Final Fantasy XIV is getting a full-on reboot. Such a thing was going to be necessary at some point, as the reaction to the initial version was almost uniformly negative. Yoichi Wada took the original team all off of the project, installed some new folks, and as of today, the game is relaunching in a Version 2.0 mode. The new version completely redoes the way maps are generated to avoid the loudly-decried repetitiveness of art assets. It will have a new graphics engine to support this goal. The UI layer is being redesigned, and the community aspect of the game is being re-engineered to include PvP, revised markets, and in-game mail messaging. Of course, it won't be a free game any more in the next few months, but those are the breaks when you're dealing with most MMOs.

You'll have to wait a while if you want this new and improved game, though; their current development roadmap calls for all these fixes to be complete by the end of February of next year, with "worldless party matching" and porting of current user data to the new servers to be complete by March. That's just for PC - the changes for PS3 won't be available until the end of 2012. Of course, with the bad taste the first version left in everyone's mouths, how many people actually will want this new and improved game anyway?

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is also trudging along. I present to you another long trailer for that upcoming release without comment, since yet again I've failed to finish XIII myself and don't want spoilers. Along with that new trailer comes word that there's going to be a ton of downloadable content for the game - enough that there will be one to two DLC releases every month, though for how long is unknown. Looks like part of it will be in costumes; while it's pretty awesome that downloaded alternate costumes will work even in cutscenes, I think that's going to be a hard sell for most gamers unless the content is dirt cheap.

(By the way, if you love long trailers, check out this new one for Type-0. It's twelve minutes long, for crying out loud. It feels very Crisis Core-y to me, which makes me fairly interested.)

Last this week, check out the gallery of screenshots debuting Square Enix' new game engine, called "Luminous Engine." It is early and it's clearly under the dual clouds of "marketing spin" and "controlled demo," but the company says it can do real-time photorealistic rendering of scenes, supports DirectX 11, and can cut development costs by thirty percent through enhanced development efficiency. Could this mean a new era of promptly-released, enjoyable games? Or just faster-to-market mediocrity? Oh, future, tell us now!

Source: Kotaku, andriasang, Final Fantasy Union

I feel like the Square Enix fanbase has probably been waiting a while for TGS this year, after the performance at E3 which this author was underwhelmed. The Tokyo Game Show, though, is right in Squenix' wheelhouse - it's the best chance the company has to get its core properties out in front of a group of gamers who remain enamored of everything the company does.

They did not disappoint.

We'll start first with Final Fantasy XIII-2, which naturally was the largest individual game on display this year. It's being released on 15 December in Japan, with a near-obligatory-in-Japan PS3 bundle. It will have post-launch DLC. It will have not one, but two theme songs in Japan, sharing a melody but with different arrangements and lyrics. One of the performers is Charice, who might be known to some American readers from her three-episode arc on "Glee" last year; the gist of the news seems to imply that Charice's track will be present on virtually all non-Japan copies of the game for both consoles. There were also two trailers at TGS, one for each console, which debuted a couple of new characters named Yaru and Kaias. The trailers also appear to reinforce the notion of time travel as a gameplay and plot mechanic. One trailer was also Kotaku did one better by actually grabbing some gameplay footage from the Xbox demo kiosk. The second video even shows off the giant Megatron hand from earlier screenshots - in battle!

Squenix are also supporting the new Playstation Vita with a few games; announced at TGS this year were both Lord of Apocalypse and the fantastically-named Army Corps of Hell. Both appear to be action RPGs from first blush.

On the MMO front, the company showed off a long-form video for Dragon Quest X, the recently-announced foray into online multiplayer for the DQ franchise. Reaction is decidedly mixed, possibly even more so than when Final Fantasy XI was first announced; however, some people are likening the game more to Phantasy Star Online than FFXI or WoW, and that might be enough to find the game a niche when it's released.

Oh, and do you like Kingdom Hearts? Have you been wanting more information about Dream Drop Distance for the 3DS? Well, there isn't that much. However, it is slated for a "Spring" 2012 release in Japan, which means we might yet get it over here next year. Not only that, it even gets a crossover character from The World Ends With You, which I'm told is one of the best reasons to ever pick up a Nintendo DS.

The "business days" of TGS have wrapped up already, thanks to the time difference between most of us and Japan, so that will probably do it for the big news for Squenix fans from the conference. It's open to the public for the weekend, though, so perhaps some more leaked video or other media will emerge - just don't bet on any further groundbreaking news.

Note: Seems like andriasang is having some issues today - the links work, I promise, just keep trying.

Source: andriasang, Kotaku

OK, maybe it's not the remake fans were waiting for, but it's something, right? Square-Enix's 2001 megahit will receive a high-definition makeover and be available as a PS3 game and a PS Vita download. Final Fantasy X follows hot on the heels of several other PS2 games receiving HD remakes on the PS3, including God of War I and II, ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, and the entire Sly Cooper Series.

This continues a trend of PS Vita games and PS3 games receiving near-identical ports. Multiplayer Vita games can play online against PS3 players and include many other connectivity features. Presumably, Final Fantasy X HD will have trophy support and scale up to 1080p, just like the other HD remakes mentioned above.

There is no release date yet for Final Fantasy X on the PS3 or PS Vita, but you can bet your memory card Caves of Narshe will report it as soon as it's made public.

Source: Kotaku