News

I got in my email a few minutes ago a pretty big list of updates and news with regards to Distant Worlds, the massively successful symphonic tour of music from Final Fantasy. Not only are there new shows being announced, there's a new CD release coming next year too.

Coming up this weekend, in Chicago, there's a pretty spectacular show planned; the Chicago Pops will be playing the first public performance of music from Final Fantasy XIV, for one; not only that, Uematsu himself will be there (as he will be for "many other DWFF Premieres," apparently). Oh, and he won't just be in the audience. He'll be playing with the "Chicago Mages," which I can only assume is essentially a Black Mages-style rock band made up of local performers. This show is Saturday night, 12 December, and as of the time I received the email, there were still tickets left.

Coming up, also, will be the first South Korean show, in Seoul, coming up on 6 and 7 February; then, over the summer, the tour will go back to Stockholm, then to San Francisco, San Diego, and back to Chicago again, with more dates and cities coming soon.

Finally, FFDW will have a second CD release next year, in June, just before the Stockholm show. No word on the tracklist for the new CD, just word that it is in fact new and will be performed at all the summer shows. I'll be sure to provide you with a nice AmaCoN link when the time comes!



Source: Final Fantasy: Distant Worlds Official Site

There are a lot of people out there who see the original Deus Ex as one of the finest games ever made, with its roll-your-own hybrid of first person shooter, role playing, and stealth attributes wrapped around a fantastic dystopian story. The love for this game continues even now, almost a decade and a mediocre sequel later; for that reason, many have been both hopeful and fearful of the third entry, should it ever arrive.

Now, you may be wondering, why does this have anything to do with our beloved Square Enix and its massive echelon of games? Well, the Deus Ex series belongs to Eidos. And Eidos belongs to Square Enix. And, in the nature of business as we know it, they're always looking for synergy across business units. So, here you go: pre-rendered cutscenes for Deus Ex 3 will be rendered by the folks at Square Enix Tokyo, the very same who have produced cinematics for your favorite SE RPGs over the years. Will it be the "A" team, the folks who just finished cranking out work for Final Fantasy XIII? Might it be some "B" team, the types who created the much less attractive FMVs from the Playstation re-releases many a year ago? Does Deus Ex even need these scenes? Don't forget that many of the cutscenes in the previous games change based on player decisions, so this might require a change to the core play mechanics.

What do you think of these events? Do we need more games with Square Enix-style cinemas? Will the design philosophies of the two offices clash? We might yet find out next year.

Source: EDGE

Massive amount of Square Enix news tidbits this week, since I took a couple unplanned weeks off, there. Sorry about that, I know that all of you out there are dying to not comment on these posts.

As usual, most of the small news items you might have missed have to do with Final Fantasy XIII. You know, it's coming out in Japan next week and all. With regard specifically to the Japanese version, you might have missed the reveal of this game's Cid, with the surname of Raines. He's meant to be a general in one of the military factions in the plot; however, as is usual, he doesn't seem to have much traditional military look to him. You'll see him somewhere along the line in a game that is fifty-plus hours long, according to director Motumu Toriyama. And, as you may have noticed along the way, the official box art for the US and European versions of FFXIII was first published this week, too. To me, personally, it seems a bit too minimalist, but if you still had any doubts about seeing it for the Xbox 360, well, rest assured that this is not a fake.

With all that real game-type news out of the way, check out some of the goofy hype machine that's still working in support of the new flagship release. If you're in Japan, you can get the chance to smell like Lightning (the character, obviously, not the meteorological event). It's peachy! It's rosey! It's musky! It's over eighty bucks! Probably tough to import, too, as it's no doubt a flammable liquid. Over here, though, your goodies are a little less pricey and a little more useless. Thanks to all the people who tweeted about Final Fantasy XIII on Xbox (you're welcome - ugh), anyone who registers for it on Xbox.com will get, sometime this month, a free baby Chocobo for their Xbox Live avatar. Certainly cheaper than the pets you can buy; I'm sure it will go well with my University of Illinois hoodie just fine, though.

Now, let's move on, shall we? Despite the fact that Squenix is laying off again, in Europe, there are still new releases in other series coming soon. An unofficial Twitter announcment implies that Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep will in fact make it out of Japan, notwithstanding any rumbles to the contrary. Not only that, you'll also get to interact with Zack of the Final Fantasy VII universe. Does that get a fangirl squee out of anyone? Yeah, didn't really think so. Finally, on the Enix side of the house, note that a western release of Dragon Quest IX has just gotten a little closer to reality, now that the game's name has been trademarked in several languages for the European Union. Leave a slot in your DS for 2010 for a cooperative, customizable JRPG, it seems.

Again, apologies for missing a couple weeks. It probably will happen again pretty soon, given the holidays coming up, so if you feel like filling my shoes, go for it!

Source: Kotaku, SiliconEra, Go Nintendo

More like Lufia: A Whole Damn Series Resurrected. Square-Enix is bringing back the cult favorite Lufia series (known as Estpolis or Estopolis in Japan) in the form of Lufia: A Legend Resurrected (Estpolis Denki: Yomigaeru Densetsu in Japan), a remake of Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals. The game will be a 3D action-RPG for the DS, bringing back the series staples of complex dungeon puzzles and customizable spells and special weapon attacks, but forgoing the traditional turn-based system for an action battle system where party members can perform team attacks.

News of this revival dropped last week in Japan's Famitsu magazine, with a second Lufia spot appearing this week explaining the new battle system. Lufia's developer, Neverland Software, whose more recent games include the Rune Factory series, is running the show once again, this time with Square-Enix producing. If Legend Resurrected is even half as fun as its SNES predecessor, then expect laszlow to make this a day-one purchase.

Source: RPGFan, More RPGFan

The Square Enix news tidbits for this week get a big flourish, as Squenix have just officially dated Final Fantasy XIII for North America (and, if you believe the video, also probably Europe?). The games for the two platforms will launch simultaneously on 9 March, 2010, which seems pretty fast; however, Yoichi Wada did just say the other day that the company was done with the Japanese version and was already applying just the final touches to the Western one. The official release announcement comes with a slick video as well, which you can watch at Kotaku or, probably, on Playstation Home.

If you haven't preordered yet, you certainly can - AmaCoN has not updated the release date as yet, but it surely will quite soon.

That's the big news of the day, but you might also be interested to know that Dragon Quest VI for the Nintendo DS has been officially dated for Japan, and that the first official release for the West should follow soon after; additionally, the company brought forth two more classes for Final Fantasy XIV, the Pugilist and Gladiator, silhouetted against the very same backdrop we've all already seen.

Have a good weekend, and I hope to see your Final Fantasy XIII preorders showing up in AmaCoN quite soon!

The title explains it all, really. Put it into your calendar, and we'll find out what's in store for us then.

What? You don't understand? Yes, maybe this topic title was a bit of a conundrum, but it's not that hard to figure out.

A HENCHMEN INVENTOR TENT UNTO

* footbigmike waves wand

ANNOUNCEMENT NOV THIRTEENTH

So, there you have it. Five days until a Final Fantasy XIII upate from Square-Enix. A demo? A release date? FFXIII on the Wii? Who knows. Hopefully happy fun times will be in store for us!

Source: Final Fantasy XIII.net