Final Fantasy XIII and Versus XIII - new trailers report

As ever, the latest trailer opens up with the same quote from Shakespeare's Hamlet: "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Even less new material was shown than the FFXIII trailer. What's here is still intriguing and beautiful, is the Versus XIII trailer. It begins with the (presumed) protagonist, a black-clad and apparently perpetually bored dude, sitting in the back of an expensive-looking car and listening to a news report as it zooms through a modern city. "This is a fantasy based on reality," the trailer promises. It looks like modern-day Tokyo, more or less, but darker and more foreboding, with black buildings and harsh lighting.

The trailer then picks up with the fantastic sword battle we've seen before - between the man and the soldiers who wait for him outside of the building he's sitting in. He several magical floating swords to deflect their bullets (this time we noticed that he even brings his swords close to the soldiers so their deflecting bullets bounce back and kill them.) He teleports around, knocks soldiers off of buildings, is constantly protected by the crystalline floating swords, and sometimes even wields a real, metal one. Our thought: if this dude is the main character, he's going to be way overpowered when you play as him. It's going to be crazy, either way.

He also grabs and breaks a soldier's arm and uses his gun to shoot other soldiers before snapping his neck - it's almost gruesomely violent, and a big departure for Final Fantasy for sure. This is going to be one dark game. It also appears, we noticed, that when he chucks his sword at an area (and it sticks in) he can then teleport to where the sword landed, which seems to maybe suggest some mechanism for how it works (and what might make for some very hot, exploratory gameplay. But this canned trailer is far from being "real" gameplay at all so that's pure conjecture.)

The trailer ends with a very new part: after the battle, our man heads back into his building. Inside, a white robed figure is waiting for him. The two prepare to fight and both strike - the white robed enemy surrounded by the main character's magical swords while the main character is surrounded by magical figures traced in the air which the white-clad figure cast. It's a standoff, and there it ends. Given that we saw most of this trailer almost a year ago, we're almost criminally eager to find out more, and this did not deliver that. But it did give us just enough to keep interest high. This game is dark and different than the FF series, and also much different than Kingdom Hearts II, the project this team most recently completed. Show us more!