Pre-E3 06: Final Fantasy XIII goes huge

More surprisingly, perhaps, was the immediate unveiling of another Final Fantasy XIII game. Final Fantasy Versus XIII is another adventure for PS3. Each FFXIII game is in a "differing world with a differing story." It appears that FF Versus XIII has no direct connection, stylistically or story-wise, to the main FFXIII installment.

It is an action game under development by the Kingdom Hearts team, with cinemas designed by the team behind the Advent Children movie that was recently released. Both were created by mastermind Tetsuya Nomura, the character designer for both FFXIII projects and creator of Kingdom Hearts.

The cinema shown depicted a man slumped on a throne, inside a skyscraper in a contemporary-looking city. He stood up and moved outside, where a number of figures were slumped on the stairs onto the street. As the character walked outside, a huge group of soldiers in medieval-style armor, with machine guns, proceeded to open fire on him. However, he raised some sort of crystalline shield and deflected all of the bullets. That's it. We have no idea about the gameplay, or the characters or story, really. Just some cool visuals. That's good enough for now.

The company also unveiled a third FFXIII game. This one, however, entitled Final Fantasy Agito XIII, is for mobile phones. It concerns a number of students at a school known as Akademia. Players will be able to join in multiplayer cooperative battles with other gamers. No screens of the game were shown - just concept art of the characters and the Akademia. We're also not sure if or when this game will hit the US, considering that Before Crisis: Final Fantasy VII, the last FF mobile game, took several years to come to the US and is not to be released till later this year.

May 8, 2006