The Silent Protagonist – Final Fantasy XIII Versus

If you haven’t heard of Square (either Enix or soft) then consider me disappointed. Even if RPGs aren’t your thing, you probably know of them. Maybe you’ve played Vagrant Story on the PS1, or simply seen the Kingdom Hearts or Star Ocean series in shops. So far, Square has released 26 Final Fantasy games in total in Europe. These range from the hugely popular classical series, to tactical games such as Final Fantasy Tactics and even 3D fighting games like Dissidia

I’d first like to point out that there isn’t really a lot of information on FFXIII Versus’ story so far, despite its announcement six years ago back in Summer 2006. There is a hefty amount of information about the characters and the general gameplay, though.

The story is separate from Final Fantasy XIII’s so you never meet Lightning, Snow or any of the others from that game. It has been classified under the “XIII” title as both games share the same mythology. In other words, Etros, the goddess of XIII, is still kicking about in Versus and the story is driven around the Crystal mythology.

The game revolves around Noctis, who is a descendent of the Royal family, although he is not the King. His kingdom holds the last Crystal which he must protect from neighbouring kingdoms who have lost their Crystals while at war.

The game itself is said to be similar to that of the Kingdom Hearts series. You’ll have three characters in your team at any one time and the battle system is also said to be similar, going with the action-role playing genre. However, there also appears to be a third-person shooter element to the game as well, should you control the character Prompto. The game also promises to have many real-time events, where you have to control your character’s movement at all times, even during cut scenes. However, the “REAL-TIME EVENT” screen from Final Fantasy XIII-2 won’t conveniently pop up so you’ll need to be prepared at all times!

There is also a day / night time system being developed to make the game more realistic. Square Enix wants to make this the most realistic Final Fantasy game, with believable characters and diverse cities with varying levels of technology. Some cities will feature castles, whereas others will have skyscrapers and cars. The world map will make a comeback! Finally! One of the things I loved the most about Final Fantasy was the world map and physically running from A to B, instead of skipping large chunks of the journey. The world map in Versus is going to be massive. Not only do Chocobos make an appearance, so do vehicles (which includes Tanks!) and, of course, the airship.

There seems to be a huge array of weapons available in the game, and Noctis, the main protagonist, can use them all. He can generate weapons out of thin air, and can attack in a very fluid manner, appearing to use Telekinesis to control the weapons. He is also able to teleport to the locations of where his weapons fall. Stella, another character in the game, also uses the same weapon generation as Noctis, although she uses Yellow Runes to generate her weapons, whereas he uses Blue Runes. Whether this has any significance on the game has yet to be confirmed.

The game does look similar to Kingdom Hearts but without the light-hearted Disney feel. After all, this has been promised to be the “Darkest Final Fantasy yet.”

At the moment, there is no information as to when this game will be released, or even on which console(s).

Well that’s it for the Final Fantasy series for now. Look out for my next blog on “Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance“.

To Be Continued…