Noctis voice to be revealed at Square’s 1st Production Department Premier

In the latest issue of Dengeki, Nomura unveiled some new details on the “Square Enix 1st Production Department Premier”, an event focussing on all Square Enix titles in their 1st production department group.

Nomura says that this event is kind of like a premium video event for their fans. We’ll be hearing Noctis voice for the first time ever and we’ll see a lot of new footage of Versus. The footage won’t be completely up-to-date, as the footage dates from before the game got a significant graphical boost.

This event was known as the Fabula Nova Crystallis but shifted name and date recently. It was delayed to the 18th of January, one week later than the original event was planned. It seems Square got word on their numerous leaks in Jump and Famitsu/Dengeki because the delay is due to the magazine publishing schedules, according to Nomura.

Besides Versus XIII, the PDP event will also feature new video content of Final Fantasy Agito XIII,Kingdom Hearts 3DS, Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep: Final Mix, Final Fantasy Dissidia Duodecim and others. Square Enix has also hinted at several new titles to be revealed at this event.

Finally, the official website for this PDP event got an update revealing that Square Enix will stream contents of this conference on niconico, a popular Japanese video website similar to YouTube.

Official Website – Source (Scrawlfx) – Images are Versus/Agito posters shown at Jump Festa. Notice the official spelling for Peristylium, unlike Perishtilium used in many translations.

Fabula Nova Crystallis TGS Trailer

Update: working video (combination of the Versus/Agito clips)

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I don’t think a description is needed, enjoy!

[Videos are “no longer available due to a copyright claim by Square Enix Co., Ltd.”]

Versus XIII/Agito XIII Trailer Report (Updated)

The  Gamespot Otaku saw the combined Versus/Agito trailer and wrote down their detailed impressions. The trailer shown at TGS isn’t available yet and contains only a little amount of new footage. The trailer, however, reveals that their will be a special Fabula Nova Crystallis press conference on January 11, 2011 which will feature all Fabula Nova Crystallis games (Fabula Nova Crystallis will consist of more than 3 games, so the announcement of the fourth title seems likely to happen on that day)

This weekend TGS will be open for everyone and therefore there’s a higher chance the short trailer might get leaked (considering the booth isn’t as heavily guarded as Jump Festa 2010 🙂

Final Fantasy Agito XIII – PlayStation Portable – Online Action RPG

“It does appear that the cast in the game are a bunch of students, as we saw a young girl school girl in a noticeably short skirt wielding a giant hammer. The gameplay appears to be action oriented, with a targeting system similar to Crisis Core. Even if we could understand Japanese, the trailer was over so fast that all we could make out was that there will be some giant mechanical foes as well as chocobos to ride on.At the end of the series of painfully short trailers, which included images for Final Fantasy Versus XIII, Square Enix revealed that a Fabula Nova Crystallis conference will be held January 11, 2011, so we can assume all the information is being saved until then.“

Final Fantasy Versus XIII – Playstation 3 – Action RPG

“The Final Fantasy Versus XIII trailer was part of a series of incredibly brief trailers that showed images from Final Fantasy XIII as well as Final Fantasy Agito XIII. We saw the main character, a young man with short black hair wander through several completely deserted areas. First it was a barren landscape, then it switched to a deteriorated roadway, and eventually we see him in the city, where it was just him fighting a giant behemoth. The quick fight scene showed him jumping and slashing furiously at the beast. Any hint of color or life in the trailer was limited to the spurts of red blood, coming from the behemoth, which stood out against the mostly dark and grey environment. There was nothing else on screen that would give us any clues as to how this game is set up other than it looks to be a 3D action game.“

* Header image by Semokan from DeviantArt *

Twitter updates on FF Versus/Agito XIII (Updated 24/24)

Update (08/31/2010): We get even more Twitter teasing:

By the way, the Agito PV is very short but it looks really good. Please see it by all means possible! Get a glimpse of Agito’s battlefield settings. @Tabata

As for Agito event-scene, the real-time part is already considerably done. Moreover, the great attention and level of impressiveness to what we’ve already shown, the developers were like “The expression at which Agito aims is impossible on the PSP” To everyone’s happiness it’s coming on the PSP. @Tabata

After 3rd is completed we’ll shift things up a bit and 3rd team will join us to complete Agito. So time and wait are still necessary. There’s an unpublished title in front of Agito that Tetsu talks about so much. Wait for information and announcement in a while! @Tabata

As for both Agito and 3rd, Visual Works (VW) produces the High-End CG part. Each title footage and demonstrations are shown in monitors and everywhere. When I go to the VW Studio floor I just want to stay there and enjoy the moment, it’s a treasurable space. @Tabata

On that note, Versus. That scene in the PV. I think it will make you shake. @Tabata

Update (08/26/2010): Tetsuya Nomura shared some more details on Final Fantasy Versus/Agito XIII and their TGS “trailer”

Well, we’re in the midst of our domestic event and doing TGS preparations now. I was in the edit studio yesterday. All PVs have not yet been completed and are in edit stages as of now. Details will come next month even though there’re alot of questions regarding TGS. @Nomura

Basically, there will be specific revelations for Public View. The length of information disclosure will be different in each magazine and media. The following titles to open to the public are Re: Coded and 3rd. And little information about FABULA, on a short trailer Versus and Agito put together at this time. @Nomura

The scale of the trailers are short though, there will be a space to show off FABULA and the trailers will be about 1 minute long. We will show footage of those 3 screenshots we release sometime ago at E3 time and move on to new realtime footage of Versus. @Nomura

The footage alone is new to the public, doesn’t have the command menus, which were removed. On the other hand, Agito footage is like a brand new debut of a more product-like version. Sorry for not being able to show little and nothing more, that’s because the release date for both titles are still undecided. @Nomura

Thanks to Oji from ff-xiii.net!

Original post:

An increasing amount of video game directors, like Fumito Ueda (The Last Guardian) are beginning to use Twitter. We would love seeing Tetsuya Nomura on there too but he recently said no to his own Twitter account. Instead he uses the promotional account for PSP Third-Person Shooter The 3rd Birthday to update us on his projects, and yes, that includes Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII. Yesterday Twitter got really excited when he revealed more about Versus’s worldmap and voice casting, quoted from NovaCrystallis translations:

“Versus has had many difficulties, and past methods of production have been completely inapplicable, but these are the difficulties of birth, so we are working hard. We have a lot to announce, but because we’re going in order, I can’t say too much yet. There have been many questions regarding fields. It’s not a completely open world. It’s like the 2D FF games in HD.”

“That is to say, in terms of looks, it’s not a top-down view, it’s like the screenshots that have been released. You’ll move through the world from that view. Agito and Versus have different production styles and progress states, but they’re both presently undergoing voice casting. 3rd’s recording will end shortly. Next up is Agito.”

And it doesn’t look like we’ll see Versus XIII or Agito XIII before Tokyo Game Show next month:

“..President [In comment to Wada’s own postings]. I have several unannounced titles being worked on. These will release before Agito and Versus. Some have their voice work completed already. They will be announced in Japan. Just like E3 [2010], Agito and Versus will not be at GamesCom. The 3rd Birthday and Kingdom Hearts will be there.”

This news might come as a shock to people who thought these games were already in an advanced stage of development. Considering how Final Fantasy XIII’s voice acting took over a year to record and motion capture, it doesn’t look like Versus is near anytime soon. Nevertheless we’ll get some new footage at TGS next month (September 16th to 19th), along with the other projects Nomura mentioned, perhaps? Tokyo Game Show is promising to be huge, with Nintendo 3DS announcements, the last bits of FFXIV information and a possible Final Fantasy XV announcement so stay tuned on The 13th Crystal and follow both the 3rd Birthday and us on Twitter!

New Versus and Agito details and scans (updated 2x)

Final Fantasy Versus XIII still lives and is in development somewhere in a crammed development studio in Square Enix’s bootcamp in Shibuya. After 14 months of waiting many people were eagerly awaiting Versus at E3 2010. Unfortunately those people were disappointed but in a surprising move Square Enix decided to send a new batch of screenshots and information to Japan’s largest gaming magazines: Famitsu and Dengeki.

At the time of writing no scans are available yet but they will be added to this post as soon as they are available. In the meantime you can catch up with some new Versus XIII information thanks to Andriasang:

– Final Fantasy Versus XIII will appear at TGS 10
– You can go anywhere on world map (excluding the mountain because it is an open field)
– Battles are completely seamless
– The town in trailers is modeled after the Shinjuku city
– Versus will be huge
– Destructible environments
– Cloud movement are done by physical calculations
– No loading (only when changing from big area to other big area)
– People couldn’t believe when they saw the destruction of a road in realtime
– Staff motivation is up high and they’re happy 
– Nomura: Even though the quality is high we aim for more detailed graphics
– Big revelations and the world unveiling of the game at TGS
– The Versus screenshots show a fight with a weaponized Behemoth in a city
– All the screenshots in the interview are captured from the game running in real time.
– Visual quality will still improve. Screenshots aren’t final.

Furthermore the scans also reveal some more information regarding Agito XIII

– FF Agito XIII will be “the best looking PSP title ever”
– There will be chocobo’s and airships
– Development is progressing well. – Visual quality will still improve. Screenshots aren’t final.

Update: HQ scans and more information added.

Andriasang also provided us with a little bit of new information on Final Fantasy Agito XIII from the latest Dengeki:

– Development is progressing well, although the 3rd Birthday takes priority
– Final Fantasy Agito will have a harsh portrayal of a war story. Tabata says that Agito is a Final Fantasy game with an image that differs from the one fans have.
– Kitase gives an example:
"There are parts where you see a soldier burned and falling over after being struck by fire. Initially, I warned them to not go too far in their expressions, but now I’m telling them to do whatever they want."
– While it has been said back in 2006, Tabata confirms again that Final Fantasy Agito XIII will have multiplayer elements.

And at last, enjoy these HQ scans showing gameplay screenshots of Final Fantasy Versus XIII for the first time ever.You can read the full translated interview at our source 

 

Hajime Tabata Gives Agito a Progress Report

Its been quite a while since we had the official word on Final Fantasy Agito XIII, hasn’t it?

Contiunuing there series of developer interviews on the Square Enix Members Japanese Twitter account, SE has interviewed director Hajime Tabata on the games status.

From andriasang:

“Development is progressing well. The reaction was extremely positive when we showed the development version to the producers, management and marketing team in March. The whole staff is excited. We won’t be able to show it for a bit, but it’s looking like it will become an awesome game.”

It seems developement on Agito is going well. With E3 only two months away, it wouldn’t be surprising if SE chose the setting of the games initail reveal to give it a proper, full unveiling.

Stick with The 13th Crystal for all the news as it hits.

Source: FF Agito XIII and 3rd Bday Director Provides Status Updates (andriasang)

Rumor: FF Agito XIII makes a transfer

Looks like Final Fantasy Agito XIII may be making a transfer from the Univerity of PSP to the Academy of iPhone. The reason for the change is apparently the poor performance of the PlayStation Portable in the western market. This would be a valid reason. While the PSP has flourished in its home country of Japan (thanks to the success of series like Monster Hunter), the portable has become increasingly less popular in North America and Europe. Last years release of the PSPgo didn’t help the current sales slump either. Panned by critics, customers, and even retailers themselves, the sytem has been all but scrapped completely. Rumors are already floating around about the next iteration in Sony’s portable line. Despite this however our source makes clear a PSP version is still in the cards.

On the flip side, the iPhone/iPod Touch has been performing brilliantly (as par the course for manufacturer Apple). Things have only gotten better with the recent reveal of the Apple iPad Notepad which is compatible with all iPhone/iPod applications. Not only would a release on these platforms benefit SE, such a major release would bring Apple that much closer to competing with Sony (and moreso Nintendo) for the handheld gaming crown.

Unfortunately as this is just a rumor, it doesn’t actually give us much to really go on. For instance, hom much would Agito cost now? The PSP version is still in production. The average game for that system costs $39.99 USD (both at reatail and as digital download), while the most expensive iPhone game I’ve ever seen could only have been about $10 USD. Ah well.

Final Fantasy Agito XIII was announced for mobile phones at E3 2006. In 2008, it was announced that the project had switched platforms to PSP, at which point the mobile version was canceled. The games plot is said to revolve around a group of students attending the Peristerium School of Magic in the world of Orience. The title also utilizes the Crystal Mythology, as all Fabula Nova Crystalis series titles do.

Source: PSP not the final stop for FInal Fantasy Agito XIII (Pocket Gamer)

– 13thCrystal’s Twitter

– 13thCrystal’s Facebook page.

FFXIII, FF Versus XIII and FF Agito XIII big Famitsu interview

In the latest Famitsu magazine, Nomura was interviewed about Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII.

Awntawn from NeoGAF  translated the Japanese interview:

FF13 Interview
Toriyama (Director)

– Fang is physically stronger the Lightning and more strong-willed than Snow.
– (Other main characters?) An FF mainstay (laughs) coughCidcough
– Bahamut’s element is not specified
– Conceptually, Bahamut’s style can be considered “Aerial Raver” (probably referring to the 2d fighting game style) in which using great mobility and power, he launches opponents into the air and juggles the shit out of them.
– Sazh’s summon is female. She has fun while fighting casually.
– Palmpolm (location in trailers?) is crystallized because a battle between Snow + Shiva and a certain other individual took place previously. )

Nomura (FFXIII – Character design, FF Versus and others – Director)

– Before the scenario was complete, Fang was a male character.
– After making her female, in order to avoid too much similarities with Lightning, they made Lightning less sexy and Fang more sexy. Damn you Fang!
– (Nomura himself?) has nothing to do with character weapons. ambiguous Japanese pronouns ftl
– For FFXIII, transforming weapons are also a key concept as well as summons.
– Ultimate decisions for voice casting was up to Toriyama.
– Sazh was originally intended to wear a hat over his afro.

FF Versus 13 Interview

Nomura (FFXIII – Character design, FF Versus and others – Director)

– Footage at TGS was for internal previewing purposes, so there’s not actually a character that is shimmering white, it just didn’t have textures. Behemoth was also displaying without textures.
– (w/ regard to the ginormous monsters seen in the trailers) they were testing to see the limit of how big the monsters could be. I guess they’re referring to hardware testing
– (Q: Can we really fight enemies like that? It’s hard to imagine) I can see how it’s hard to imagine. Even I’m wondering if it can be done, which is why we’re trying to do it.
– Playstyle can be categorized as an extension of the Kingdom Hearts system, but we’re trying to make it feel like the nostalgia of traditional FF mixed with something new.
– Heavy focus on level design.
– Experimenting with having a portrait window of Noct at the bottom right so that you can see his emotions all of the time, but when the other party members are on the screen it feels weird, so we’re probably going to remove this.
– Window idea was brought up because they wanted it to be a way to understand what your other party members are doing on their own
– Aiming for the type of buddy A.I. such as in western FPSs, where they act on their own but you get the feeling that they’re teammates working in unison with you.
– All clothing is asymmetrical
– Noct doesn’t wear a necklace or earrings, the ring he wears on his right hand (which is story related) is his only accessory.
– The ring is important, so on his left hand he wears an open fingered glove.
– Noct maybe rides a bike. I imagine not the kind that nigga stole
– In order to make it difficult to tell the difference between pre-rendered CG and real-time footage, they pay attention to the most minute details down to the wrinkles in boots.
– Stuff that wasn’t in the test will be revealed bit by bit next year, perhaps as early as E3

FF Agito 13 Interview

Nomura (FFXIII – Character design, FF Versus and others – Director)

– The multiplayer shown at TGS was mostly legitimate battle footage
– Very difficult at the moment
– Constantly updating the battle with new short missions is a key point to Agito
– Up to you to decide whether or not to accept the new objectives. If you don’t respond within a certain amount of time, it will assume you accepted them.
– Next year is the year to start looking forward to stuff. Media blitzing like this year was XIII’s year, I imagine

This year was undoubtely FFXIII’s year, next year will be the year of FF Versus and Agito!

And maybe…

Final Fantasy Haeresis XIII?

Some leaked screens and impressions from Square Enix’s (mini) Closed Mega Theatre

Today and tomorrow people will be able to attend a small closed mega theatre (Standing room with 100″ hd tv) where people will be able to see exclusive footage of Final Fantasy XIII, Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII

Some people were able to leak some screenshots. It is unknown which game they belong to but most people are thinking it’s all about Final Fantasy XIII:

Furthermore we have some (a lot) impressions from GameFaqs:

FF Versus  XIII
On the big screen they showed about a minute or so of early Versus footage. I confirmed:

– Cities with lots of people walking around that reminded me of FFXII. (Walking animations and pathfinding were totally broken though).

– Day/Night cycle (people are inside at night, streets are barren).

– A weird box on the bottom left corner that shows the main character’s face at all times, I am wondering what this means.

– Huge creatures in the environments, like dinosaurish things that are much taller than the main character. He was running around and everything was seamless. There was no combat or attacking, but the monsters did kind of swoop in a bit and show off how huge they were.

– There was some KH UI on there, but a little bird told me that the gameplay isn’t running around and hittings things like Kingdom Hearts, it has more menu type stuff. I don’t know more than that though.

Final Fantasy Agito XIII – Looks much more polished, battles are very active like FFXIII. It looks like you can do combo attacks if you time the button presses correctly. The world in the game is well realized.

View the full article to read some impressions about Final Fantasy XIII

Nomura, you DAMN liar!

Nomura is a liar! He has said that we won’t hear anything of Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII until after 2009. It turns out these 2 games are indeed at TGS! They’re both shown in the form of (alpha) gameplay.

From Andriasang:

Tetsuya Nomura is one of Square Enix’s most powerful producers, so I probably shouldn’t be saying this… but man, Nomura, you’re a big fat liar!

Late last month, Nomura revealed to Famitsu that Square Enix wouldn’t be holding a Closed Mega Theater in its Tokyo Game Show booth this year. He also said that the company it probably wouldn’t be showing new footage of Final Fantasy Agito XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII. He was wrong on both accounts.

While it’s true that there wasn’t a traditional sit-down closed theater in this year’s Square Enix booth, there was something extremely similar to it. After playing Final Fantasy XIII and Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, players were ushered into a shared viewing space between the two demo areas where they viewed the latest Square Enix trailers on a massive Sharp LCD monitor. This theater was standing-only. But it wasn’t visible from outside the booth, making it fit my definition of a closed theater.

Following my first viewing, I tried my best to peak through the curtain closing the theater off from the outside world because I’d seen something during the trailer showcase that I really liked: actual gameplay footage of Final Fantasy Versus XIII.

While we’ve been seeing realtime footage of Stella and Noctis’s first meeting since last year’s DK-something-something-90210 event, the new TGS video offered a first look at gameplay — that is, someone was clearly moving a character around. I’m pretty sure that character was Noctis. A series of clips showed Noctis moving around through the streets of a European-style city, first surrounded by other people, and then alone at night. Next, the footage switched to Noctis moving about a vast field. Here, he was joined by monsters, some massive. I was actually reminded of a scene of Hope running around FFXIII’s vast Pulse fields in the TGS FFXIII trailer.

When referring to the Versus XIII TGS showing, I use “footage” instead of “trailer” because what we were shown wasn’t actually a trailer. The footage was all off-screen, filmed off presumably development units by the development staff. It was set to the same music from past trailers, but there wasn’t any attempt to make a promotional trailer out of the various gameplay clips.

Below the footage, subtitles showed a conversation being had by Tetsuya Nomura and other staff members as they viewed the footage. They seemed to be joking around mostly. For instance, someone asked why there was no one around in the night scene. Nomura’s response was that everyone had probably gone home.

Admittedly, I was only able to view the trailer once, so I didn’t get to look too closely at the text. There may have been some other gameplay secrets hidden in there (if the usual progression holds, a Famitsu interview will clear up such things in a couple of weeks).

This was definitely an unconventional method of showing off first gameplay footage from a game. But, then again, it’s not entirely surprising. The DK-something-something event also offered visitors a glimpse at early prototype clips of Versus in similar fashion, with the developers joking around as the brief footage flowed across the screen.

Versus wasn’t the only attraction in the “closed theater” trailer real. Square Enix also had new footage of Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep, Final Fantasy Agito XIII and The 3rd Birthday. The Final Fantasy XIII trailer was also new for most visitors, although I’d seen it in advance at the Premiere Party event a couple of weeks back (I was happy to see it again, now that developer interviews had shed some light on what we should be looking for).

Like Versus, the trailer for The 3rd Birthday included first actual gameplay sequences. Here, while a proper trailer, the gameplay scenes were largely obscured by post processing effects. From what I could make out, the game is a third person shooter, with the action taking place from behind Aya’s back. There was just a few seconds of blurred gameplay footage mixed in with what was already a short CG trailer, so it’s tough to say more. Still, being shown first gameplay footage — regardless of the form — is a good sign that a full unveil is on the way.

Final Fantasy Agito XIII has seen playable footage in past trailers. In this latest trailer, I noticed the characters’ battle menu palette changing depending on the character. While fight and defend/evade were always there, two other commands would change between such things as Snipe, Black Hole, Nebula. I presume these are skills. Square Enix will hopefully start getting specific on the game once FFXIII sees release later this year.

The Famitsu.com article makes one additional note about the Agito trailer. Apparently, some footage indicated that the players were taking on a mission of some form as assigned by a Magic Guild of some form. The mission that appears in the trailer asks that players use magic once within a minute.

No screens or further details are known because they were shown in a small “Closed Mega Theatre”, but we might get some Saturday because then  the general public is allow to attend TGS (Today and Tomorrow is press only.)