Interviews// Final Fantasy XIII-2

Final Fantasy XIII sold a lot of copies worldwide. It was also very quickly panned by a legion of RPG fans who felt that the game had strayed too far away from the traditional game mechanics and values that define a Final Fantasy game. Square Enix’s Yoshinori Kitase and Motomu Toriyama, having helmed development of the 2010 epic, are eager to put things right.

Now we’re witnessing the development of Final Fantasy XIII-2, and along with it come some features that address the probable mountain of letters the studio has had regarding its predecessor’s shortcomings - towns, interesting side missions and riding Chocobos, to name a few.

You can see the full result of the changes in my E3 2011 preview here. Shortly afterwards, I was able to meet with Kitase-san and Toriyama-san to discover more about monster hunting, fan feedback and how Red Dead Redemption has helped Square Enix improve its game.


SPOnG: Could you talk about your approach with Final Fantasy XIII-2? Did you look at other RPGs from Western developers like BioWare and apply some of their mechanics to yours?

Yoshinori Kitase: We actually didn’t take inspiration from any Western RPGs. Not consciously anyway. On the other hand, the Paradigm Shift feature in XIII was quite popular. Lots of people liked it, so we carried it over and created an upgraded version. There are two examples to how we’ve improved things here.

The first is that you can actually recruit monsters and make them battle for you. There are over 150 types of monster for you to capture. They progress in the same way that all the other characters do - you can enhance any particular part of battle statistic, so you can custom make them to become exactly the kind of monster you want.

The second one is what we call 'Cinematic Actions'. In big battles such as boss characters, there is a cinematic action so that it appears more dynamic. In every single way we want to ensure that the player has some kind of interaction with the gameplay.


SPOnG: Do you feel that fans were slightly disappointed with Final Fantasy XIII? Are there any features in Final Fantasy XIII-2 that were made as a direct reaction to feedback?

Yoshinori Kitase: I think Final Fantasy XIII was criticised by a lot of people because we think it was meant to be story driven, but so much so that people thought it was quite linear, which people didn’t like. So before we started making Final Fantasy XIII-2, we were determined to take all of the negative comments seriously, and rectify every single one of them, thoroughly and completely.

This game is more player driven rather than story driven, so that the player will have an active involvement in each phase of the game. There are a lot more things in the field that you can explore like towns... and you can also choose what you want to say and do during various scenes. It will give players more freedom.


SPOnG: Indeed, one of the main criticisms with XIII was the lack of the traditional RPG town. It was mentioned in a previous interview that making towns on high definition consoles is quite difficult. Is that something that you’re now finding easier, or can we still expect these towns to be rather small compared to past Final Fantasy towns?

Motomu Toriyama: As Kitase-san said earlier, we did take into serious consideration the feedback regarding a lack of towns. So we’ve added some in the sequel You can explore the towns, talk to the people and discover new destinations in doing so. You can also find shops in these towns too, so you can purchase items more easily.

Although we have worked hard to introduce towns in a manner that people expect, I think that equally, creating towns in exactly the same way would be quite boring. And as you say it is still quite difficult to do in high definition. So to spice things up, we have added AI to every single person living in the towns so that they do their own things. They may sit down and chat, or go to see family members or other such things. In that sense it is a different kind of town that you might find in past Final Fantasy towns.


SPOnG: At what point did you decide to make Final Fantasy XIII-2, and what was the reasoning behind it?

Yoshinori Kitase: We actually made a decision to make a sequel right after the worldwide launch of Final Fantasy XIII. Around that time we were visiting a lot of different countries, including the United States and the UK on a promotional tour, and we got a really positive reaction from the fans. Final Fantasy XIII also enjoyed commercial success with around six million copies sold around the world. We just felt that people wanted a sequel on this basis.

We also decided that, during the process of making Final Fantasy XIII, that the characters in this universe had more potential and elements to be explored. We realised we could make more games to highlight these characters.