Control Every Cutscene In Final Fantasy Versus XIII

Famitsu has a few details on Final Fantasy Versus XIII. Remember Final Fantasy XIII-2‘s live sequences where you can move during a cutscene? Final Fantasy Versus XIII is going one step further and will let players control characters in every cutscene in the game. Tetsuya Nomura says it was important for players to never feel like they have to stop playing.

The event scenes, according to Famitsu, are the same quality as pre-rendered movies, but they are rendered in real time. Nomura attributes this to little difference between the high quality and low quality models. The exception is hair, which is more detailed in high quality models. Nomura says events will be tied to a new system, which Nomura believes has never been done before. He did not give any details to Famitsu.

Events will flow naturally in Final Fantasy Versus XIII and not feel like a game as seen in his other titles. The conversation tempo is different from Final Fantasy, but don’t misunderstand, Nomura says, the game is not like Final Fantasy Type-0 or the Kingdom Hearts series either. Battles in Final Fantasy Versus XIII can change depending on a player’s action.

Final Fantasy Versus XIII presented new challenges for the development team. Because of this the core members have been leading the game, but Square Enix is getting ready to put the game in mass production. Bit by bit they have been recording voices, but there haven’t been many female characters in the scenes so far. To make the conversations feel more realistic they would have four guys record lines in a room together so their dialogue would overlap.

Nomura did not give a date for the next Final Fantasy Versus XIII reveal, but said he has a timeframe in mind.

Update: A summary at FF-Reunion has further details. Nomura brought screenshots of the game to show the reports. One reporter couldn’t believe the graphics were in realtime. Nomura attributed the graphics to their pre-rendered know how and lighting effects. It’s unclear, but it sounds like someone commented that the graphics are like photos. Nomura added that Noctis has a smartphone, which he can use to take photos.

Nomura said we would have to wait until they publically release the images, but we have details on the screenshots. One scene showed a street that looked like Italy with a beige wall with Noctis looking up at a behemoth in the center. Another screenshot showed Noctis standing in a highway road in the afternoon. The same screenshot was shown in the evening with a street sign that reads Meguro.