Article: Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII announced

Following on from a few weeks of rumours and speculation, Square Enix has announced Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII which as you may suspect from the title, stars none other than Lightning in a whole new quest.

http://home.eyesonff.com/content/att...ning1.png.html

From what little we know, it sounds as though Lightning will be something of a lone wolf in this game, and it will be the final installment in her story. Players will have a lot more control to shape Lightning the way they want, in terms of appearance, fighting and movement style.

This particular episode will take place several hundreds of years after what happened in FFXIII-2. The game is set in a world called Novus Partus, a Latin name which can be very roughly translated to "New Birth". It consists of four islands, all interlinked with a monorail system.

http://home.eyesonff.com/content/att...ning3.png.html
Is there a chance the track could bend? Not on your life, my Moogle friend!

A very intriguing gameplay element that has been made known is the Doomsday Countdown. The world of Novus Partus is destined to come to a screeching halt after 13 days (Final Fantasy THIRTEEN... see what they did there?) and presumably Lightning's role is to stop this. However, unlike the previous Final Fantasy games where you could merrily tootle about the world, racing chocobos and snowboarding while that big ol' Meteor hung lazily in the sky, the Doomsday Countdown means that the end is coming, whether you're done with all the mini games or not.

The countdown is shown in the form of a rather large and glaring clock in the corner of the screen, always reminding you of what is to come and making you feel guilty. Worse yet, actions players take such as riding the monorail takes time and will see judgment day draw ever nearer.

http://home.eyesonff.com/content/att...ning2.png.html
Checkerboard City. No word yet if you can travel in time using that phone booth.

The clock also plays a part in the battle, with certain time-based attacks and skills draining the counter in exchange for dealing high levels of damage. Interestingly, if you die during a battle you can rewind your mistake... at the cost of precious time, of course!

The game is scheduled to be released in 2013. You can find the site for it somewhere around here.

Yoshinori Kitase talks about crystals in a rather fetching office.

So, what do we think? Are we bored of Lightning and the Fabula Nova Crystallis saga? Do the gameplay elements excite you, particularly the Majora's Mask-esque Doomsday Counter? Does the an open world game see a shift for Square-Enix? Will you be getting it?

Ok, so there were two versions of this thread and I accidentally deleted the one with all the comments (or maybe Super Delete did it...that bastard :shifty:). So sorry to everyone who commented. Just post again saying exactly what you said before and we should be all good.

I think I said something like 'here we go again!' followed by a few paragraphs reminiscing about the 'good ol days'.

Quote:

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first day purchase mothersmurfers

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Damn you, Super Delete! :argh:

I posted something about how the concept sounded pretty cool.

At first glance, of course it sounds interesting. However, I'll hold off on passing judgement until I see something more concrete, closer to the finished product. Creative visions are all well and good, but they have to be delivered, too.

Hopefully this title will finally close the storyline and feature Lightning as a playable character. Neither of those happened with Final Fantasy XIII-2.

What did I say before? Something about being excited! I'm actually looking forward to this game, it's a neat concept.

irrationalfinalfantasyfan: At least until they... - Final Fantasy Things

Though this forum has been a lot more sensible than the typical 'OMG FFXIII SUCKS, GO DIE SE' stuff I've seen since this was announced. I almost enjoy seeing these FFXIII sequels etc just for the hilarious outrage online.

If there's a doomsday counter, is there going to be an Ocarina we can play the Song of Time on to rewind it?

Sorry, but I'm not a big fan of games that limit how many sidequests and such I can do. I love being a completionist.

Lightning is one of my favorite characters ever so yay.

WTF another XIII game, yet Versus XIII still isn't out, no release date for it still, and we don't know much of jack trout about it!

i reckon this is going to be a multiple-playthrough thing, with paths opening up based on how you played the last run or something

so what's this thing I keep hearing about the game being facebook compatible?
So your characters are going to have a facebook themselves or what?

Sounds so weird :D

use your friends as monsters in-battle!

"Honey, did you just make me a behemoth in your FF13-3 game?"
"Oh it must've been automatic sweetheart..."

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Originally Posted by J.D

so what's this thing I keep hearing about the game being facebook compatible?
So your characters are going to have a facebook themselves or what?

Sounds so weird :D

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It could be awesome, though it's been done before. In Suikoden IV, all the characters had a LiveJournal.

The setting looks very, very interesting.

More details:

The game is currently 30% complete
This will be Lightning’s last game and will end with a happy ending. The game has just one ending.
The first FFXIII was story driven, meaning that the story pulled the player along. FFXIII-2 was player driven, meaning players selected the story. Lightning Returns is World Driven, meaning players have to consider how they interact with the changing world.
The game’s in-game time works out to one day being the equivalent of one to two hours of real time. There will be increases and decreases in time.
The game is meant to be played and cleared multiple times. The volume is not such that it will take many tens of hours to clear once.
People from XIII-2 haven’t died. Because of the effects of the chaos (I’m not sure if this is the proper English word), people have stopped aging and don’t get old.
The Novus world has four continents, two natural and two city-type.
Depending on your actions, the remaining life of the world could decrease, and the game could end before the 13 day limit.
There are some times when helping someone will decrease the life of the world.
Defeating some enemies and clearing some quests will increase the life of the world.
Lightning is all by herself in battle, allowing you to concentrate more than when you had to control a party.
Lightning has become a considerably more refined person.
You can freely move around during battle. Some elements of the battle system are timing-based.
The battle system is close to action. There’s an ATB gauge.
During battle, you don’t select menu commands. Instead, you select abilities which have been assigned to buttons.
Hope will give guidance to Lightning via wireless com.
The city has clocks everywhere showing the constant progression of time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by charliepanayi

More details:

The game is currently 30% complete
This will be Lightning’s last game and will end with a happy ending. The game has just one ending.
The first FFXIII was story driven, meaning that the story pulled the player along. FFXIII-2 was player driven, meaning players selected the story. Lightning Returns is World Driven, meaning players have to consider how they interact with the changing world.
The game’s in-game time works out to one day being the equivalent of one to two hours of real time. There will be increases and decreases in time.
The game is meant to be played and cleared multiple times. The volume is not such that it will take many tens of hours to clear once.
People from XIII-2 haven’t died. Because of the effects of the chaos (I’m not sure if this is the proper English word), people have stopped aging and don’t get old.
The Novus world has four continents, two natural and two city-type.
Depending on your actions, the remaining life of the world could decrease, and the game could end before the 13 day limit.
There are some times when helping someone will decrease the life of the world.
Defeating some enemies and clearing some quests will increase the life of the world.
Lightning is all by herself in battle, allowing you to concentrate more than when you had to control a party.
Lightning has become a considerably more refined person.
You can freely move around during battle. Some elements of the battle system are timing-based.
The battle system is close to action. There’s an ATB gauge.
During battle, you don’t select menu commands. Instead, you select abilities which have been assigned to buttons.
Hope will give guidance to Lightning via wireless com.
The city has clocks everywhere showing the constant progression of time.

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should really give a heads up to the andriasang article you copied the info from :/

Anyways, the game seems pretty interesting.....aaaand they'll probably have it out before VERSUS XIII :(

I forgot the link, sorry. I think it was pretty obvious I'd taken the info from an article somewhere, was hardly claiming credit for it.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by charliepanayi

More details:

The game is currently 30% complete
This will be Lightning’s last game and will end with a happy ending. The game has just one ending.
The first FFXIII was story driven, meaning that the story pulled the player along. FFXIII-2 was player driven, meaning players selected the story. Lightning Returns is World Driven, meaning players have to consider how they interact with the changing world.
The game’s in-game time works out to one day being the equivalent of one to two hours of real time. There will be increases and decreases in time.
The game is meant to be played and cleared multiple times. The volume is not such that it will take many tens of hours to clear once.
People from XIII-2 haven’t died. Because of the effects of the chaos (I’m not sure if this is the proper English word), people have stopped aging and don’t get old.
The Novus world has four continents, two natural and two city-type.
Depending on your actions, the remaining life of the world could decrease, and the game could end before the 13 day limit.
There are some times when helping someone will decrease the life of the world.
Defeating some enemies and clearing some quests will increase the life of the world.
Lightning is all by herself in battle, allowing you to concentrate more than when you had to control a party.
Lightning has become a considerably more refined person.
You can freely move around during battle. Some elements of the battle system are timing-based.
The battle system is close to action. There’s an ATB gauge.
During battle, you don’t select menu commands. Instead, you select abilities which have been assigned to buttons.
Hope will give guidance to Lightning via wireless com.
The city has clocks everywhere showing the constant progression of time.

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Addtional info. from GAF:

"They mention that the customization system in LR is actually a result of breaking down the basic concept of the Dress Spheres in FFX-2. Instead of having fixed jobs and costumes which players change between, what they want in LR is to allow the players to create their own jobs by putting together different equipment which into sets which then form Styles. Players can preset different Styles and change between them this way, but there is also much more freedom is customization.

Another element is the battles. For boss battles and tougher enemy types, they are planning to design them such that they feel like intense 1 on 1 battles, where Lightning takes the enemy down piece by piece, with multiple destructible body parts on the foe."

welp the first two sentences of that were more info than i wanted before playing the game

see ya in two years, ff13-3 forum!

Well at least the game is sounding interesting.

I wonder what they mean when they say the game is made to be replayed many times. I hope it doesn't mean it's too short.
If a FF game main quest doesn't last more than 25 hours in your first run. I think that would be pretty lame.....

Quote:

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Originally Posted by J.D

I wonder what they mean when they say the game is made to be replayed many times. I hope it doesn't mean it's too short.
If a FF game main quest doesn't last more than 25 hours in your first run. I think that would be pretty lame.....

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Nearly all new FF games can be finished in 25~30 hours just like old JRPGs, SE doesn't make a 60+ hours long game in general or multi-disc games and this game is solo much like PE1/2/Crisis Core.

The concept of expiring time worked well in Majora's Mask and ephemeral Fantasia (although those games rewound time). Will this game force you to start over to do it right? Will you get a Game Over and be forced to choose between starting over or reloading a save and figuring out how to rush to the end despite having already wasted a bunch of time on that save file?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Mercen-X

The concept of expiring time worked well in Majora's Mask and ephemeral Fantasia (although those games rewound time). Will this game force you to start over to do it right? Will you get a Game Over and be forced to choose between starting over or reloading a save and figuring out how to rush to the end despite having already wasted a bunch of time on that save file?

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There is a rewinding mechanic. You can buy yourself more time through side quests (although some actually decrease your time) and defeating monsters.

I think the idea sounds really badass. Along with gems like 7 and 10, I think 13 was one of the best ones out. Good soundtrack, interesting characters, revolutionary gameplay and a pretty unique yet complicated storyline. So, needless to say that I liked the idea of 13-2 and now this one.

I read somewhere that they were alrdy talking of making sequels to 13 or 13-2 and making almost expansion-pack type add-ons to the 13 universe, being DLC and featuring some of the characters that weren't in 13-2, like Sazh and a more detailed episode explaining what Snow was up to etc..
It's also interesting to see what type of new feature they'll come up with to add a new twist on things, and well, this doomsday clock definitely seems interesting and should change up the gameplay and overall end results. I'm also glad to hear that they're trying to implement more RPG type dimensions, in saying that actions u make will actually influence gameplay results (unless they just solely mean the clock).

So yea, really looking forward to this one as well, as I am with any new edition of the FF series.

I am excited, but like others, I'll hold off buying it until it comes out, and game play details are fully unleashed. The idea of a master game ending clock is interesting though. This sounds really weird, but it reminds me of Dead Rising somehow!

Majora's Mask + Final Fantasy = PURE EPIC ADVENTURE. I must play it.