"What I want to do is to examine the humanity of the characters in this game. This is not going to be a fantasy world in the traditional Final Fantasy sense. Rather it's based in the world today with all of this world's ugly issues. There's this mainstream tradition of Final Fantasy games and, in Versus I'm trying to propose new vision of how a Final Fantasy game can be. The game's going to be more human than the science-fiction caricature we so often see. It will focus around current world events - in that sense it's darker."
We wonder if this style is perhaps closer to Nomura's heart? "Yes, this game might be closer to my real-life taste than kingdom Hearts is, for example, but there are undoubtedly areas of crossover. Kingdom Hearts is an example of a game world which I have worked on which is full of good things, light and magic. That's fine but I've worked in these worlds for a long time, perhaps too long, and it's time to work on a new kind of world - a bleaker place. This kind of theme is traditionally unappealing to a mainstream audience who want to role-play in generally happy and safe worlds. It's a challenge."