Interviews with the Final Fantasy XIII development team appear to have yielded some surprising revelations, including the admission that the game’s notoriously linear structure was due in large part to the trouble inherent in designing towns in a “high definition” manner.
The revelations come by way of developer interviews and other information published in Square Enix’s official Final Fantasy XIII production “mook” (magazine/book), Final Fantasy XIII Scenario Ultimania.
Some of the most interesting points are paraphrased below:
The game’s linearity was just because depicting towns and so on like we did before was impossible to do on an “HD” console – it was too much work.
Nomura had hardly anything to do with it; he just did character design and commercials, not even the intro or movies.
The game was designed with DLC in mind but we don’t actually have any planned.
It was easy to port to the Xbox. Porting to the PS3 is harder. The PS3 has more processing power but you have to do it properly.
Jumping was manual at first and you could jump onto the titans.
You used to be able to avoid enemy attacks in the field using the analogue stick, but due to difficulty considerations it was canned.
The battle team came up with the transforming summons. The art team was dead against them.
“I was thinking this time we would make it completely story-centric” – Toriyama.
By now it is clear that the decision to adopt an extremely linear and heavily simplified design is by far the most controversial one made by the developers.
Learning that it was due at least in part to the hassle of designing cities with good graphics suggests Square Enix may be severely out of its depth, particularly considering most world class developers have no trouble designing games with cities aplenty.
Go play oblivion then
well that sux i bought the game….they should have just made another Final -fantasy movie -crisis core-☺
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☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺☺well………
i guess i should finish it since i bought it
interesting.
I keep reading all these comments saying nothing but bad things about FF13, but i’ve been enjoying it since it’s launch and yes, it’s linear in comparison to older ff games but it’s different, pretty, and it’s fun. yes i said fun, and isn’t that what a GAME is supposed to be!?
when i got about 6 hours into this game i thought to myself “everyone is gonna verbally r♥♥e this game and every person involved with the making of it” and i was right..i also agree with every negative word u guys r sayin bout this game..what the f♥♥k were these ppl thinkin..this s♥♥t is just terrible i am so tired of run down a road, jump over something(automatically i might add) then fight 5 or 6 dumbass monsters and repeat for 3 discs. jesus i feel fucking robbed by square enix.. i mean seiously im pissed that i was stpid enough to buy this when i had my doubts in the first place. why are the goddamn bosses so hard i have right now on disc 2 a max hp with lightning 780 yet im having to fight bullshit bosses with 130,000 hp like aster protoflorian..BULLSHIT!!!! i want to finish this piece of s♥♥t only because i started the damn thing i dont believe in quiting a game for some reason. guess i have gamer values and passion for games..something it seems square enix dosent have so much of these days.
does neone remember a game called E.O.E eve of extinction for ps2??…well final fantasy 13 is an hd next gen remake of that piece of s♥♥t..y dont we just make final fantasy 14 a classic “GO RIGHT!” game. That would probably be an improvement over this fucking blackhole of a fucking game. THIS WAS INDEED MY FINAL FANTASY..(good pun there hahaha)f♥♥k YOU SQUARE ENIX!!!!
p.s Final Fantasy 8 was the best..thats just my opinion tho