When Lightning Strikes Thrice

Last week, we reported that Square Enix had confirmed Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII. We didn't know much more than that at the time, but here we are now, a week later, sporting the proper logo for the newspost image and a whole boatload of facts for your cranium (courtesy of a famitsu interview).

First off, the game is already 30% done; this isn't just concept stuff being thrown around (no offense to concept stuff). It will be the final entry in the Lightning-FFXIII saga, and it will have only one, happy, not-ambiguous ending. So that's refreshing. Lightning's character will continue her evolution into an increasingly refined individual. They just grow up so fast *sniffle*.

The developers of Lightning Returns have a very clear idea of where the game sits in relation to its two predecessors. FFXIII was, as its detractors have frequently brought to attention, story driven; FFXIII-2 was player driven (the path of the story was directed by the player). Lightning Returns, however, will be 'world driven', or driven based on the character's interactions in time with the changing world.

Time is the key concept in Lightning Returns. Everything revolves around it: gameplay time has a roughly direct relation to in-game time (two hours equals one day), people have stopped aging, and clocks will be found frequently throughout the world as an environmental symbol of the constant progress of time. There are only thirteen days' worth of life remaining in the world (or should I say, XIII days' worth) - reminiscent of Majora's Mask though without repeating the sequence, or the use of thirteen as the number of days over which the events concerning FFXIII took place - but players can lengthen or shorten this window of time by defeating enemies, clearing quests, helping people or even not helping people.

In FFXIII, players were restricted by time: the plot had its characters working against the clock, and as a result players were unable to 'stop and smell the roses' in the ways that they are usually able to do in . In FFXIII-2, players had (relative) freedom over time, traveling forwards and backwards across it. In another example of the theoretical continuity linking the three games, Lightning Returns once again puts the player at the mercy of time.

The battle system will feature only Lightning, going from three characters in FFXIII to two characters in FFXIII-2 to this, a final and full focus on the central figure of the trilogy (yet another way in which the game's developers see the progression of the Lightning-FFXIII saga). As mentioned in our previous post, the player will have free control over Lightning's movement in battle; what we've learned since then is that, while the game will still feature some form of ATB gauge, Lightning's actions in-battle will not be selected via menu commands but rather assigned to controller buttons, moving this latest title even closer towards live active battle.

It certainly seems from the information above that Lightning Returns will not only be distinguishing itself from its two predecessors but from the previous entries in the Final Fantasy series as a whole.

That's all we have on Lightning for now - be sure to scroll down a bit for the Final Fantasy anniversary news Josh posted earlier this morning.

Source: Andriasang