Square Enix 1st Production Dept. Premier Rollup

Posted on Friday 21st January 2011 at 03:10 by Rangers51

If you've been at the forums recently, you not only know about the Square Enix 1st Production Department Premier, and you've probably also read some bits and pieces about the contents of the mini-exposition, too. For your convenience, though, we'll roll it up a bit for you here in the news section. Where we ask people to post new news and such!

Anyway, here's the big stuff. As just about everyone knows by now, there's going to be a Final Fantasy XIII-2, and it has a trailer already. This game's still not Versus. That's still its own game, and it has a new trailer too. And after all this time, that's still all it has. If that doesn't get you excited for its prospects, well, there's not much more I can do for you.

In other Final Fantasy XIII news, the game that we always knew as Agito is Agito no longer; the newly mentioned Type-0 is the new name. The other Final Fantasy XIII news is that Type-0 won't actually be a Final Fantasy game any more, but instead is the starting point for a new series.

Square Enix also showed Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep Final Mix, which is an extended version of the Birth By Sleep game released last year. Previous Final Mix releases in the series have been Japan-only, and have mostly been Japanese releases of the American version, with a bit of bonus content.

The newest Kingdom Hearts will be coming out for Nintendo's new 3DS, and at this meeting, it got a name: Dream Drop Distance. You see what they did there? There are three "D"s in that name. It's on a 3-D system. Et cetera. Sora and Riku both will star.

Duodecim got some significant play as well, with new characters announced, including Gilgamesh. There's going to be a paid demo in Japan, and folks who buy the demo can get Aeris as an assist character in the full game. No word yet on whether that will be a possibility elsewhere, of course. The American release date was announced separately, too - the game will hit stores here on 22 March, for thirty bucks, and it's ready for pre-order on AmaCoN now, as is The 3rd Birthday, which happens to come out a week later.

Yeah, that's a lot of stuff for a meeting that only happened for about three hours. Not knowing Japanese, hey, I might have missed some stuff, too. Feel free to let me know in the comments.

Source: Kotaku, andriasang, Kingdom Hearts Insider

Posted in: Square-Enix News, News from Japan

Written by

Rangers51

CoN Webmaster

Member Since: 1997-07-31

News articles posted: 558

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Comments

Death Penalty

Comment 1: 2011-01-21 06:12

You know, it's interesting, because I didn't realize how fond I actually was of FFXIII until I watched the trailer for FFXIII-2 earlier today. Say what you will about its lack of towns; its lack of world interaction; its lack of substantial main plot. The game did one thing better than any other FF has ever managed to do, and that is character and party development. Even if a lot of that included way too much grunting/gasping. And for that (not the grunting), I appreciate FFXIII.

As for FFXIII-2, I have to say that my scepticism of sequels in general currently defines my general opinion. Whether in movies or in videogames, I find that a sequel to an already concluded work is often unsatisfactory: there was a story, and it was completed already. Thus, building on it feels unnatural and out of place.

One thing that FFXIII-2 does provide, as I've mentioned before in the forums, is a chance for the developers at SE to address the complaints from the original brought by fans. Now that Lightning and Co. aren't on the run from, well, everyone, there should be no excuse to not include towns and a more involved, interactive world. While I find it rather unlikely that a compelling, new plot can be told within a world that has already concluded its epic struggle, I think the people behind FFXIII-2 have an even greater opportunity this time around to develop the characters we already know from the previous game and their relationships in new, increasingly complex ways as they struggle to restructure a new society.

Though, they'll need to get Leona Lewis to do another song.

And I still hate Orphan.

Edit

And this is what happens when I write posts at 1:00 in the morning: CoN gets DP's Treatise on the Sequal Worthiness of FFXIII.

BlitzSage

Comment 2: 2011-01-21 21:18

Quote (Death Penalty @ 21st January 2011 02:12)

As for FFXIII-2, I have to say that my scepticism of sequels in general currently defines my general opinion. Whether in movies or in videogames, I find that a sequel to an already concluded work is often unsatisfactory: there was a story, and it was completed already. Thus, building on it feels unnatural and out of place.

Though, they'll need to get Leona Lewis to do another song.

These two statements together are the best explanation of what Square Enix is today, and why it has problems.

GamblingCat

Comment 3: 2011-01-22 01:29

An FFXIII Sequel? Interesting, didn't think news of this would come so quickly. I still need to play it (having a Wii and PS2 puts me at a disatvantage)

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