Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII is the latest upcoming entry of the Final Fantasy series, bringing an end to the Lightning Saga which started with Final Fantasy XIII and continued with the game’s direct sequel Final Fantasy XIII-2. Lightning Returns will change a lot about the previous games formula: in a recent interview with Nova Crystallis.com, Motomu Toriyama and Yoshinori Kitase have talked about some of the game’s elements and the reasons behind the choice to change things this much from the previous games.
Lightning will be able to explore the field more than ever, with the ability to jump over obstacles, climb and so on almost in a “Assassin’s Creed” kind of way: Toriyama stated that they wanted more freedom in traveling and that they desired to give players more methods of traveling through the game’s locations. With time becoming a precious and limited resource in the game there was a need for faster traveling methods.
The more open locations and the whole “time” concept has been greatly influenced by Skyrim, said Toriyama: they loved the open world setting as well as the passage of time and came up with the World Drive concept of the game, adding the twist of the 13 days before the end of the world.
The decision of creating an entirely different world and remove everything that has been built in the previous entries of the trilogy has been almost a natural choice, given the ending of Final Fantasy XIII-2: while the setting may be different, this new world is still tied to the crystal mythos. Final Fantasy XIII fans will surely love the new setting.
You can check out the full interview here.
Source: Nova Crystallis
