Fans of Japanese role-playing games rejoice - at last night's E3 conference, Sony revealed a double dose of fan favourite Square Enix games would be coming to the PlayStation 4 (and Xbox One it emerged later). Revealed alongside the equally long-awaited Kingdom Hearts III came news of the next numerical entry in the Final Fantasy series, Final Fantasy XV. Speaking via a video message at the event, the games' producer Tetsuya Nomura refused to give too much away for the time being, but did hint that more information would be coming out in the coming days instead.
Originally announced back in 2006 as Final Fantasy Versus XIII, a game which was in development for the PS3, Square Enix had been mostly quiet about the game until recently, leading many fans to believe the project had been abandoned. Part of the 'Fabula Nova Crystallis' trilogy alongside Final Fantasy XIII and the Japan-only Type-0, all of which were set to share the same story world, Versus XIII disappeared for many years, and was all but presumed dead - before surfacing again last night as Final Fantasy XV.
As the years have gone by, Final Fantasy XIII eventually morphed into its own trilogy, with the final instalment coming next year in the form of Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, while Final Fantasy Versus XIII has spun off on its own and become Final Fantasy XV. Confused? You're not the only ones. Taking place in an entirely different world, with nary a Lightning in sight, the game may be part of the same series, but that's roughly where the similarities end.
How some fans feel about the new move to more action-orientated battles...
Translated from the Latin as "the new tale of the crystal", the Fabula Nova Crystallis series all revolve around the power of crystals in a big way, with some sort of power struggle between the gods being at the root of the world's troubles. A man called Noctis Lucis is the main character this time round, and is the son to the king of a Mafia-like royal family charged with protecting the crystals - although this responsibility doesn't seem to sit well with the land's other inhabitants, with the trailer opening with a faction seemingly intent on wiping out the Lucis family. Things seem a whole lot more action orientated this time, with fast-paced sword fights, massive bosses and even a spot of abseiling down a building - it's leaps and bounds away from the slower paced turn-based affairs we've come to associate with Final Fantasy games in the past. Battles are set to be much faster, faster still than the Kingdom Hearts and Tales of role-playing games, with you and your enemies fighting it out in real-time, executing different moves dependent on button combinations instead of choosing actions from menus - it's a strangely similar direction to the new Lightning Returns game, and perhaps a sign of the next generation of Final Fantasy. One that we aren't wholly welcoming.
Final Fantasy XV is coming to both next generation consoles, the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One - although when exactly is anyone's guess. Hopefully more information will creep out of the woodwork in the coming months, especially around September time when the Tokyo Game Show kicks off. Until then, we have a trailer to tide us over:
