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Star Ocean developers worked some magic on Final Fantasy XIII-2

by Arthur Gies on Dec 26th 2011 10:00AM

Did that almost reasonable 24-month turnaround time between Final Fantasy XIII and the just-released-in-Japan Final Fantasy XIII-2 rock your understanding of reality? Who could blame you? The development time of the last "direct" sequel was also pretty short -- two years between Final Fantasy X and X-2 -- but it was five years between Final Fantasy XII and XIII. Did Square-Enix make some dark sacrifice to summon the new game so quickly?

You'll probably need to talk with Tri-Ace about that. According to Tri-Ace programmer Yuichiro Kitao (courtesy of Twitter), the Star Ocean/Valkyrie Profile developer assisted with design, programming, and art on the all-too-rare Final Fantasy sequel. Animal sacrifice may have also been involved, but that's not the kind of thing you talk about on Twitter. That's okay, Square-Enix; even Santa had the elves for help with that Christmas(ish) miracle.

Via: Siliconera
Source: Twitter

Tags: final-fantasy-xiii-2, microsoft, playstation, ps3, Square-Enix, tri-ACE, xbox

Reader Comments (28)

Shoot, I'll just take another Star Ocean game; I love that series

@WhiteShield

Me too. I wouldn't mind another Valkyrie Profile game too....

A *console* Valkyrie game...just to clarify ...since the devs over there have got it into their heads that everyone wants a portable game only.

@ShadowXIII
You didn't like the Lenneth remake? Maybe it's just me, but after playing that, it seems like the perfect series for Portables.

@ShadowXIII I imagine the user install base in JP for handhelds is much, much larger than console. Hence why devs keep developing on them. That and much lower development costs than a console game.

@Code Supreme commenter

I imagine you just explained one of the main reasons why the western market for JP games has dwindled to nothing.

I don't mind a portable port of a good game...but they should release the games on consoles in tandem if they expect the western market to embrace them more.

I still want Star Ocean 5 tri-Ace, don't keep me hangin' now..

@Helghast102 rar, me too!

Does anyone know if this one doesn't suck? Or at least, it's the same game as 13, but minus the 5-6 years of development leading to an ultimately disappointing game?

@Gibbeynator Its fan service as far as I'm concerned.

@Gibbeynator The sales from Japan are not good so far, its sold only a bit over 500,000. That sounds like a lot, but for a Final Fantasy game, that is pretty low.

@neojames82

I personally am writing it off simply because of how much I disliked XIII. I assume many others will feel the same. I don't really care for sequels in the FF series. But hopefully they learned something to improve the franchise and it will be seen in the next major installment.

@Poor Tom

Hopefully one of those lessons they learned was "Don't announce something 5 years before you intend to release it."

Seriously, I wonder how much dislike of 13 stems from the fact that it didn't seem to reflect 5+ years of development. If it came out in 2007, it probably would have been game of the year.

@Gibbeynator I plan on skipping FF games entirely until they get around to releasing Vs 13. So yeah.

@Faceless Troll

Hey, you and me both pal.

Doesn't really speak well of the Square team that for tools they had already, just, worked with and supposedly had material left over that outside talent had to be called in.

@Godmars I love Square Enix, but they are the epitome what's wrong with JP gaming industry. Development hell, massively-overbudget and after all that, delivering good, but not great results.

Whatever happened to XIII Versus?

13 always kinda seemed more like a Tri-Ace game than anything else.

Seeing this reminded me that I need to get around to playing Resonance of Fate. I've had that game since launch, but just never got the chance to dig in to it. Finding out that tri-Ace had a hand in Final Fantasy XIII-2 has raised my interest levels in the game from "nothing" to "next-to-nothing". This is one title where I'm going to let the reviews do the judging for me. I remember Final Fantasy X-2 and how god-awful that one was, so this being a sequel to one of the most terrible primary games in the series has me bracing for the worst.. Fool me once, Square-Enix. . . . .

I don't know why so much hate against FF XIII...overall it was a very good game...it has some flaws, but as a whole it was very good.

@mranthony

I know. I found it to be 30 dollars well spent. It just didn't reflect 5+ years of development.

I assume that when FFX came out that Square had to make a new engine and that was the first final fantasy game on the PS2. FFX-2 UI assume uses the same engine and graphics style as X so there wasn't as much "creating" going on. Same story with FFXIII bein first FF game on PS3 (next gen consoles), so a new engine was probably created, then FFXIII-2 will just use the same engine.

If you look at the production value, that's where the 5+ yrs of development time was spent. I'm just hoping that Versus XIII is still a go...because that actually looks great.

@mranthony it was 5 years of developing a in house engine when they didn't have experience with that sort of thing.

13 was a pretty good game, it just wasn't a final fantasy game outside of it's name, same thing with 12: best single player MMO I have ever seen.

@mranthony

As the years go by, I anxiously await a "very special announcement" whereby Nomura publicly denounces Versus and announces KH3 instead.

Which for the record would make me personally a very, very sad panda indeed, as I don't care for KH at all. :(

People seem to forget right before the game came out they told us they cut out an entire game's worth of content out of the game. So thats how it was made so quickly the only thing they had to add was a few character models and in game cutscenes.

Sigh, they made a part two to a game no one asked for so fast but an awesome looking game like Versus 13 that people clearly want they can't just put some effort to get it out or freaking Kingdom Hearts 3. This must be my fault and people like me, I buy their crappy games knowing it's crappy. I should just wait for the good ones. I'm buying 13-2 knowing it will probably be below average like the first but they are hitting me in a weak spot by having time travel as part of the plot, now I have to play it.

I don't regret playing FF13 though, I bought it day one, and enjoyed it very much but felt there were many things that could be better.

Breaking News

Final Fantasy XIII-2

Star Ocean developers worked some magic on Final Fantasy XIII-2

Reader Comments (28)

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 10:08AM WhiteShield said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 10:15AM ShadowXIII said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 12:02PM Sonictheratherquickhedgehog said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 12:08PM Code Supreme commenter said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 12:49PM ShadowXIII said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 10:12AM Helghast102 said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 12:06PM Code Supreme commenter said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 10:26AM Gibbeynator said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 10:43AM Godmars said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 11:11AM neojames82 said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 12:02PM Poor Tom said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 12:10PM Gibbeynator said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 3:32PM Faceless Troll said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 4:29PM Jeff Zero said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 10:42AM Godmars said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 12:06PM Code Supreme commenter said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 3:27PM mikemyerz666 said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 1:30PM Fakeassname said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 2:36PM FinalFantasyXIIIsucks said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 3:22PM mranthony said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 3:37PM Gibbeynator said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 3:23PM mikemyerz666 said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 3:47PM mranthony said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 4:02PM Fakeassname said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 4:30PM Jeff Zero said

Posted: Dec 26th 2011 8:13PM darkheartlessriku said

Posted: Dec 27th 2011 12:12AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Dec 27th 2011 12:15AM (Unverified) said

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