With an amazing list of games on his record, developer Tetsuya Nomura of Square Enix has certainly come to be a driving force in their productions. Having started there in 1990, with so much history, the games he has produced have certainly changed. So we can only wonder: What will his next project be like?
Having finished his most recent work, Kingdom Hearts 2, Nomura’s new title Final Fantasy XIII Versus is not quite stealing the spotlight for most anticipated games. Perhaps due to it’s brethren being released under the simpler title Final Fantasy XIII, it hasn’t generated too much individualistic excitement. It so far is merely being considered as just another title in the subseries Fabula Nova Crystallis that Square Enix is so hard at work on. So what sets it apart to have been crowned as Versus?
Simply put, Nomura has finally gotten a chance to produce a game with the theme he has always wanted, namely darkness. The game is reputed to be much darker, much more serious, with an outlook attempting to elaborate more on the human aspects of the characters and the realism of the world that is supposedly only linked mythologically with Final Fantasy XIII’s world.
According to Nomura himself,
Nomura: “There’s been times when I’ve wanted to take FF in a completely different direction than the game’s producer has wanted. I’m not saying that his or mine opinions have been right or wrong, just different. One thing I’ve always wanted to explore deeper is human emotions. By going in that direction, you risk to make the target group for the game narrower, and FF is appreciated by a very large audience. But with Versus XIII, it feels like the right time to take that risk. Since the script isn’t done yet, I still don’t know exactly how far I dare to go, but I know I want to squeeze humanity out of these characters. I want Versus to feel in the entire body.”
It’s exciting to see a company willing to put faith in their developer enough to take a risk like Nomura describes it. Both exciting and refreshing.
Nomura has also said,
“When I produced Kingdom Hearts, I was in a world so bright that I almost got blinded. So now I want to do something completely different. Maybe it has something to do with my love for extremes. FFvXIII is about man in the real world. In that sense, the game will contain less fantasy than usual. We’ve created some dark environments and shown them in our trailers. But the entire game won’t look like that; we’ve only just begun.”
Even more evidence that the project will be very unique, and will incorporate very new ideas. For instance, Nomura has been quoted saying the game will even include more “real-world events”. His goal is to create a world the player truly believes in. This time around however, it will be integrated with the real world. Exactly how they will blend this together is a mystery, but an exciting one.
What this all means we have yet to see, but all together it seems Versus will surely stand apart as a next-gen RPG.
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