[  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Next Page »  ]

If there's one triple-A game that's sure to shift a few PS3s, it's Square-Enix's upcoming RPG Final Fantasy XIII. Despite the insane interest in the title, little is known about the game's story, its characters and the battle system. So we here at VideoGamer.com thought we'd let Game Scene Investigation loose on FFXIII, pouring through everything that's known about the game and offering up our own verdict on how it's shaping up.

A Tale of two cities - the story

Here's what we know: FFXIII is actually part of a three-game series called Fabula Nova Crystallis (Latin for The New Tale of the Crystal). As with every true FF sequel, XIII has a completely new game world, divided up into the rich kids who live in the posh mechanical sky city, called Cocoon, and the downtrodden poverty-stricken peasants who live on the ground, called Pulse - your classic upper/lower class conflict set up. Cue an invasion of Cocoon by the people of Pulse, and the beginning of the game.

It's not just stale bread and the prospect of busking for a living that's got those on the ground baying for blood. From what we can gather, Cocoon's "holy" government is using sentient crystals with the power to create machines and control Pulse's inhabitants to work against their will. And that's not cool. Neither is a quarantine and deportation of anyone who sympathises with Pulse. Hence the uprising - led by the only FFXIII character we know anything about - a rock-hard Cloud-esque woman codenamed Lightning.

There's been mention of a split screen system for FFXIII, which will allow us to see different characters on screen all at the same time, 24 style. Details are sketchy, but rumours suggest it will be a technique used in cut-scenes to make the story-telling more dynamic. But we wonder if it could be introduced into the battle system somehow too...

So what do we think of FFXIII's story? Well it's classic FF, that's for sure - featuring a rebel force going up against an evil ruling class in a pseudo-sci-fi setting. So we've got lots of guns from the future, flying ships, motorbikes and robots spliced with knights in shining armour style foot soldiers and sword fights - a kind of medieval tale with super advanced technology. We've seen it all before of course in almost every proper FF game, so there's nothing in the story that indicates Square Enix has taken a fresh approach to storytelling. Is that a bad thing? Fans of the series will probably be happy, but we can't help but feel a tinge of disappointment.

[  1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Next Page »  ]