quote Shuyu

Oh, that was talking about Goggle Twat, who is Maqui.

They haven't unveiled the new guy yet, but since you seem to enjoy it (gross misinterpretation of your comments likely) I will be sure to rip into him the moment we see him.

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DengekiPS: Can you explain the keywords of this game, "l'Cie" and "fal'Cie"?

Toriyama: "fal'Cie" is beyond humanity and associated with the crystal. fal'Cie is not only one being but many, and one of them stepped up to created Cocoon. "l'Cie" are people chosen by fal'Cie to take on a Focus and a marking of their identity. Lightning and the others become chosen as "l'Cie" and each of them must take on their destiny and fight. While peaceful everyday lives are shattered at every corner, they must fight, and move forward no matter what the cost is. That is how the story will go. The reason of existence of fal'Cie is only because the crystal desires them, so the explanations given from the human point of view in the story might not be completely true. fal'Cie and l'Cie might exist in "Versus XIII" and "Agito XIII" also, but their purposes will definitely differ in each game.

DengekiPS: Cocoon is the main setting of the beginning of the game, but how large will it be if it existed in real life?

Toriyama: If brought into this world, Cocoon will be about the size of North America. The underworld Pulse is about as large as Earth itself. The shape of Cocoon is close if we describe it as a massive circular object surrounded by a circular shield. The futuristic cities and nature within the shield is the world fal'Cie created as its' technological world. On the border of the outside world and Cocoon exists a sun-like fal'Cie, so a blue sky can be seen from inside. Thanks to fal'Cie's power, Cocoon is able to stay aloft. Cocoon's fal'Cie's purpose is to enrich people's lives, so it influences many unique features of Cocoon. Please look forward to the journey in Cocoon to find out what the other fal'Cie are.



DengekiPS: Ms. Ikeda, we've heard you are the character designer of Snow.

Ikeda: Right after I finished work for Dawn of Mana, I was given the opportunity to design characters for FFXIII. All of these are completely different from what I've done before, so in the beginning I threw in everything I could to find a comfortable spot to start off at. Since this is on a next-gen console, I've designed every little detail possible.

DegekiPS: Please let us know a bit more about the members of Nora.

Ikeda: First of all Maqui, he has a history where he was an introvert and always stayed home until Snow came to pull him out. Since then he started to respect Snow greatly. That's why his outfit is styled like Snow more than other members. For example Maqui has a brassard on to copy how Snow's left sleeve is like, and his gloves are similar also. He is seen in many layers because he wants to hide his slim body that he finds embarrassing, compared to Snow's powerful and muscular body. His pair of headphones are used for radio transmissions between Nora members, and his goggles and tool satchel is his identification as the proud Nora mechanic.
Lebreau's colors and other motifs are inspired from the images of butterflies flying along an asian beach resort. Since the town where Nora's headquarters are located is along the beach, I've designed her to wear a swimsuit with short-shorts and a cardigan-like top. She talks and acts much more mature for her age, and sometimes acts as if she's the mother of Nora (laughs). Gadot was required to be "shorter than Snow, but more macho. On the young side for age, and not as big as FFVII's Barret" and I had a lot of trouble with that. In the end he became in-between the two, and has a reverse-traingle type body. Also like his hair and his tattoo represents, his motif is "fire", and he is supposed to be opposite of Snow who has a motif of ice. They both are hot-blooded, so I can't really say they're truly opposite though... (laughs)



DengekiPS: How much of the game will we enjoy with the demo?

Toriyama: If played normally from the opening of the story, you can enjoy it for a little over an hour. We've included a system where a battle rank is shown after every battle, and if you want to complete that, you would have to play it through a couple times. Also, the field system's concept is "live", so if you don't spin the free camera to look around, you might miss some cutscenes. We'd be happy to have you take time to search through the corners of the field for them.

Dengeki PS: Do we get the basic parts of the battle system?

Toriyama: Yes, and the battles will be at the same speed as shown in recent trailers. Of course we'll include more features in the final product, but you will be able to enjoy the basic but fun mechanics. Magic actually takes some progression into the game until they become available, but in the demo, we wanted you to see how cool the battle system is, so we included them from the start. We want you to see the new battle system where thinking strategically will lead to more cool-looking visuals and actions. Right now we are thinking that including Sazh's baby chocobo in combat somehow in the final product will make it more interesting. That baby chocobo is in many recollection scenes, and interacts and gets along with many other characters, so it actually is one of the important characters in the game. It's one of the characters you'd want to look out for.

Degeki PS: Please give out a message to those waiting for the demo.

Toriyama: Everyone has waited for so long, but we'll finally be able to release something playable. With "FF7ACC". Please wait a bit more for the April 16th release. The development of the product version is going very well also!

(Dengeki comment: In the next issue we'll have more interviews from Mr. Toriyama and Ms. Ikeda! We'll also have more information on the demo and characters.)

quote Shuyu

Hidden meaning behind "Nora"? Lulz, waiting for the speculation surrounding Lightning's name to flare up again.

quote Shuyu

Purely visually, I found the characters to be quite... ugly, to state it simply. If this is the sort of work this Ikeda woman does, I don't want it to continue.