They won’t be going into detail until the Tokyo Game Show later this year. Toriyama-san did reveal that Red Dead Redemption has affected their designs.
”There isn’t an awful lot I can tell you on this subject, but we have changed that structure, because obviously people didn’t like it—there is a new one,” said Motomu Toriyama in an interview discussing Final Fantasy XIII-2’s story structure.
”For details on that, we’ll have to wait until TGS, but one thing I can tell you is that for the first time in the Final Fantasy series, XIII-2 will have multiple endings.”
Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption has had a profound impact on the Final Fantasy team, and while FFXIII-2 is nowhere near as open-world as Rockstar’s critically acclaimed cowboy romp the team has still learned a lot and changed their own gameplay designs.
”Among the millions of games that came out last year, Red Dead Redemption was adored by a lot of Japanese developers, including ourselves,” admitted Toriyama-san.
”Our game is not as open-field as that game, obviously. We did take some inspirations, however. For example, missions can happen anywhere rather than having to go to a certain shrine, or base or something, and that’s from them.”
”In this game you see lots and lots of chocobos and you can ride them. The kind of feeling you get as you ride the chocobo, it’s a bit like the way you ride a horse.”
”It’s a really refreshing feel good experience, and that’s one thing we learned from the game.” Final Fantasy XIII-2 is unlikely to be featuring towns like in previous series instalments, mainly as they’re ”very hard” to do in HD, and ”quite boring” to experience.
Final Fantasy XIII-2 releases on Xbox 360 and PS3 in early 2012.
