Square "never knowingly" recycled cut FFXIII content in FFXIII-2

It was said that the amount of content cut from Final Fantasy XIII was enough to ‘make a whole new game’, but that was ”really badly misinterpreted.”

FFXIII-2 director Yohinori Kitase says the team has ”never knowingly picked up” any cut designs or content and recycled them. It’s ”completely newly written”.

”I think those comments have been really badly misinterpreted. The fact is that when making any game you need to come up with lots of different ideas and designs that you weigh up against each other before picking the best one,” explained Yohinori Kitase.

”Obviously in that process a lot of ideas and designs have to be discarded.”

Fans needn’t worry that Square Enix is simply dusting off Final Fantasy XIII’s content cast offs as a whole new game. The team designed its experience from scratch and didn’t reference anything from the first game except the storyline of course.

”We have never knowingly picked up these kind of ideas and recycled them. That’s not what we do. It’s natural for anyone making games to throw away ideas but the scenario of FFXIII-2 is completely newly written and has no connection to anything we didn’t use for FFXIII.”

Final Fantasy XIII-2 releases on Xbox 360 and PS3 in January 2012.