Final Fantasy XIII Linear “Since Towns Were Too Much Work”

[Gingerbread Lesbian]

Interviews with the Final Fantasy XIII development team appear to have yielded some surprising revelations, including the admission that the game’s notoriously linear structure was due in large part to the trouble inherent in designing towns in a “high definition” manner.

The revelations come by way of developer interviews and other information published in Square Enix’s official Final Fantasy XIII production Final Fantasy XIII Scenario Ultimania.

Some of the most interesting points are paraphrased below:

The game’s linearity was just because depicting towns and so on like we did before was impossible to do on an “HD” console – it was too much work.

Nomura had hardly anything to do with it; he just did character design and commercials, not even the intro or movies.

The game was designed with DLC in mind but we don’t actually have any planned.

It was easy to port to the Xbox. Porting to the PS3 is harder. The PS3 has more processing power but you have to do it properly.

Jumping was manual at first and you could jump onto the titans.

You used to be able to avoid enemy attacks in the field using the analogue stick, but due to difficulty considerations it was canned.

The battle team came up with the transforming summons. The art team was dead against them.

“I was thinking this time we would make it completely story-centric” – Toriyama.

There is a source, but the link is NSFW therefore, I'm not posting it.

 

[King Sean]

So basically, they couldn't do it because the PS3 was too complex to make any side quests or anything for? Maybe if it had been on the PS2 they could have added side quests. The game may be boring if there are no on-the-side things to do. This is not good news

 

[Gingerbread Lesbian]

It's easy to defend SE but this is concerning, it just screams laziness to me. I'm not bothered that there's no towns since I couldn't care less but the whole "it was too much work" just seems like they couldn't be bothered. Look at Versus XIII, the main storyline seems to be centred around huge towns and cities. Maybe Nomura should have more of an influence in the making of FFXIII after all.

 

[Martel]

Poor excuses. It is not "impossible" to depict towns for an HD console, not in the slightest. There are plenty of RPGs out for the PS3 and 360 that have numerous towns. What the hell are they talking about?

I don't see what jumping has to do with towns and linearity, either - what, they couldn't be bothered to take the time develop the concept properly so they just left it out entirely?

I understand that there is a tremendous amount of pressure on them to get these games out ASAP, but delaying things in the name of getting them done right happens all the time in the video-game industry, and I, for one, would rather wait for a spectacular game than have a crap one delivered to me in no short order. It seems to me they're taking the attitude that no matter what they do it'll sell because it has the FF logo stamped to it, and that pisses me off.

So, they spend years developing it, and can't be bothered to do it properly? Disgusting.

 

[Linnaete]

The game’s linearity was just because depicting towns and so on like we did before was impossible to do on an “HD” console – it was too much work.

Impossible? Surely this person jests, right? FFXIII is NOT the first RPG game on an HD console! Look at other games such as Infinite Undiscovery, Star Ocean IV, Lost Odyssey and WRPGs such as Mass Effect 2- Tri-Ace, Mistwalker and Bioware managed to put in towns and add in some HD flavour, so out of all companies, why not SE?

So let me get this straight- it's OK to spend months and months polishing rocks and perfecting the environment of a very linear location, but when it comes to towns (usually one of the prettiest aspect of RPGs), they suddenly seem unable to leap over that hurdle? Sorry, that just screams laziness to me as well. I don't believe it was "impossible" because Versus XIII seems to be going well.

The battle team came up with the transforming summons. The art team was dead against them.

Of course the art team wouldn't like it as it would mean hard work trying to decide how their summons would transform and designing it all. I don't even know myself why they bothered having transforming summons. Only because FFXIII has a sci-fi setting, it doesn't mean they have to turn Pulse into Cybertron.

 

[John Marston]

This is what really bothers me about games nowadays, people care too much about graphics than gameplay. There's nothing wrong with graphics but if that's all that is going to be focused on then the damn thing might as well be turned into a movie.

Games such as demons souls, dragon age origins, etc aren't too heavily focused on graphics yet they have towns amongst other things. I don't buy their excuses one bit.

 

[Gingerbread Lesbian]

So let me get this straight- it's OK to spend months and months polishing rocks and perfecting the environment of a very linear location, but when it comes to towns (usually one of the prettiest aspect of RPGs), they suddenly seem unable to leap over that hurdle? Sorry, that just screams laziness to me as well. I don't believe it was "impossible" because Versus XIII seems to be going well.

Yeah, I sort of remembered FFXII when I read it, even though it wasn't HD it still arguably had the best graphics on the PS2 and had some brilliant towns in there. Same goes with The Last Remnant. Al being said, at least they admitted it was too much work

 

[DeadFantasy]

It bothers me too. If they can work on the graphics and whatnot till it's practically a movie then they should be able to somewhere seqeeze in side-quests and whatnot. It's lazy. So the people that have a 360 will have side quest? Since apparently it's easier to do so on there then the PS3. If it was too much work then they should've focused on other things then just the graphics. Linear isn't nearly as fun then games with extra things added on. Now i'm mad and I was having a good day too. >.>
It wasn't "impossible" they just didn't want to do it. It could be a better game if they took the extra time to add in extra things. Can't say though, since it has yet to come out.
-sigh-;