Fabula Nova Crystallis: Final Fantasy XIII was first announced with an E3 2006 trailer. It was an incredible grand scale project that spans over three games: Final Fantasy XIII (led by Yoshinori Kitase and Motoru Toriyama), Final Fantasy Agito XIII (later becomes Final Fantasy: Type-0, led by Hajime Tabata) and Final Fantasy Versus XIII (Tetsuya Nomura was entrusted with this title). All three games were supposed to be created from a common mythos surrounding the lore of the new tale of the crystal.
All three directors were given a freedom of interpretation of the mythos. Tetsuya Nomura who was given the task of creating Final Fantasy Versus XIII took the liberty of using the Crystal Tools engine developed for the PlayStation 3. But a few years later, in 2011, it was moved to a more sophisticated engine so they could focus on the gameplay itself. While the Luminous Engine was used for the lighting, the Crystal Tools was still used for real-time graphics.
The word Versus at the time was used as a mark of its difference from Final Fantasy XIII. Square wanted the world in Versus to be a whole, connecting world, the direct opposite from Final Fantasy XIII, hence the name Versus.
Versus XIII was in three years of development after it’s very first announcement as “Not a sequel, but an independent story with its own characters” in 2006. Yet other than the first conversation trailer of Noctis and Stella (both were the main protagonists) in 2008, no other progress had taken any shape. It was a total radio silence from Versus XIII division.
Even Noctis was not so happy about the delay.
Then on December 2012, Hajime Tabata became the co-director helping Nomura to finish what he had started. Tabata said that when the transition began, Versus XIII was already 25% done. Tabata then led a huge restructuring on Versus XIII that there’s so many features were cut mercilessly. He even kicked Stella out of the window.
At Tokyo Game Show 2014, Square then announced a demo Final Fantasy XV: Episode Duscae, which later on March 2015 released as a Pre-Order bonus for buying Final Fantasy Type-0 HD. This year, Square Enix reallocate Tetsuya Nomura to other projects, pushing Tabata to the director’s seat.
And ultimately this year we will be receiving a great news from the event Uncovered: Final Fantasy XV at the end of this month. Please, be excited.
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everlight
Yeah, we will finally end this ‘eternal waiting’ in the upcoming Uncovered FF XIII Event. I hope they really give us the exact release date for this game 🙂