Thursday, July 23, 2009

Giant Final Fantasy XIII Scan Update + Mandatory Whiny Kid Character Revealed

I know, for a while there you thought you might be able to escape having a whiny little brat join your team in Square Enix's upcoming Final Fantasy XIII. 'Hey,' you thought to yourself, 'everyone that joins your team looks like they might be able to really add something.' Well, you thought too soon.

As glimpsed at in the most recent trailers, Dengeki PlayStation has confirmed that the little blonde boy is indeed the 5th main party member. Named Hope Estheim, the little brat will play the role of whiny kid that you are supposed to feel bad for after he joins the party. Afterall, his mother is killed when she joins Nora in a battle during the Purge on their Cocoon. (Yes, she is apparently the girl in the hood that volunteers to fight in the trailers. At least, that's what the article says.) Geez, I can already hear the sobbing and pouting now.

Hope apparently uses boomerangs in battle, and hates Snow (the person, not the weather) because of what happened to his mother.

The Dengeki article is extremely lengthy, and covers several story points, battle details, and information on magic. Let me know if you're interested in a translation, and I'll try to squeeze it in.


Final Fantasy XIII will be available sometime this Winter for PlayStation 3 in Japan, and sometime next Spring for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in North America.

5 comments:

Billy said...

I'm still looking forward to playing this, but the more that gets revealed, the less hyped I am. It seems like they're abandoning all the gameplay and design improvements that XII brought to the series and just trying to remake VII and VIII.

Brandon said...

i personally hate FFXII with a passion (it was sort of the last straw in what I felt was a loss of everything that made the series good), so the return to a more FFVI - FFX style game is very encouraging for me personally.

if you're really hard up for more FFXII style RPGaming, i would recommend The Last Remnant, which employs a lot of ideas from FFXII in (what i felt) was a much more interesting execution. (and if you do get TLR, get the PC version if you have a machine that can run it well - it's vastly superior to the 360 version.)

but yeah, i'm not letting that little kid on my team any more than i am forced to.

Billy said...

Hmm, that's an interesting recommendation, maybe I'll check out Remnant. It's funny how polarizing XII is! Personally I thought the story and pacing were a little lacking, but the world/character design, battle system, and overall gameplay were the best yet in the series.

Brandon said...

yeah, i have noticed that people either swear by FFXII or loathe it with every fiber of their soul. there doesn't seem to be much of a middle ground.

Anonymous said...

I'd love to read your translation for those scans! If you have some time left !