Nineteen new FFXIII scans for your viewing pleasure

Nineteen new scans of Final Fantasy XIII hit the internet today out of Weekly Famitsu, depicting some new scenes and some new in battle footage of Fang and her fal'Cie Bahamut. Also depicted are Sazh and his fal'Cie Brunhilde, and some new cutscenes that involve Fang and the rest of the party.

Check them out at Kotaku.

Four Warriors multiplayer details emerge...

The upcoming DS title "4 Warriors of Light: Final Fantasy Gaiden" looks to return to a simpler time in the franchise. But not so traditional is the addition of a multiplayer wi-fi option in which players will be able to traverse the overworld and spelunk into dungeons in turn-based random encounter deliciousness. It's not revealed yet if players will be able to trade in-game commodities but I'm more than willing to say it looks like a go.

The official site updated with this information, check it out here.

(Thanks to Athel of Kingdom Hearts Insider for the heads up!)

New FFXIII character revealed: Oerba Yun Fang "Fang"

In the new issue of Shonen Jump, the black-haired woman we saw in the TGS2009 trailer is given a name, and we see a glimpse of her summon. Is it Bahamut? Also, it's confirmed that she works for Sanctum, and that Sazh's summon is NOT named Ifrit.

View the scan.

SOURCES: Shonen Jump

Love SQ announced

Square Enix has announced a compilation soundtrack titled Love SQ (album art can be seen here). It will contain arrangements by various musicians from classic Square titles such as Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger, and will be released on November 25th.

Tracklist

• Final Fantasy – Main Theme (PE'Z)
• Final Fantasy III – Yuukyuu no Kaze (De De Mouse)
• Chrono Trigger – Chrono Trigger & Toki no Kairo (Novoiski)
• Chrono Trigger – Harukanaru Toki no Kanata e (livetune)
• Chrono Trigger – Kaeru no Theme & Sentou Shori (Sexy-Synthesizer)
• Final Fantasy – Chocobo no Theme (Good Luck Heiwa)
• Romancing Saga – Medley (note native)
• Seiken Densetsu Legend of Mana – Medley (muZik)
• Final Fantasy – Battle Medley (Pia-no-ja)
• Final Fantasy – Prelude (no.9)

The official site for the upcoming album can be found here. There's a requirement to get in too, and I'm not talking about the Japanese!

SOURCE: andriasang.com

Engilsh FFXIII TGS trailer online

New today is the English dubbed trailer for Final Fantasy XIII, certainly up quicker than what we'd normally expect.

View the English trailer.

SOURCES: GameTrailers

Final Fantasy XIII TGS 2009 trailer goes live

On Square-Enix's website, they have made available the trailer that was shown at TGS this year.
Click here and go to the Trailers section to view.

Final Fantasy VIII hits Japan PSN

Like Final Fantasy VII at E3 before it, another PlayStation Final Fantasy was announced and made available during the press conference at Tokyo Game Show. It's Final Fantasy VIII's turn this time around, and by downloading the title from the store you can play it on your PlayStation 3 or transfer it to your PSP for mobile play. No word yet on when it will come to US and European PSN, but I'm more than willing to bet that it will eventually.

New 4WoL details

• Can be completed in 40 hours (originally 30 hours during development)
• Each character can only carry fifteen items
• Items don't stack (think Earthbound)
• Auto-targeting will make battles go by more quickly
• Lots and lots of optional sidequests not part of the main story
• Also like Earthbound, you can swap out items you're carrying with items from a previous inventory using hiding places

SOURCES: NeoGAF via GoNintendo (Dengeki Magazine)

TGS '09: Events as they unfold...

So at this point, I'll keep a little "liveblog" of stuff that comes out of E3. Keep refreshing and I'll post what I find as it happens.

9:31pm : Montage of games in Sony keynote, FFXIII present.
10:01pm : Final Fantasy IV: The After Years trailer.
10:10pm : New Crystal Bearers trailer, click the Multimedia section.
10:21pm : New Final Fantasy XIII floor footage.
10:26pm : Snow, Sazh, and Vanille battle in a the temple, Shiva is summoned.
11:01pm : FFXIII, summoning Odin and driving mode.
11:22pm : FFXIV TGS trailer.
12:01am : FFXIII special edition "Lightning" PS3 announced. It is pink and white with 250GB hard drive.
12:34am : FFXI expansion A Shantotto Ascension trailer.

Side note, we have six new in-game shots of FFXIII:
◆ #1: Lightning riding Sleipnir in Driving Mode.
◆ #2: Lightning and Odin in battle.
◆ #3: Snow and Serah.
◆ #4: A close-up.
◆ #5: Serah being engulfed.
◆ #6: Snow reaches out to Serah.

1:15am : Lightning and Hope battle underground.
1:20am : The official site will have the FFXIII TGS trailer in about 3 days, countdown was added.
2:20am : Snow party, first look at the menu system.
7:44am : Crystal Defenders heading to PSP.
12:23pm : Final Fantasy Versus XIII makes a secret appearance.
12:31pm : Hands on with Four Warriors of Light.
5:05pm : More footage from last night, Vanille is monsterbait. And the ensuing battle.
10:14pm : More escapades with Lightning.
1:03am : Snow nipplage. This is from the trailer that's coming out in a few days. (Hope for a leak.)
5:28am : Snow's party, seven minutes of gameplay and airship chase. Beautiful.
3:38am : The new "tattoo-girl" character?

Pre-TGS festivities: Vanille and Serah scan

In leading up to Tokyo Game Show 2009 (which starts later tonight) we have a new scan of Vanille and Serah in an in-game cutscene (below). Hopefully, the new trailer we'll see at the event will be online for viewings relatively quickly. But stay tuned for updates!

◆ Scan

SOURCES: 2ch

Fortress not dead in the water after all?

Since Swedish developer GRIN kicked the bucket, a flood of development artwork has surfaced on the Linkedin profiles of the developers associated with the project. However, the game codenamed Fortress, has been picked up again by Square-Enix. This was actually done roughly six months in the past as GamesIndustry.biz reports. Square-Enix had some concerns about the quality of the project, and financial woes finally caught up with GRIN due to Swedish legislation that imposes penalties on companies "that go into debt", which I take for a bankruptcy.

So it looks like behind closed doors at Square-Enix, Fortress is still alive. However there are still many questions left unanswered. Will Square-Enix still have a western developer work on this project? Will newly acquired Eidos be a good candidate for such a title? Will it still have the same themes we have seen in the artwork?

SOURCES: GamesIndustry.biz, Thanks SuperEclipse for the heads up.

More Crystal Bearers gameplay videos

Some new gameplay videos from Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers were put up on the official Japanese website where you can also find a few new wallpapers. They feature a look at some minigames, as well as some different uses for Lyle's crystal power. Take a look:

◆ Sheep rescue mini-game.
◆ Many uses for balloons.

SOURCES: Mahypsy (NeoGAF), 23Makoto23 (YouTube)

HI-quality Serah scans, FFXIII novella in the works

So, a bit more news in the FFXIII department today. We have some higher quality scans from V-Jump of Serah, and we also learned that a web novella entitled "Final Fantasy XIII: Episode Zero" is in production for Final Fantasy XIII. It will be penned by Jun Eishima, and be up on the website sometime later on this month.

◆ Scan #1
◆ Scan #2

SOURCES: V-Jump

Four Warriors of Light site updates

http://www.square-enix.co.jp/hikarino4sensi/

As soon you bring up the main page, you'll notice that a banner linking to Square's TGS page has been added.

The World page now has a map featuring some of the game's locations, as well as new entries for three guest characters such as the previously mentioned mouse mage. Whether or not this will be it for the guest characters in 4WoL is unknown.

System has been updated with eight job profiles: (from left to right) Beast Tamer, Druid, Monk, Knight, Black Mage, White Mage, Alchemist, and Recorder.

SOURCES: Athel at KHInsider for the tip, duckroll at NeoGAF for the job titles.

Four Warriors of Light boxart

Truly, truly amazing! I really hope this comes with an artbook.



SOURCES: GoNintendo

Crystal Bearers to hit US shelves the day after Xmas

Courtesy of Klee Kuo's Twitter page, he reveals that the North American version of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers will be released on December 26th, 2009.

SOURCES: Klee Kuo (Twitter)

Distant Worlds headed to Canada, new songs

Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy is an orchestra tour headed by Arnie Roth that has made its rounds around the United States this year peforming classic themes for Final Fantasy fans. I was actually able to attend the Minneapolis performance earlier this year and I was nothing less than amazed. If you have the chance to attend, do it. You will not regret it.

This week, Square-Enix sent a newsletter involving new developments with the tour:

Distant Worlds: music from FINAL FANTASY will be in Chicago on December 12, 2009 at 8:00 PM! We hope you can make it out to our exciting show, featuring the Chicagoland Pops Orchestra, Elmhurst College Concert Choir, and Susan Calloway, conducted by maestro Arnie Roth. Best of all, Nobuo Uematsu will play the B3 organ with the Chicago Mages! There will be North American Premieres, World Premieres, and works never heard outside of Japan! New arrangements of Dancing Mad and J-E-N-O-V-A will be debuted at this show.

(What's fun about this is that at the Minneapolis show (in which Uematsu was in attendance) we got to pick these two new songs for the December Chicago performance. The other choices I believe where Battle with the Four Fiends, Clash on the Big Bridge, and Fight with Seymour all I would have loved.)

Also, the newsletter announces that they will have a Vancouver show on October 8th that will feature the first North American performance of Main Theme of Final Fantasy VII. (They played Ronafure from FFXI at our Minneapolis show as an exclusive.) Also, they will have a concert in South Korea.

For more information on performances and tickets, click here.

Serah Farron revealed

V-Jump has released a new scan featuring newly revealed character Serah Farron. In this scan, we see Serah being carried by Snow, and that she bears the mark of a L'Cie on her arm. We also see that at one point it looks as though she becomes completely frozen, but it's hard to discern from the quality of the scan. Serah will be voiced by Minako Kotobuki.

duckroll:
"She is Lightning's younger sister. A headstrong girl who believes in solving her own problems and not getting other people involved. She is always very concerned for her elder sister. She wears a necklace on her chest, a present from Snow. Lightning does not approve of her engagement with Snow. Like her sister, she is a L'Cie and is marked with a tattoo of two red spheres on her left arm."

◆ V-Jump scan.

SOURCES: FF7AC Reunion, duckroll (NeoGAF)

FFXIV's Tanaka and Komoto chat with Dengeki

Recently after the hub-bub Final Fantasy XIV had at GamesCom with the alpha build already playable and a wellspring of new information about the MMORPG available to the public, FFXIV producer Hiromichi Tanaka and Director Nobuaki Komoto were interviewed by Dengeki about the status of their upcoming project.

They mention a wide gambit of updates and changes to what gamers can expect from a Square-Enix MMORPG. With a good technological generation down the line from FFXI, they elaborate that they were able to produce a better detailed player character and environment. While they didn't specifically say that the world of Eorzea would be seamless, they note that there has been an improvement compared to FFXI.

Dengeki also asks about Guildleves, something I have found interesting since the unveiling of the project. Guildleves are essentially the game's questing system. Now, FFXI's questing was rather sparse in comparison to WoW, and required the player to eke out a challenging(?) grind. Now, since the days of FFXI, FFXIV has implemented something that could make questing more of a dynamic and fun process. In essence, the guildleves that you collect have a wide variety of tasks that you must complete; this in turn can be rewarded with better skills and other rewards. The guildleves that you choose are designed around how much time you want to play. Only have an hour? Pick up the according Guildleve and you're off.

ZAM was awesome enough to translate the full interview; I'd highly recommend checking it out.

One more FFXIII party character to reveal?

You can find relevant information in the unlikeliest of places. So, recently, if you've been following the news out of the Final Fantasy XIII Premiere Party, you may have caught the announcement of "Elixir", a Final Fantasy XIII take on the Final Fantasy Potion from the Final Fantasy XII release. (See: crazy Japan.) Suntory, the manufacturer of both Potion and the new Elixir, has been updating their online listings for the beverage. Now, in one of these pics that Suntory provided we see five characters that have been revealed thus far: Lightning, Snow, Vanille, Sazh, and Hope. However a sixth slot has a question mark. Will this be the sixth and final party member to be playable as a part of the main team?

SOURCES: FF7AC Reunion, country food