PixlBit

Expect the unexpected, and keep hope alive!

Final Fantasy

If you frequent PixlBit at all or listen to our podcasts, you’re probably aware that I’m a huge Final Fantasy fan. Heck, I spent months this year putting together our 25^th anniversary retrospective. So it pains me to know that the franchise is starting to slip a bit, either because of long, arduous development cycles or tons of strange spinoffs diluting the series’ reputation. I still have a great deal of love and respect for this brand, however, and 2013 could very well end up being the banner year for the series that 2012 should have been, what with it having been a big birthday milestone.

Probably the biggest game for the franchise this year would be Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn. If you haven’t been following the brutal and embarrassing launch and first year of FF XIV, this is a nearly-complete redesign of the core MMO game. The new team has stripped out those archaic design elements that had people living in a post-WoW world scratching their heads, while keeping most of the things in the game that worked. It’s running on a much more efficient and scalable graphics engine that looks great even on lower end rigs, and the PlayStation 3 version is finally going to launch this year. Considering that Final Fantasy XIV hemorrhaged money for Square Enix for over a year, my fingers are crossed that A Realm Reborn can right the wrongs of “XIV ver. 1.0”.

If you had told me back in 2009 that I’d be playing a third Final Fantasy XIII game in 2013 that wasn’t one of the announced Fabula Nova Crystalis games I would have laughed in your face. And yet here we are, on the cusp of yet another game bearing the FF XIII name. Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII is a head scratcher for sure. After that crazy cliffhanger ending from XIII-2 I expected a game that picked up right where that one left off, but Lightning Returns doesn’t seem like a continuation. Instead, we find Lightning on her own in a new city known as Luxerion. The game looks gorgeous, straddling that line between the high-gloss visuals of XIII and the lower res graphics of XIII-2. It seems like LR is a straight-up action/RPG this time around, with players taking direct control of Lightning in battle. The XIII games were already pretty fast paced, but time will tell if the battles can be as compelling with only one character in the mix.

We also have the HD version of Final Fantasy X to look forward to for PS Vita and PlayStation 3. The game was announced ages ago, but Square Enix says it will have information on its release “soon”. If you still believe that Final Fantasy Versus XIII is an actual game and is still getting a release, 2013 seems like a great year to do that, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Rumors still pop up about Final Fantasy Type-0 as well. The PSP game reviewed well in Japan, and reports had pointed to a PS Vita release, which could translate to an eventual HD version on the PS3 if it ever got translated. And with the next generation looming, could it finally be time to hear the announcement of Final Fantasy XV? Enquiring minds want to know!

                                                                        Wake up, Noctis. You're late!