Famitsu Weekly has dropped yet more Dissidia: Final Fantasy info on the videogaming community, with Siliconera stepping up to translate some of the important bits.
Top of the list were details of each character’s alternative costumes. Final Fantasy VII’s Cloud Strife can apparently slip into the outfit he wore in UMD movie Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, while his arch-antagonist Sephiroth is playable in his full, final-boss, stripped-to-the-waist glory.
If real-time arena slugging isn’t your thing, Square Enix has built in a Command Battle mode, which lets you issue orders to your character from a menu as in the turn-based games of yore. Once given their orders characters will perform them endlessly or till defeat, though you can command the brave souls to retreat by holding a trigger.
Once you’ve mastered the art of dishing out the pain, you might want to record your antics with the game’s theatre mode, or take photos of especially punishing blows with the in-game camera.
Famitsu also had a chance to chat to Creative Producer Tetsuya Nomura (interview translated by 1UP) about the game’s roster. The most recent Final Fantasy character to be announced for Dissidia is Shantotto, a Black Mage NPC from the massively multiplayer Final Fantasy XI.
"Introducing Shantotto and not one of the FFXI player-characters was one of the surprises we’ve given people in interviews from the beginning of the project," Nomura commented. "As for Final Fantasy XII, just stay tuned for now!"
Regrettably, it seems Square Enix doesn’t want to include characters from Final Fantasy XIII as this would wrong-foot development of the latter. "One idea we had was to include an FFXIII character," Nomura admitted. "But having one debut in Dissidia would lock down the image of his or her skills and so forth, perhaps affecting FFXIII in the process. As a result, we couldn’t get permission."
Dissida: Final Fantasy will raise its banner over Japanese PlayStation Portables on December 18. A North American release date surely can’t be too long in coming – or can it?