According to an interview with Fumitsu, some very interesting details surfaced for the upcoming Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII.
The story delivery in Lightning Returns , which is thirty percent is meant to connect the experiences with the other two titles. Final Fantasy XIII was story driven, FFXIII-2 was character driven, and Lightning Returns will be world driven. This means that players will have to determine how they must interact with a changing world.
The characters from FFXII-2 aren’t dead. Apparently, because of "the effects of the chaos," everyone has stopped aging and don’t get old. So, the age of the world is the determining factor instead. Helping certain people may decrease the life of the world, and defeating certain enemies and completing quests may lengthen the world’s life span. The world will have four continents, where two are natural and the other two are city scapes. Throughout the game, clocks will literally be everywhere to indicate the progression of time to maintain the urgent ambiance.
There won’t be parties in Lightning Returns, leaving Lightning as the focal point for the entire game. She can be moved around freely on the battlefield, unlike any other Final Fantasy title. Action will be the name of the game in combat. Though it will still contain an ATB gauge that’s familiar to FF vets, abilities assigned to face buttons will replace menu commands.
Square-Enix could be testing some of the mechanic ideas it plans to feature in Versus XIII, but this last statement is purely speculation. Final Fantasy XIII has received a lot of love and a lot of hate from Final Fantasy fans, but this direction looks to be, as it were, redeeming the XIII series. Leave us your thoughts on the matter below.
Via Andriasang