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TGS 06: Final Fantasy XIII Impressions

We check out a new trailer for Square's upcoming Fantasy at the Tokyo Game Show.

TOKYO--Today at the Tokyo Game Show, Square Enix showed off a bevy of trailers for their upcoming titles in their patented "Closed Mega Theater." Included among the cornucopia was an updated, expanded trailer for the eagerly anticipated RPG, Final Fantasy XIII. While concrete information, like a release date, is still up in the air, the trailer at least showed off a good amount of new eye candy for the audience.

If you've happened to see the trailer from this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo, not much of substance has changed in the new TGS trailer. The action still revolves around the same nameless woman that was shown causing so much property damage in the earlier trailer. In the previous trailer, though, her enemies were exclusively human; now, she's shown fighting against a number of monsters, as well.

In the first instance, the enemy that appears is a massive demon, looking somewhat like the Balrog from the Lord of the Rings movies, save that it glows blue and swings a massive sword that leaves energy trails behind it. The guards in the large city that's under assault manage to summon their own defenses, as they activate a blue energy field through which leap a few battle wolves, which quickly coalesce from pure energy into solid matter to take on the monster. The woman isn't bereft of tricks of her own, however; immediately preceding the precious few seconds of battle footage (which appear to be identical to the E3 trailer), she drops a grenade on a group of enemies and then slices through it with her sword, causing them all to go flying.

Afterwards, a bit of footage appears in which the woman directly engages another large monster, which somewhat reveals the Ifrit summon from Final Fantasy X, but in a bit of a bluish hue. This didn't appear to be battle footage, though, as everything moved around a bit too much for it to be anything other than a cutscene.

Lastly, the brief trailer is wound down by the appearance of a mechanized, flying manta ray-esque creature, which landed on one of the railway trains that are seen zooming through these trailers, and then ground it to a halt by pressing it against the track. It stayed there for a moment, causing the woman to leap up from the train and see what all the fuss was about. As in the previous trailer, this one ended as she held her sword out toward the beast and posed for the camera.

Although everything is still deliberately cagey--the game is still a long ways away--we're going to go out on a limb to surmise that the game's plot is at least superficially similar to that of Final Fantasy: Spirits Within, where a female protagonist attempted to convince a skeptical world that their reliance on technology was the cause of their problems. The juxtaposition of the world's high-technology setting and the apparently startling appearance of demons and monsters make us think that perhaps the advanced technology is for some reason the cause of the monstrous invasion, which perhaps isn't that much of a stretch, considering the classic relationship of nature versus technology in most of the previous Final Fantasy games.

Anyway, that's pure supposition. As more details become available on Final Fantasy XIII, we'll be sure to relay them to you as quickly as possible.

179 Comments

  • andybling12

    Posted May 13, 2007 11:36 am PT

    Wheres the video at,Message me!

  • yaantey_basic

    Posted Apr 5, 2007 3:40 am PT

    Woww.....the obiviously looks cool. Cannot wait for this.

  • Rizer

    Posted Feb 22, 2007 8:57 am PT

    Interesting...but I hope they're wrong about the plot. Spirits Within's odd, same old b-movie plot of man as ignorant retards doing stupid things that result in self inflicted wounds is kind of overdone, in my opinion.

  • boricuasnake04

    Posted Feb 20, 2007 8:07 am PT

    one of the most innovating games in history i hope

  • riseofnations36

    Posted Feb 15, 2007 10:55 am PT

    A chance for the creators of Final Fantasy to redeem themselves.
    FF 1-6 were perfect.But then they went and ruined the whole series with FF 7.Shallow gameplay and story.
    FF 8 -12 tried to redeem the series but just couldn't live up to FF 1 - 6.Lets see if this can.

  • Jerian

    Posted Jan 31, 2007 7:56 pm PT

    Happy Happy

  • dunedain-ranger

    Posted Jan 21, 2007 9:57 pm PT

    weeeeoo (that's me whistling)

  • hikari33

    Posted Jan 13, 2007 2:29 pm PT

    this game will rock my socks

  • Xavdidtheshadow

    Posted Dec 26, 2006 11:27 am PT

    This game looks very good indeed. While you can't tell how good a game is simply by its trailer (*cough*Tales of Legendia.... *cough*) this one looks like a good bet. By the way, for those of you who don't know, it has been said that the girl shown in the trailer is not the main character, just one that the developers chose to head the trailer.

  • lilike09

    Posted Dec 7, 2006 1:39 pm PT

    final fantasy is the best game ive ever played (just had to get that out of my system)

  • Thor1981

    Posted Nov 30, 2006 2:48 pm PT

    Wow, and FF 12 just came out!

  • errati

    Posted Nov 29, 2006 4:04 am PT

    Still to find how powerfull is the (White Engine) for the FFXIII, but in matter of graphics, Square is worth to be trusted.

  • bdl108

    Posted Nov 19, 2006 7:06 pm PT

    man i expect great things out of this game. can't wait

  • Tungsten88

    Posted Nov 12, 2006 3:30 pm PT

    Hahahahaha! That sound weird.

  • kingpimp101

    Posted Nov 5, 2006 1:22 am PT

    Well I can tell you where 100 hours of 2007 for me is going.
    Who cares whether its realtime or not. Either way it still looks stunning.
    More looking forward to Versus. Still waiting for the PAL version of FFXII damnit!

  • Juro4dark

    Posted Nov 4, 2006 9:58 am PT

    idc this game is gonna be extremely amazing...lol im buying it months before

  • aznboi71486

    Posted Nov 3, 2006 2:07 pm PT

    Actually, the movie for FF XIII is not using CGI technology. I noticed bland textures and jagged lines, which means that it's running in real-time. I didn't believe that it was possible for a PS3 at first, but after I found some imperfections in the movie, I realized that the PS3 was able to run this in real-time.

    EDIT: Haha..... I got carried away with the point I was making so I decided to delete it =)

  • henry4th

    Posted Nov 3, 2006 10:04 am PT

    NelsonsGhost
    That "graphic beauty" is just a movie, and it's not just possible on the PS3. It's possible on my DVD player. Once again, FF proves itself nothing more than pre-rendered, gameplay-lacking filler. And yet you just HAVE to be here to read the so claimed-filler-by-yourself FF news... how pathetic are you?

  • NelsonsGhost

    Posted Nov 1, 2006 6:36 am PT

    That "graphic beauty" is just a movie, and it's not just possible on the PS3. It's possible on my DVD player. Once again, FF proves itself nothing more than pre-rendered, gameplay-lacking filler.

  • -Napoleon-

    Posted Oct 28, 2006 5:09 pm PT

    Can't wait ! Wish it were on the 360 to though.

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