Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII is 30% complete

As promised, Famitsu’s exclusive interview with the Lightning Returns developers has surfaced in this week’s issue.

Details are just now coming out, but the game is only 30% complete according to the staff. Lighting Returns will bring the long-promised happy ending for Lightning, and will not include any multi-endings. The game’s project leads specifically stated that this would be the last game in the Final Fantasy XIII saga.

The concept of the game is “world driven.” FFXIII was story driven, and XIII-2 was player driven, and so LR is world driven – which relates to the movement of the world.

Since time is important in Lightning Returns, it’s important to take into consideration that 1 day in the game is about 1~2 hours of real world play time. Remember, the world of Novus Partus is set to end in 13 days. There will be increases and decreases in time. Novus Partus is composed of four islands, two with natural terrain and one has the city of Luxerion on it.

The game is meant to be played and beaten a multitude of times – the volume is not such that it will take many tens of hours to clear once. You’ll have the ability to carry items over through multiple playthroughs.
The people from XIII-2 have not died. Due to Chaos, people no longer age. Depending on your actions, the remaining life of the world could decrease, and the game could end before the 13 day limit. Even actions such as helping people will end in the timer decreasing. Actions such as defeating enemies and completing quests will increase the timer.

In LR, Lightning has become a considerably more refined person. In fact, by having just sole control of her, you can concentrate more on battles than if you would have a full party to manage.

You can freely move around during battle. Some elements of the battle system are timing-based. The battle system is very similar to an action RPG, but contains an ATB bar. There are no menu commands this time – commands are mapped to specific face buttons which can be pressed in succession.

Lightning encounters a murder in the city of Luxerion to which she is tasked to help solve. Such a scene was displayed during the closed doors demo a few days ago.

Hope is confirmed to return. He’ll be sending messages to Lightning through wireless communication. The city shows clocks everywhere which show the ever moving concept of time.