Final Fantasy Versus XIII TGS Impressions
Despite telling Famitsu and press at GamesCom Germany that it wouldn't be present at this year's Tokyo Game Show, Square Enix saw fit to show off some footage of Final Fantasy Versus XIII within a small enclosed area of their booth.
Once fans had finished playing the Final Fantasy XIII and Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep demos, they were shown the way into an enclosed mini-theatre where all the latest trailers - including the as yet unreleased FF13 TGS trailer - were shown on a big screen.
The trailer reel was relatively short, and the screen had nothing on Square's giant trailer screen at E3 2009 - but it was still very cool of Square to show off stuff in this way - and in amongst the trailers was a first gameplay glimpse at Final Fantasy Versus XIII.
Our man at the show went in and saw it twice, and though pictures and videos weren't allowed within the mini-theatre, he did send us along some impressions us all to enjoy. From here I'll let him take over:
What was shown wasn't exactly a trailer but it wasn't exactly gameplay footage either - it was simply off-screen footage of one of the Versus team playing around in some test areas set to Yoko Shimomura's "Somnus," the track that was played in previous trailers.
The off-screen footage was relatively interesting though, giving us our first glimpse at the game's real-time graphics in a section the player can control, rather than the real-time cutscene segements seen in the last couple of trailers for the game.
The clips showed main character Noctis running around a city similar in style to those pictured in the trailers at different times of day with varying numbers of NPCs around him. At night, the city was utterly deserted apart from Noctis.
Aside from the city, the footage also treated us to a glance at a field area which also played home to some gigantic monsters. The field was massive and relatively flat - reminiscent in a way of Final Fantasy X's Calm Lands - just with huge monsters on-screen with you.
In every way the footage that was shown was definitely far from completion and nothing that will likely be considered for wider release - unless it leaks, this footage will probably remain an exclusive for fans at the show.
The game looked good, but from this simple footage of Noctis running around incomplete environments people could easily get the wrong idea about the game and how it plays - there was nothing even approaching combat in the video, and the simplistic HUD displayed gives little to no idea of how the game'll play, either.
That's the most interesting question of all: While it's clear that Versus is progressing thanks to this video, we've still no concrete idea about how it will play. The suggestion appears to be that it'll be similar to Kingdom Hearts - but based on this footage, it's too early to say.
It was definitely pretty - if incomplete - and intriguing. Hopefully more information regarding Versus will emerge through magazines like Famitsu and Jump in the coming weeks. As always, stick with us on RPGSite for the latest.