Hope Estheim Officially Announced for Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII

While we’ve known through trailers and screenshots for quite some time now that Hope would return for Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, it has been officially announced today.  However until now we haven’t seen what he looks like outside of his face.

Thanks to Famitsu we have learned that Hope is holed up within an Ark on Bhunivelze – the Cocoon-like replacement he built over Final Fantasy XIII-2. However it would seem he doesn’t have that much of a new look, now looking much like he did within Final Fantasy XIII only with his scarf having a different color and pattern.

Hope’s role will be to give Lightning a chance to restock her supplies and recover for the day ahead, and is a place where you can “take a breather” from the events happening in Nova Chrysalia. Every day at 6:00am, Lightning can receive quests from Hope that will extend the time left before Doomsday. The game starts out with seven days left and can increase that to a maximum of thirteen through her deeds. This will also restore power to Yggdrasil – a “holy tree of life” which gives the world more time left before the end. Clear more quests from Hope and the brighter/stronger Yggdrassil will become.

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII will be available for PlayStation 3 and XBox 360 in Japan on November 22nd, North America on February 11th, and Europe on February 14th. You can pre-order the North America version off Amazon for both PS3 and XBox 360.

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