The latest Famitsu has released the promised interview with the developers of Lightning Returns in this week’s issue.
While details are still coming out, we do know some new things. The game is currently 30% complete and will bring the long-promised “happy” ending for Lightning. It will also not feature multiple 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.’ Final Fantasy XIII was story driven and XIII-2 was player driven. With Lightning Returns being world driven, this relates to the movement of the world.
Time is an important factor in the game. 1 day in-game is about 1-2 hours of real world play time. The world of Novus Partus is set to end in 13 days and it will be possible to increase or decrease this time.
The game is meant to be played multiple times, but not so much in a way that it will take many tens of hours to complete the game once.
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 with a decreased timer. However, actions such as defeating enemies and completing quests will increase the timer.
Lightning has definitely become a more ‘refined’ person this time around. Just by having sole control of her you can concentrate more on battles than if you had a full party to manage.
You will be able to freely move around in battle. Some elements of the battle system are timing-based. The battle system is very similar to an action RPG, but with an ATB bar. There are no menu command however. Instead there are specific commands 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 in the closed doors demo a few days ago.
Hope is confirmed to return and will be sending Lightning messages through wireless communications. The city also shows clocks everywhere which show the ever moving concept of time.
Keep an eye on this post as more information comes in.
Source: