Square-Enix will reveal the rebranded title at E3.
Final Fantasy Versus XIII is the JRPG fans’ version of Half Life 2: Episode 3. First announced alongside the rest of the “Fabula Nova Crystallis” collection in 2006, FFv13 has been infamously languishing in development hell since then. But a possibly-leaked video suggests that we’ll finally see some more about the game at this year’s E3 – just not as we know it.
The video you see here to the right supposedly comes from a Square-Enix “pre-E3” event. The footage is hardly awe-inspiring or even that revealing, because it seems to be just the very end of a longer trailer. Still, it features a man who is almost certainly Final Fantasy Versus XIII protagonist Noctis, and at the end a brand-new logo: Final Fantasy XV.
If this is the real deal – and again this must be taken with massive helpings of salt – it has some interesting ramifications. Perhaps Square-Enix’s executives were tired of Versus XIII‘s project lead Tetsuya Nomura wasting time. Perhaps they didn’t think that a “spinoff” title would garner as much attention (and cash) as one in the main numbered series, and that it couldn’t justify the long development cycle. Or, maybe they just felt that it would be an embarrassment for Versus XIII to come out more than two years after the “real” XIII.
We can only speculate, really, and I’m sure there will be plenty of that in the comments.
Also interesting is that, judging by this trailer, Versus XIII (sorry, FF15) won’t be PS3-exclusive as originally promised – but not in the way we’re most commonly used to seeing. At the end of the trailer, we see logos for the PS3 and the Wii U, but no Xbox 360 in sight. Then again, it’s possible that this is a regional thing – Final Fantasy XIII didn’t come out on the Xbox 360 in Japan, either.
Again, even the presence of a video doesn’t make this anything more than just a rumor, so don’t go preaching this as gospel just yet. We’ll find out more next week at E3.
Source: MCV UK
UPDATE: Square Enix has confirmed that this is a fake. Ah well. Maybe we’ll still see Versus XIII at E3 after all.
Published: Jun 1, 2012 06:32 pm