Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII General Discussion and News Thread

[Fleur]

I wouldn't be opposed to Lindzei playing a proper active role in the game, though I've always presumed that Toriyama was done with Pulse and Lindzei in the first game, even if we only "know" them through the respective worlds they created and what was written in the Datalog about them; and (sort of) done with Etro in the second one. This one has always seemed to be Bunnybell's time slot.

I'll go first to whichever location that has "Savior" as the battle theme. That's such an addictive track. It's probably going to be Yusnaan in the very beginning, isn't it? With Lumina wasting no time to troll everyone? Eeeeeexcellent.

 

[Storm2356]

I'm not really sure what order I'll play through them first. All of them interest me equally because all four have at least one returning cast member in them, but Luxerion is really intriguing, IMHO, and the Wildlands has "the Angel of Valhalla."
EDIT: There's also the chance that I'll lose my mind temporarily and play the game at least 24 times because that's how many paths there are to take through the story. Yeah, I counted.

And lastly, the Wildlands. Based on the recent Gamescom demo I'd imagine that there are a lot of higher-level enemies around here, such as that Behemoth.

I'm sure that the Wildlands will be our equivalent of the Steppe, so I would imagine some tougher enemies would reside here. I also believe that the different areas will be tougher by a really small margin, but the developers have said that enemies get tougher as the in-game days go by so that you have the same, scaling difficulty no matter how you choose to go about it.

 

[Storm2356]

I sure hope so. I plan on playing the game on Hard Mode eventually after my first playthrough, so it'll be interesting to see how tough the enemies are on the final days. And yeah, I'd agree that it's our equivalent to the Steppe, but by the looks of the map, it's even larger than the Steppe, maybe even plus the other areas like Yaschas Massif, Sulyya Springs, Taejin's Tower, Oerba, and Titan's Trials!

Which Steppe, XIII, or XIII-2? The Steppe in XIII takes 2 minutes and 42 seconds (credit for this info goes to Sapientia) to cross. They've said that just the Wildlands takes 45 minutes to cross on foot, which means that the Wildlands is about 17 times larger than the Steppe in XIII. That sure puts things in perspective. Also, on a side note, fully crossing the Wildlands on foot is not advisable because it's over half of an in-game day.
So, what do you guys think of the combat system?

 

[Storm2356]

XIII's Steppe. XIII-2's Steppe was downgraded quite a bit, and even though it sure looked nice I would have liked a bit more to do.

Hm, well, I don't know how long the Steppe from XIII takes to cross, so I can't really do the math for that. Wish I did, then I'd be able to tell you exactly how big it is compared to the largest area in the trilogy. Making this entire game open world, though, they're really pushing the limits of the graphics engine, aren't they?

 

[Storm2356]

Yeah, they are. Crystal Tools deserves a nice, long, eternal rest after this one. Unless they're still developing FFXV on it, which I hope not.
Oh, and XIII's Steppe takes 2:42 minutes to cross, starting from the tip of the Western Benchland, all the way to that little foggy area next to the save point on the Central Expanse, by the Behemoth. That's actually a lot less than I thought it was...

Hmm... I'm gonna go fire up XIII-2 and see how long it takes me to get from one end of the Steppe to the other. If XIII-2's was smaller, then I know that what I read is wrong. Be back in a bit!
EDIT: Alright, XIII-2's Steppe takes a minute and 27 seconds to cross. Dang, that was an unreliable source. Going to go edit it correct info into my original post about this.

 

[Zack]

Okay, so I ran a direct, streamlined route through FFXIII's Gran Pulse area to compare its size to LR's Wildlands, and this is what I calculated. I started from the very edge of the map, near Vercingetorix's crystal orb in the Paddrean Archaeopolis (not sure if that's spelled right) and ran all of the way to the very tip of Oerba, near Vercingetorix's Mark crystal and where Barthandelus's ship was. Every area begins and ends exactly where the loading screen into the next begins, and that's where I stopped the stopwatch. I used the stopwatch on my phone and stopped it every time I encountered an enemy, then started it again afterwards.
Afterwards I added up everything with a calculator. Here are each area's times, then added up:
Yaschas Massif: 4 minutes, 14 seconds
Vallis Media: 2 minutes, 30 seconds
Archylte Stype: 3 minutes, 15 seconds
Mah'habara: 5 minutes, 43 seconds
Sulyya Springs: 1 minutes, 44 seconds
Taeijin's Tower: 2 minutes, 30 seconds
Oerba: 4 minutes, 26 seconds

Now, I'll describe where I started and ended in case anyone asks.

Yaschas Massif: starting from the treasure sphere behind Vercingetorix's crystal orb and running through the entire canyon, ignoring the little branches and taking one path to the Vallis Media, near the save point.
Vallis Media: starting from the entrance from Yaschas all the way to the loading screen (not including though) at the end past the yellow Cie'th Stone.
Archylte Steppe: Beginning from the passage into and crossing over the Central Expanse (ignoring all other areas) and exiting from the Northern Highplain into Mah'habara.
Sulyya Springs: after exiting Atomos, running through the springs and that rocky path to the entrance into the Pallisades
Pallisades/Taeijin's Tower: starting from the canyon-like area and curling around the Pallisades and entering Taeijin's tower but not visiting any levels in the Tower, excluding the loading time for the elevator to reach the Tower's Apex, and running to the elevator.
Oerba: beginning from the elevator and winding through the entire village and onto the bridge at the very end, the closest you can get to Cocoon near Vercingetorix's Cie'th Stone.

Again, no teleportation, no chocobos. Just a straight shot through Gran Pulse.
And it all adds up to...
22 minutes, 22 seconds.

In other words, just one continent in Lightning Returns (if the devs weren't stretching it) is two times bigger than FFXIII's largest map. Obviously this doesn't include the areas like Titan's Trials (though that wouldn't add up to much anyway, the smaller areas like Font of Namva, Western Benchland, etc.).

That is some impressive stuff right there.

Impressive that you did that much work and that makes me hopeful. The only thing is, obviously, it's not a realistic scenario and one hopes that span of time in LR is filled with stuff to do. Not even Skyrim got that down right, and Witcher 3 is trying its bestest. Mind you, I bring those two open since they have described LR as an open-world game.

 

[ShinGundam]

LR still use Crystal tools, that is a good reason to not expect massive maps instead it will have connected areas and natural transitions.

 

[Omegaflare]

Still, LR will be the most massive game in the XIII-series yet. They really are going to the limit of Crystal Tools with this. I hope the graphics quality wont be reduced too severely by this. The major reason why they made FF XIII so linear and restricted the player freedom and optional things to do so much is because they couldnt do such an open FF with the kind of HD quality that XIII had. They opened it up with XIII-2 and allowed much more freedom and exploration but that came at a price. The graphics quality is still pretty good but its definitely not on the level of XIII. So with LR being such a huge world that can be explored almost completely, this will really push the capacity of the PS3 to the max and I hope the graphics dont pay too much of a price for that.

Still I am pretty excited and this is what the fans always wanted from a XIII-game anyway so here they got it. Lots of open world, freedom, optional stuff, explorable towns and so on. I would even go as far to say that they couldnt have made this game 3 years ago.

 

[Omegaflare]

Story and gameplay is a whole seperate issue of its own. I was talking about the technical side of things in the game and about the issue of the engine handling the new open world and vast player freedom. Since that was the topic of discussion.

 

[Storm2356]

Even if they're games in a series, I look at games for what they are instead of comparing them to something they aren't. I think XIII looks good, I think XIII-2 looks good, and I think LR looks good, so that's good enough for me.

EDIT: I just had a thought about something completely unrelated to the graphics: So, earlier, Sapientia said that she thought the Angel of Valhalla is Odin. Now I've got a mental image of Lightning jumping off of the Angel of Valhalla to use Zantetsuken instead of Odin as a horse. XD

 

[Storm2356]

Just to try and get a discussion going again, what's your favorite garb that you've seen? I like most of them, but for nostalgia I'm gonna have to say that mine is the Guardian Corps one. It's just plain cool. Wondering now if they'll have her sheathe her gunblade in the... case thing. Probably not, seeing as they need every weapon to work with every garb.

 

[Omegaflare]

My overall favorite is Valhalla Lightning. She just looks so gorgeous and amazing in that and has such a presence. But my favorite in LR would of course be the Cloud outfit. Having Lightning practically "be" Cloud (my most favorite male FF character), have his sword and victory stance is just too awesome. Also kind of fitting since her design was based on Cloud in the first place.

 

[Omegaflare]

you will constantly have to change outfits in the game. Thats the whole point of the battle system. Every outfit has its own ATB gauge so if you want to fight most efficiently you need to switch between outfits regularly. Sticking with one outfit only would be like never doing a paradigm shift in FF XIII. Its just very inefficient. Also different types of enemies require different strategies. If you wanna be a pro at this game you will end up switching outfits a LOT.

 

[Omegaflare]

sry it just sounded like you always just want to use one outfit in battle and never switch which would be pretty....well ill-advised

One thing I dont get yet. What exactly is a schema? Is a schema one outfit or one combination of outfit and equipment (sword/shield) ? I was always rather confused by the exact definition of schema.

 

[Omegaflare]

That I already knew. But I was confused as to wether schema is simply a term for an outfit (e.g. Clouds outfit would be one schema) or if a schema is the term for a combination of outfit and weapon/accessories. Btw the plural of Schema in the game is Schemata

 

[Storm2356]

That I already knew. But I was confused as to wether schema is simply a term for an outfit (e.g. Clouds outfit would be one schema) or if a schema is the term for a combination of outfit and weapon/accessories. Btw the plural of Schema in the game is Schemata

A Schema in this game is a combination of the garb, weapon, shield, accessories, and decoration. Random note: apparently schema means style.

 

[Omegaflare]

No I wont watch any streams or gameplay videos. These days developers release so much gameplay vid stuff pre-release that by the time you get to the game itself its all "Oh I have already seen that". There is no awe and surprise anymore like in the old days where all I have seen of a game were trailers and screenshots. I really noticed this in FF XIII-2 where I watched everything they released prior to release of the game and while I wouldnt go as far to say that it ruined the game for me it definitely dampened the experience and surprise of it. With LR I dont wanna go into the game and have the "Already seen that" feeling all the time. Hell I wont even play a demo this time. I want it to be like it used to be. Only trailers and screenshots for me.

 

[Omegaflare]

A Schema in this game is a combination of the garb, weapon, shield, accessories, and decoration. Random note: apparently schema means style.

Thanks a bunch Finally some clarification on that. I dont see where thats like the Gambits in XII though. Its a blend of the dressphere and paradigm system to me.

 

[Omegaflare]

Thank you for stating the obvious. Of course its my opinion, not yours what I wrote. Otherwise I wouldnt have wrote it but you. But I guess you just needed another reason to talk back to me. Also when did I ever tell you that you cant expect people to agree with it. You made a statement, I said I disagree, end of story. You didnt need to comment on that like I dont have the right to express my disagreement.

 

[Omegaflare]

I didnt attack your opinion. I merely stated that I disagree with it. No reason to turn this into a debate of congress. people have different opinions. It happens.