Do you feel like watching seven minutes’ worth of obscenely pretty Final Fantasy XIII footage from TGS – in a combination of cutscenes, gameplay and transforming hot rods? Yes, yes you do.
The above trailer is entirely in Japanese – not a lick of English to be found – so if you’re looking for, you know, actual plot details (and can’t speak Japanese) you might be out of luck for the moment. Still, it’s not hard to get the general gist of some things, though I’m surprised they’d spoil what looks like a fairly significant development or two in a preliminary trailer. Are we supposed to know who hooks up with each other already?
Things I’ve learned from the trailer in question: First, leading lady Lightning performs percussive maintenance on machines by hitting them with her sword (and it seems to work). Second, evil glasses-wearing femmes fatales with swords are hot. Third, the developers have managed to render male nipples in disturbing fidelity. Fourth, gravity in the world of FF13 seems to be completely optional (if the combat system is any indication). Fifth, the one black guy with the Funny Afro drives a freakin’ Transformer.
Strangely enough, the combat system reminds me of Super Robot Taisen OG: Endless Frontier – based around juggling your enemies and switching characters mid-combo. It looks more action-oriented than your standard Final Fantasy game, which can only be a good thing. Okay, so I don’t actually know what the characters are actually doing in combat, but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t look kind of cool.
Maybe the overwrought emotion and heavy Tetsuya Nomura aesthetic aren’t your thing – and that’s totally fine, since I don’t think they’re my thing, either – but there’s one thing for sure: You can say a great deal of things about Final Fantasy XIII, but one thing you can’t say is that the game isn’t beautiful. Seriously, this footage (pre-rendered though some of it may be) is jaw-droppingly gorgeous.
