Final Fantasy Versus XIII - Gameplay

Gameplay

Director Tetsuya Nomura has stated that Final Fantasy Versus XIII is being developed with the aim of challenging what Final Fantasy should be in terms of story and gameplay. He has also stated that Final Fantasy Versus XIII will be the most seamless game in the Final Fantasy series. Not only will the battle system be seamlessly integrated into the maps and have no battle transitions, but the event scenes will also be seamlessly integrated into gameplay and therefore result in all of them being interactive and playable.

The actual mechanics of the battle system will be a realistic derivation of the battle system used in the Kingdom Hearts series. However, the battle system will also incorporate an evolved form of the third-person shooter elements found in Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII.

Nomura has stated that there are two main goals he wants to achieve with Final Fantasy Versus XIII:

1. To provide the most seamless gameplay experience ever seen in a Final Fantasy game.
2. To provide the most realistic story, characters and world ever seen in a Final Fantasy game.

The overall theme of the game will depart from the light and magical aesthetic of Tetsuya Nomura's previous directorial games (i.e. Kingdom Hearts) and instead opt for a bleak and modern world based on the real world. The game world will be based on reality and have actual real world, global crisis situations happening in it. The atmosphere of the game will have a very serious tone and be more mature and realistic than any past Final Fantasy game.

Tetsuya Nomura has stated that he wants the characters to be "realistic and believable as real people" and not "anime archetypes" or "the fictional characters one would normally expect from a Final Fantasy game." In pursuit of his goal, he appointed Jun Akiyama to be the event director due to his experience directing the event scenes in Final Fantasy XII. Tetsuya Nomura believes the characters in Final Fantasy XII felt like real people rather than the fictional characters one would normally associate with the Final Fantasy series.