THE BUZZ: In a recent interview, Final Fantasy XIII-2 producer Yoshinori Kitase spoke of lessons learned in the production for the upcoming role-playing game. Speaking with Game Reactor, Kitase stated that he has looked to the West, in franchises like Call of Duty and Assassin’s Creed, and noted their short development cycles. For reference, Final Fantasy XIII which started development is April 2004 and was finally released in March 2010 in the U.S. Kitase acknowledges that production for the game took, “a little too long,” and promised to make Final Fantasy XIII-2 available to western gamers much sooner. In comparison Kitase stated that the upcoming sequel only took 1.5 years to develop.
EGM’s TAKE: Originally, Square stated that the long development cycle for Final Fantasy XIII was due to the creation of the game’s Crystal Tools engine. With that foundation already finished, it would seem obvious that the upcoming sequel would be made faster. We don’t love the idea of Square taking pointers from the Call of Duty franchise, which Activision has barely managed to not run into the ground, but all can be forgiven if Square just gave us a few towns to explore, more side quests, and less Hope.
Source: GameReactor
