Since the announcement that Final Fantasy XIII would not only be on the Playstation 3 but would also be released for the Xbox360 in America, Fans have bickered back and forth which edition would be superior. What first started as a petty spitting contest between fanboys for either system, soon turned itself back into the heated debate across forums and in stores over which system was better. But for the fans who didn’t care about the systems and focused solely on the game, one fear lingered in their minds, “If the systems versions were equal, what would we lose due to Xbox not using Blu-ray’s space availability?”.
In a recent interview with Final Fantasy XIII’s art director at the Japanese site FF-Reunion, Isamu Kamikokuryou revealed that almost a full games worth of content was removed from the final finished product of Final Fantasy XIII.
Among these removed bits of content was (aside extended dungeons) a secret base for Snow’s hero squad Nora (one time located within Lebreau’s shop), a full area for Lightning’s home (which included a park), and one of the game’s amusement parks also had an extended zoo area that had to be removed. Speculation can only lead one to believe that along with these areas being removed, portions of story that were involved with them were taken as well.
With all the recent heat that the game has gotten for a linear story, its a shame to see that this game was so deeply affected by what one can so plainly see as the inclusion of an Xbox360 edition.
Fans first saw the signs of this possibility when Square-Enix revealed that most of the games side quests would be inaccessible until the later chapters of the game due to the disk restrictions of the Xbox360 and that they were aiming for the Xbox360 version to be merely 3 disks long and story related DLC for the game wouldn’t be a foreseen addition.
While news of the games English version being finally completed may ease the minds of some fans, others who viewed Xbox’s involvement from the begining as quite literally the worst thing for the game will have to now live with knowing what game they could have had if not for Xbox.
UPDATES/FOLLOW-UPS:
2/17 – Final Fantasy XIII looks better on PS3.
2/23 – Insomniac Games believes Final Fantasy XIII is best on PS3
2/24 – CONFIRMED: FINAL FANTASY XIII On XBOX360 Is Half The Size of PS3 Version.
Author
John Heimkes
Very sad at the least.
Posted on 13 Jan 2010 at 11:40 pm | Permalink
Author
Taylor Landine
I agree. It’s borderline devastating for those who have been waiting almost 5 years for this game to be everything it was hyped to be.
Posted on 13 Jan 2010 at 11:42 pm | Permalink
Author
FreeForAll
*Sigh* With all due respect, there is no evidence that this is ALL because of the 360. Is it possible the 360 MAY have had SOME effect? Yes of course, but to what extent (if any) we don’t know. Neither is it a fact that the game is worse than it would have been if it were still a PS3 exclusive.
Was is a fact however is that analysis of the Blu-ray disk has shown the game is 38GB, but 30GB of that is for cutscenes. The game itself is only 8GB! In otherwords, 80% of the space is used for cutscenes!
http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/12/19/final-fantasy-xiii-360-losing-15gb/
So tell me, which is more important, the gameplay or the cutscenes? With that in mind, there was nothing stopping SE adding the areas to the game if they *really* wanted them to be in there (cutscenes can always be shortened/adjusted to match).
If we are to take that interview literally, then a full game’s content must be those areas plus cutscenes, hence another 40GB or so. So was FFXIII really going to be a 100-120 hour game released on 2 50GB Blu-ray disks? I very much doubt it.
So assuming it would have been ONE Blu-ray disk at most, there is only 9GB of space left on the FFXIII disk (not 12GB as it may seem), hence certainly not enough space for a full games worth of content! Therefore something WOULD have been removed even if it were a PS3 exclusive.
Posted on 16 Jan 2010 at 9:39 am | Permalink
Author
Taylor Landine
Sankaku-Complex is primarily a smut site. Just because they posted saying that’s how it is, doesn’t make it true.
Posted on 16 Jan 2010 at 3:46 pm | Permalink
Author
FreeForAll
Firstly, the source is irrelevent. FFXIII is out in Japan, the game disc is available for others to analyse for themselves, therefore if the data information was false, surely it would have been debunked by now?
Secondly, FFXIII is on a dual-layer Blu-ray disc. Now that doesn’t happen because a game is a tiny fraction larger than a single-layer disc, since under those circumstances, a game will be adjusted to fit. Therefore it’s safe to assume FFXIII takes up a sizeable portion of that dual-layer disc. Therefore the point I’ve made about deleted content even if it were a PS3 exclusive still stands.
So whilst I can understand the sentiment, I do feel it’s misplaced sentiment, especially since SE may be produced a better game as a result of the cuts (just as there are many great films with deleted scenes on the cutting room floor, scenes that don’t even make in onto the DVD extras).
I’m not going to claim the 360 had no part to play in this, because that may or may not be true, but what I am saying is that it’s wrong to blame it ALL on the 360 as you have done, when it is clear that parts of the game would have been cut anyway, for reasons which SE says were to keep the game balanced and reasonably sized (it is 50-60 hours afterall for experienced players).
Posted on 17 Jan 2010 at 5:16 pm | Permalink
Author
jyung_woo
They should have just kept the advanced content in the ps3 and released 360’s without them all in all it would give sony owners a little something to brag about that they get the full image of what square-enix was releasing…now its all dumbed down thanks to xbox…
Posted on 23 Feb 2010 at 8:27 pm | Permalink