With the PlayStation 3 currently struggling to capture a similar market to that of the PlayStation 2, many people are looking towards Square Enix and its flagship Final Fantasy franchise as being the first of many saviours. Now the company has openly spoke about more details regarding the in-progress title.

Over on EuroGamer Square Enix’s Tetsuya Nomura was recently quizzed on all things related to the epic RPG Final Fantasy Versus XIII. The director of the side-project, part of six planned efforts in the Fabula Nova Crystallis umbrella of games, is renowned for creating characters such as Cloud Strife and the evil Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII, in addition to the ones featured in the Disney RPG Kingdom Hearts.

Not much has been revealed at all about Versus, other than a few images and a pre-rendered action sequence that lasted all of five minutes. In fact, whilst many presume it will be a role-playing game, it could in fact only have tenuous links with that genre. That is how little has been revealed, even following the trailer! However, it can be fathomed that Versus will be a lot darker than the average light-hearted Final Fantasy outing.

When asked about how the theme will differ from previous entries, he responded:

“…it’s mostly set at night. Thematically speaking…What I want to do is to examine the humanity of the characters in this game. This is not going to be a fantasy world in the traditional Final Fantasy sense. Rather it’s based in the world today with all of this world’s ugly issues. There’s this mainstream tradition of Final Fantasy games and, in Versus I’m trying to propose new vision of how a Final Fantasy game can be. The game’s going to be more human than the science-fiction caricature we so often see. It will focus around current world events - in that sense it’s darker.”

He continues by stating his desire to change over from working in worlds filled with “good things, light and magic” to instead focus on “a new kind of world - a bleaker place.” He is acutely aware that the mainstream audience may not take well to this style, but that is all part of the challenge, something that he is definitely looking forward to.

Moving onto whether this will stay true to Final Fantasy’s role-playing roots or take a different approach, he was quite clear with his thoughts on the direction of Versus, stating “We don’t want to create a classic menu driven RPG here” and talking about how the design is heading in a similar direction to Kingdom Hearts’ action-oriented gameplay, but at the same time mixing in the tension found in third-person shooters.

One thing is for definite, though, and that is that Nomura-san is keen to squeeze as much out of the PlayStation 3 hardware as he possibly can, mainly due to him eager to create a seamless environment that is not broken up by long loading times that disrupt the gameplay’s flow. All signs for Final Fantasy Versus XIII point to something PlayStation 3 owners should definitely keep an eye out for!

Be sure to stay tuned to Playstatic for more updates…