A few highlights from the interview with Final Fantasy XIII producer Yoshinori Kitase and director Motomu Toriyama published in this week's Famitsu magazine, the final interview before the game's December 17 release in Japan:
- Where did the idea for the battle system come from? "The concept was to fuse speedy action elements with the strategic parts of battle," Toriyama said. "The video we showed at the initial announcement [at the 2006 E3 show] showed an ATB-based battle system that ran very fast. To make that work, we implemented features like multiple command inputs and juggling and so on. That lead to the chain and break systems, which accelerates things even further. The style has changed, but the original concept has survived the entire process. The Paradigm Shift system didn't exist at that initial announcement, but it's improved the strategic aspect of battle so much that I think it's done one better on what we were picturing at first."
"In FF up to now, the key to battle was choosing the right commands for each character based on the battle situation," Kitase added. "But if you gave a command to each of your three party members here in order, like Toriyama said, there's a limit to how fast you can make things while still allowing the player to stay in control. So instead we have the player only controlling the leader, planning chains and formations with the other two AI-controlled characters. We figured that was about what the player could handle. That was where the paradigms came from -- they keep battles fun while retaining the balance between speed and strategy. Making each character's role obvious -- attack, recover, shield -- and letting you switch between them instantly lets you fight your way through battles more adroitly."
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