For the people awaiting the mysterious release date for Square-Enix’s next big venture, you don’t have to wait any longer… sort of. Square-Enix has announced that FF XIII-2 will be released in North America “sometime in January of 2012.” It may not be a precise release date but it’s almost as close as you can get without one.
Square is selling FF XIII-2 based on the concept of being “player-driven,” as opposed to FF XIII which was story-driven. XIII-2 is about the player exploring the world and how the world evolves based on those actions. Unlike XIII, XIII-2 will be used very few pre-rendered cut-scenes, everything will be mostly real-time.
There will also be a much larger amount of mini-games and the game is supposedly set to drastically deviate from XIII’s oft maligned linearity. Players should be able to get approximately 40 hours worth of gameplay producer Yoshinori Kitase to Famitsu (translated by 1up).
The more I hear about XIII-2, the more it is sounding like an actual Final Fantasy game and not a J-Pop music video. I dare say I’m pretty interested in this release. When an exact date is given, we will be sure to pass it along.
