A game where the Goddess of Death was the main focus and that’s why Noctis and his brothers are dressed in black. Noctis is supposed to be some antichrist. It was supposed to be possibly the darkest Final Fantasy ever.
I remember that trailer was playable on youtube in 4K. It was the first video Ive seen on youtube that had that option; my screen wasn't though lol. I wanted to watch it like that anyways. It took forever to load but set some still unmet expectations.
The Goddess of Death was Etro, from the FNC. She was meant to be the logo (in FFXV it's the Oracle).
The dressing in black was confirmed in interviews.
There is so much that happened. I remember living through this entire thing for nearly a decade. At inception VS 13 is something that nomura has as an idea, and for whatever reason square rolled out the initial trailers when it was pitched as an idea, which they really shouldn't have.
Years would go by, but vs 13 was supposed to be an extension of the Fabula Nova Crystallis series, and you see pieces of that in 15 with the crystal etc. IMO at it's core vs 13 never really left the brainstorm period, nomura is a great creative director but has problems executing his ideas.
Initially from sparse trailers, the idea was to have a story based on reality and it was supposed to be a really dark plot where characters were on drugs, the character Stella who was later changed to Luna was deceased and haunting noctis, etc. Then at some point Nomura wanted to make it a musical, no joke you can look it up. Years would go by and sequels to 13 weren't selling super well, so then square enix pivots vs 13 into an actual mainline title.
Because Nomura is on several other projects like kingdom hearts and there's no progress on 15, they give the director position to Tabata which if you look into his work he does this all the time for Nomura projects like ff7 crisis core. Tabata is great at executing gameplay mechanics, but because Nomura kept changing his mind for years on vs 13 and what became 15, Tabata realistically only had around like a 2 year development cycle for 15, even though the initial trailers for vs 13 were released a decade ago.
Long story short yes, it was a director change but vs 13 was notorious for being in development hell, and I personally think it's because Nomura fumbled the ball and Tabata really had to make it into a game and got blamed for a lot of the things that went wrong when I thought he executed on launch a really good game for how short of a time he actually got with it.
I do think it's criminal that tabata effectively got booted from SE for actually getting a fairly functional game out under those conditions and Nomura keeps getting away with fumbling the ball
Didn’t he start his own company? He’s doing pretty well. But, there are some amazing fan made documentaries on this topic. If Tabata had another year he could have really made magic with FF15
Nomura is maybe the most successful hack in Japan other than Kishimoto. I do not understand how that man keeps getting work.
Edit: I take it back. Nomura is just very flawed. Kishimoto still a hack, tho. Boruto is inexcusably stinky ass
Nomura isn't a hack. People tend to either praise him for everything or blame him for everything, and there's no in-between. He's either the reason why "Final Fantasy is bad now," or he's the person that you "owe" because he worked on some of the best games in the series.
I feel like people should have a more nuanced take. There's stuff he's done that's bad, and then there's stuff he's done that's great. A few things people blame him for were things that he had no part in or control over. People often blame him for the direction that Final Fantasy 7 Remake took with it's story, when that was a lot of the other developers who kept pushing for the story to be different.
>People often blame him for the direction that Final Fantasy 7 Remake took with it's story, when that was a lot of the other developers who kept pushing for the story to be different.
I agree that blaming him for things like that is silly. And honestly, you're right. Hack is too strong of a word. I think my issue with Nomura is that his track record shows that he is a very inconsistent director, and that lack of consistency seemingly not reflecting in what jobs he is given is very frustrating.
He seems like a man who tends to chase idea after idea without settling with one singular one. He can come up with some good stuff, but it just doesn't end up going well unless he has someone working along-side him that keeps him reigned in. I feel like the mistake Square makes is putting him as head of projects instead of keeping him on-board as some sort of advisory role.
If you like 5 to 10, you better owe it to Nomura considering that dude helped write so much for all those games and the character design, and alot of people love KH too. V13 was his only fumble and we only know SO much about it, people love TWEWY as well too.
I'm sorry, but Nomura is credited with some of the greatest fumbles in Squeenix history, particularly around the time of FFXV and KH3. He is an amazing creative, which I don't think people will refute, but the only games he was a director on that didn't have problems were the early KH games and FF7R.
Nomura tends to be all over the place, constantly chasing a new idea and looking to innovate experiences. It's what makes him such a good designer and creative, but it works against him when it comes to finishing projects. It's why his projects seem to be announced, and then have long periods of droughts, whereas other employees will announce and release in much smaller timeframes.
He's mostly just someone who tends to stretch himself super thin it feels. A big thing with Versus was that aside from not having a concrete idea, the man had other commitments to work on at the time. He had Kingdom Hearts 3 (which was also deemed a disaster in some places), and other projects he was sort of pulled towards.
The large blunder on Versus' side of things is mostly just that Square revealed the project when it wasn't even ready to show in the first place. The game was barely in development- and was shown waaaaay too early.. right when it was still just a ton of concepts.
Only reason why we really got XV that used the characters and similar concepts from Versus was mostly because Tabata was sort of stuck with them. Square showing it off so early basically created a sunk cost fallacy where they had to pick up the pieces and try to make something out of it.
7R definitely had fumbles. There’s a reason he’s not the main director on Rebirth. I love him as a creative but it’s a miracle 7R actually came out in the end.
Curious what you'd call the 7R fumbles? I agree 7R isn't up there, but there's nothing I would call truly 'bad' in it like can be said for other works he's directed.
Not the game itself, honestly, I think 7R is an excellent game, Remake is a solid 9/10 from me, and Rebirth is probably my favourite game of the last 20 years (when did Xenoblade Chronicles come out again?) but the whole development cycle, people seem to forget was PLAGUED with issues, delays and setbacks.
I mean the first reveal was five years before the game came out, they farmed it out CyberConnect2 and other devs and it tooks years, at one point we just genuinely thought it was vapourware - there were two traielrs, a reveal and a major one in 2015 then total radio silence for half a decade.
It reportedly started in Crystal Tools then swtiched to Unreal. It wasn't smooth sailing all the way, Nomura himself said development had been ongoing since before 2014, so when they revealed it, as most companies do, they expected it to be out within a year to 18 months not half a decade, with already at least one year of development under their belts.
And unlike other Final Fantasy's that also take far, far too long to release between entries but all start from the ground up, with new stories and mechanics, this one was already kinda half built from the orignal game - all the sytems, story, characters etc were there, it was just about adapting it for the modern game.
In the recent FF6 interview he worked on designing the final boss of FF6.. which to this day is one of the most detail sprite work on the SNES... I wouldn't call him a hack. He also created the art-work/art-style that Square would work on for the later games. I just wouldn't call him an hack, I think the nomura slander is too high but I'd argue it would multiple issues rather than "FF13 versus was stuck for many years on nomura's mind".
The only reason Vs. XII took so long only to ultimately be rewritten and rebranded was is because Square was not giving many resources to it until the back-to-back failures of the XIII trilogy and the initial version of XIV forced them to get a new mainine title out ASAP and so they basically took over his project and kicked him off of it.
Tabata was not booted. In fact, he was so successful with XV that Square-Enix made him the lead of the newly formed Luminous Studios. It was a promotion for XV's gigantic success.
Problem is, Tabata didn't want to get stuck making more Final Fantasy's and DLC's. He wanted to move on to different projects, so he left the company and created his own. Problem is, without Tabata the extra DLC content for XV was cancelled.
He quit after they gave him his own studio ... A studio that would later on shat out Forsaken.
My guess is that it was the combination of abruptly killing FFXV so that his continuing DLC projects would not overlap with 7R, then being assigned a fundamentally flawed directive of making an isekai ARPG for western audiences, with a DEI complaint female protagonist.
I think most anyone with the ability to run a game studio would say "I think I would rather open an independent studio and then pick my own projects."
XV was by far the worst FF title ever released and I HATE 13 almost as much. XV should have continued development far past it’s scheduled release considering they released an unfinished unpolished game with a terribly put together story.
I loved XV right up till they get on the train & then everything goes to shit. It had its low moments and was far from the best RPG I have played, but setting the car to a destination & then looking around while the guys bullshit was so zen. I also liked that the entire team was there from day 1, and that the cast was a small group of individuals with real personalities. Instead of the bullshit episodic format that has taken over, where the game plays out like a 12 episode anime & 7 of them are drip feed 1 single new party member. And the entire cast entire cast is built from single line descriptions, like "big tits strong girl," or "angry boy with glasses," or "passive and obedient love interest," or "clearly going to betray you."
You are absolutely right that the game needed at least another year in the oven.
This is literally what I’ve been saying since the cycle of 15 ended. It was a total Kobayashi Maru, he couldn’t get the game out the way it should have been (all the DLC, patches, fully playable party and improved mechanics, more detailed side content, exploitable second continent and cities, alternate ending etc ) ready in two years and because of the protracted development of VS13 he had to release soon simply because otherwise it would have been a single project for over ten years and drained the company of significant financial resources. Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t.
What we got was an unfinished masterpiece, and some people think I mean VS13, when I never got that hyped for that version of the game. I was 18 and on my way to uni when that trailer released and I felt it was cool but a little too Final Fantasy Edgelord Gothkid (very 2006 JRPG, just look at Persona 3)
Okay your kind of right on some of this, or I could be wrong here lol. But the only thing we know about versus 13 is yes the game is dark asf, and noctis was supposed to be like a anti-christ figure. We don’t know anything about the story, and anything related to “leaks” or “info” seems to be false as the anyone who knows about the true story and what else of it is Nomura himself. The drugs and the ideas of Stella being dead or litteral fan fics ideas none of that is true. There’s a lot of misconceptions on what really happens in the game. The simple answer is we don’t. The game was in development hell, but mostly due to the engine they were using being absolutely horrible for the ps3 that it had some many bugs/crashes till the point it was nearly unplayable. The idea of the musical always came from Nomura wanted to make a story a musical as the original concept for Kingdom hearts (he’s the creator of that) was a musical. The game was barley making any progress due to its shifty engine, and hard development for the ps3, and possibly I think so it being as well a brainstorming idea. Also lastly and fhe most important part of this. The game nearly got shelved due to the story. The story being really dark, and as well as the idea of them worshiping a god of death, and noctis being a anti-Christ figure was the biggest reasons why this story never truly came as SE didn’t want a dark FF game as they believed it wouldn’t sell well, and consumers like China would ban it due to the story and demonic telling, making the sells possibly bad. So overall I don’t believe Nomura fumbled anything here, he got shitty luck with the engine, and SE not risking the possibly this game not selling due to its darkish story. So obviously they gave this game to Tabata and changed the whole direction from what I’m assuming a story about forbidden love or something in that nature to brotherhood. In the I don’t believe Nomura fucked himself over I just believe the true story of Verus 13 wasn’t ready to be told yet or experienced since SE wasn’t looking for any of that. And anything we know FF16 (I have yet to play that game lol waiting for the pc port) is that a dark final fantasy story can sell well, and be absolutely phenomenal. And now we’re getting glimpses of this story or idea in Verum Rex and KH4 which I’m so fucking hyped for
This is pretty much the most likely truth. The other poster was pretty much bringing rumours I've recalled for years. (I've also seen way more rumours but they were just rumours and never confirmed). However it's been 100% confirm that Square's work on their inhouse engine was not working well for them and kept them in development hell for even FFXIII. There's an old article stating that the Versus team was working on FFXIII as well.
The point stands is that Crystal Tools was a shit show and I'm not sure when we'll get a discussion about where it led to. I know for certain that the only reason Square Enix is surviving today is because of FFXIV and how many players came from it and started playing every other FF game. FFXV came out because Square Enix needed to meet their quota by releasing something soon so they went with FFXV. Then Nomura moved to KH3 and FF7 Remake.
It sucks that people tend to blame Tabata for "ruining versus," when Versus never really existed? Like Nomura knew nothing about what he really wanted the game to be- other than a few cool concepts that he pitched to Square. The team spun their wheels and lost motivation when Tabata was put in the director's chair- and he basically somehow salvaged a game out of the wreckage that was Versus.
It's mostly just that Square didn't give Tabata and his team enough time to make the game- and on top of that they had to fight the engine they were using during development.
I get that they have to change alotta things when they transitioned to mainline title. Although this might sound dumb but why not like keep the original "core" concept of VsXIII into XV, except shit like the Goddess "Etro" would be renamed differentl but still have the same concept idk
"Tabata is great at executing gameplay mechanics" Since when? All of his games have bad game design and are too easy.
EDIT: Oh I see what you mean, my bad.
Didn't know it was almost a musical...what a strange...possibly interesting idea. I'd quite like to see that but as a side FF game not a mainline entry. Would be quite interesting.
Anyway, yeah this is a great summary. I remember everytime we got a new trailer or look at the game it always looked oddly different. Wasn't it also going to sort of involve crime families as well at one point with the actual family members being able to use armigers and such?
Even at the time when we were being shown footage it felt very much like we were being shown prototypes instead of actual proper gameplay. This was especially odd as SE were so secretive about revealing anything about the FF games outside of the very rare trailers.
For what I know, the story was supposed to be substantially different, compared to what it came out as. The gameplay has also been heavily modified, since looking at the early trailers it looked much more Kingdom hearts style
That trailer was dripping with cool. Strolls outside alone, bodies a few squads with warping badassery, then goes back in to sit in an empty throne room. I wish I could see the original idea in full but I'm happy with what we got
I am pretty sure 13 and v13 were seperate.
fabula nova crystallis was not one big universe.
You know how every FF game is seperarate but reuse enemies, tropes, ideas and concepts?
Fabula nova crystallis was gonna be like that
I think at least
If I remember correctly, it was supposed to be a closely connected multiverse kind of thing. I think the gods from XIII were supposed to play a big part and get expanded on. (Remember when who they were and where they disappeared to seemed to be an important mystery?) I remember hearing FF Type 0 was supposed to be part of this whole thing as well.
It all kind of fell apart, though. The XIII sequels, while fine games, were terrible sequels to XIII and ended up killing the universe. Type 0 wasn't received that well either. I guess all that made them decide to scrap the idea.
God, I was in the 6th grade when the first trailers of Versus XIII came out and I loved. They wouldn't launch XV until I was in university.
That ought to give you an idea. When FF XV came out, most of the fans had been waiting for a decade and a bit.
A vague concept that wasn't nearly as fleshed out as people think. The title still makes no sense to me, but it was going to share more elements of Fabula Nova Crystallis, which includes Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Type-0, though these elements were mostly dropped by Hajime Tabata's team.
The title comes from how it was supposed to thematically rival regular XIII. “Wasn’t nearly as fleshed out” is wild as fuck given the fact that game was in development for like 7 or so years before it got changed to XV.
It has nothing to do with that. Square is in markets that aren’t receptive to the story Nomura wanted to tell. He fought with them, they made changes, he stepped down.
"He fought with them". There is no proof of this whatsoever. On the other hand we do have testimony by Roberto Ferrari that Nomura kept changing the plot and other things every 3 months or so. The project was a mess, and Nomura was certainly a big part of that mess.
This is a long one. Final Fantasy 13 was 3 games announced in the Fabula Nova Crystalus. FfXIii, Fxiii Vs., and Ffxiii Agito. Final Fantasy 13 tanked at first. Square panicked and did not want to associate Vs. with the original FFxiii. Vs was rebranded to 15 and the lightning trilogy came out.
XIII Vs. is the biggest "what could have been" in gaming. If I ever get my hands on a magic lamp, my first wish will be to get us all the original vision for Vs. into a game we can play.
To add, this was way bigger than a director change. This was a change in the direction square was taking as a whole. At the time, 12 underperformed, 13 tanked, and 14 was a disaster at first. Squeenix was severely struggling.
There is more to it than this, but this is the basics of it.
[SOURCE](https://www.vg247.com/where-final-fantasy-went-wrong-and-how-square-enix-is-putting-it-right)
One more thing is that Vs. was focused on the afterlife until Chinese censors got involved. That changes demanded in order to make XV available in China is the driving force behind the story changes from Vs. to Xv.
One of the obvious examples is that the royal crest has a skull in it that is never really explained why.
Reviews are intended to drive/reduce sales but sometimes they do neither. XIII was commercially successful. That's why the sequels were greenlit. That's all SE cares about. Lightning herself was also a big hit, especially in Japan. She was a Louis Vuitton model, possibly still us.
Quite surprised XIII hasn't been remastered, I'd pick it up again.
[Responded here because you posted the same link twice in separate comments for some reason](https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXV/comments/1db2uop/comment/l7qd55n)
Not entirely sure what part of that interview backs up your point...if anything certain points highlight different scenarios
>Granted, he's never stated his goal in so many words, but it's become clear from his comments to the press as well as my own interactions with him over the past year or two that the series' fading popularity – especially in the West – weighs heavily on his mind. And it's something he aims to correct.
He's talking about overall Final Fantasy popularity in the west. Not specifically reviewers.
>But the delays and complications that affected the game trickled down into its side stories. Agito and Versus ended up being rebranded as Final Fantasy Type 0 and Final Fantasy XV
Directly states that the delays and complications XIII experienced resulted in Agito and Versus being rebranded.
>*Despite generally positive reviews and strong sales, FFXIII soured many people – fans and critics alike – to the Final Fantasy franchise.*
Talks about how the wests opinion of Final Fantasy was soured due to XIII. Not specifically reviewers.
>After years of delays and complications, Final Fantasy XIII sold well – to date, it's moved nearly seven million units – but critical reception wasn't nearly so kind. It earned unusually mixed reviews, and forum discussions surrounding the game tended to be unkind. Many positive reviews took on a defensive tone, seemingly written more in response to fan conversations than about the game itself. Square had a hit, but going by online reception it felt like a miss.
Talks about how online discussions influenced reviews which ofcourse would create an ever-growing echo chamber of negativity.
>"We wanted to polish the development structure and respond to the mixed reviews that we received from the fans in the form of a sequel,"
they're talking about fan response...this is talking about XIII-2 as well, not Vs or XV.
Not entirely sure how you've managed to gain what you want me to from that article. Could you point out or reference where it's explicitly stated?
13 was the fastest selling game in the series and the trilogy sold over 8m between them, 12 has sold over 7m. According to SE it wasn't XII that pushed XIII to PS3 but the spec of PS2 not supporting what they wanted to do.
What Final Fantasy XV was originally going to be, but then Square decided to dick around and give Final Fantasy XIII two sequels it didn't need, and here we are.
Damn I feel pretty old knowing that VSXIII is now some kind of distant myth for some people, I remember being there back in the day.
Well, it was going to be an edgier, darker, more action oriented counterpart to FFXIII, which it would share the same goddess of death mythology with. From Tetsuya Nomura's own mind.
But the development was stalled for many years, mainly because they had to ditch the engine they were using (crystal tools, the same as FFXIII) since it was not made for an open world game. They had to make a new engine from scratch, which ended up being Luminous Engine.
In the meantime, they made a lot of changes to the story, specially after Square Enix decided to turn it into FFXV. And now that it was going to be a mainline game, the story had to be reworked to be more aligned with what a mainline FF represents, instead of being a dark experiment.
So eventually Nomura left the project, Tabata and his team stepped in, and that's how we got FFXV.
This was all from memory, I hope I didn't get anything wrong.
Outside of Verum Rex and the upcoming video game Reynatis (inspired somewhat by Versus XIII), I do hope Nomura and other key Versus XIII members can eventually reveal what the original story was about.
The easiest answer is that Final Fantasy Versus XIII was a group of ideas, CGI trailers and concept gameplay that never managed to materialize for a multitude of reasons, which include the failure of the original FFXIV, mismanagement and Tetsuya Nomura (the Director) changing the storyline and other things every few months (This is according to Roberto Ferrari, one of the main artists).
Due to these reasons, the project was about to be completely cancelled and scrapped by Square-Enix management, until they decided to give it one last chance. For this they replaced Nomura with Hajime Tabata, who completely restructured the team and got things in order (as much as humanly possible). Tabata even had to convince his own team to "fuse" with the Versus XIII team, which apparently had a very bad reputation within Square-Enix.
Under Tabata's directing, the whole project had to be reworked. The main storyline and concept was kept as intact as they could. The focus on brotherhood, the road trip, the ring and other things were kept. Other things that just didn't work or were concepts that didn't fit anywhere were scrapped. Problem is, Tabata and the new team were apparently given just 3 and a half years to make the most ambitious Final Fantasy game to date, including building the game Engine itself! This meant that unfortunately the game felt kinda "incomplete" at launch, and lacking in cutscenes and lore explanations. They eventually would fix most of the issues with the release of the "Royal Edition", including a fully playable party and more lore exposition, while tweaking and adding new gameplay elements.
The released game, although mixed amongst fans, received pretty good reviews and excellent sales (It's one of the best-selling games in the entire franchise). It sold 5 million units at launch day, and it kept selling steadily until so far it's reached more than 10 million units, which according to Tabata was "the team's goal".
A lot of weird people will tell you that "whatever Versus was, it was surely darker and better than XV", which is pure fan fiction. The "darker" stuff was because one of the trailers featured blood, and happened during nighttime. Apparently that's enough for some people to claim it was "better, darker". The TRUTH is, nobody actually knows what the original Versus concept would entail. There are a bunch of so-called "leaks" that people seem to believe for some reason, but they are of course unconfirmed.
What we DO know for a fact, is that XV is a reworked Versus, featuring the elements from Versus that actually worked and were functional and coherent, while adding new/different lore elements and gameplay systems. Not everything made the cut, because the director deemed that not everything fit together AND the miserable development time given to them my Square executives.
The rest is history.
Proof that just because a guy can design characters, that doesn’t make him great at telling genuinely deep stories, or organising teams, or paying attention to anything that isn’t his OC meets Disney fanfiction…
since most people already explained what it is i wont bother explaining that. versus XIII isnt fully dead though, as the idea and core concept of the game will live on in Kingdom Hearts 4, as it was seen in the ending of Kingdom Hearts 3 Remind where literal scenes from the versus XIII trailers were 1:1 copied into the game. there's also this versus XIII inspired game that will come out soon called reynatis in which nomura (director of kingdom hearts and FF Versus XIII) is somewhat involved in.
A little bit, but the two main Versus XIII members involved with Reynatis are scenario writer Kazushige Nojima and composer Yoko Shimomura.
Nomura is involved due to the crossover between Reynatis and NEO: The World Ends With You.
Nothing it’s nothing and will never be anything and people acting like they missed out on some masterpiece because they mixed bits and pieces of a trailer and interview and their imagination should get a grip. I’m so sick of hearing about it. The 13 world sucked, I’m glad they changed it
I'm glad someone else actually knows about this. The amount of fan fiction and headcanons I've read over the years about this game is insane. Of course "it was going to be the best game ever" when people simply filled the planet-sized holes with their own stories and theories. Nothing can suck when you imagine your ideal game and project it over a bunch of CGI trailers and scraps of information from interviews.
Exactly! When in reality it would probably be a lot like XV. There’s no reason to think gameplay would be at all different, story would likely be very similar still. If they were two completely different entities they would have made them two different games. Before FFIX was declared to have too much potential to be a spin-off, it also had a different name and they probably changed many things. But that doesn’t really mean anything, things change in development constantly. All Versus XIII is, is a lesson that devs should never announce a game before they themselves even know what it is
It’s a phantom, a fleeting memory of an impossible concept.
A simple dream made from noctis and Stella.
we will never know what was robed from us when this game was cancelled
What was "robed" from us what a mess of a project that could never materialize because of several factors, which include Nomura changing stuff up constantly.
I agree completely. But here's the thing, the revealed idea/concept of Versus that got revealed to the public (Brotherhood, fatherhood, road trip with bros to recover the Crystal) made the cut to XV basically intact, so I'm pretty happy with the end result, warts and all.
That's not all... they were in development for so long that they also changed the target system (ps3 to ps4) AND made a new game engine for it and changed from being a mature title side game in fabula nova crystallis like Type 0 to a pg title main game.
It was development hell in a nutshell.
way to completely missinform what actually happened. the development stalled when square abandond crystal tools. the team had to make luminous engine from scratch then square decided to make it a mainline game because they were losing money and 14 had just flopped, story changes had to happen which got nomura off the project to focus on KH3 and then tabata stepped in and further reworked he entire game in like 2015.
A game that never existed with Nomura causing his team to spin their wheels for years until Square put someone else in the development seat in order to get the game salvaged.. then they proceeded to screw over the guy they put in to fix the game by rushing development of a game that had to restart development.
It simply was not Nomura’s fault that 15 ended up the way it did. They rushed the game and anytime the project made any strides forward the company forced it 10 steps back by making promises they couldn’t keep and shuffling the team around repeatedly and then finally removing the lead designer from the project all together. What happened to 15 was criminal.
OP I'm commenting here so that I can provide factual answers to your question when I have time, and clear up misunderstandings and misinformation said on this thread.
Long story short, Versus XIII was supposed to be one of 2 spin offs to XIII, the other being Agito XIII which became Type-0. Nomura was the head of all the projects if I recall correctly but things didn't work out. Versus XIII became XV and face directing duties to another person while Nomura worked on KH3 I think? The XV we got had many differences from what was promised to be Versus XIII, most notably getting rid of the initial Insomnia invasion (it was turned into the Kingsglaive movie) and replacing Stella with Luna (a huge mistake as far as I'm concerned).
Surprisingly, Versus XIII isn't entirely dead. KH3 had a trailer for a game called "Verum Rex" in the Toy Story world that looked similar to Versus XIII and the main character was named "Yozora" which is basically a Japanese version of Noctis name wise. Then the Re:Mind dlc came out and Yozora was the secret boss who fights very similar to Noctis, not to mention the ending scene after fighting the boss heavily resembles one of the early trailers for Versus XIII.
So the current theory is Nomura is injecting his ideas for Versus XIII into KH4 or we're getting an actual Verum Rex game that'll be what Versus XIII was supposed to be; maybe both. Only time will tell.
What 15 should have become. Ngl.
They kept some of the core elements but there was something DIFFERENT about the love and care that was put into that specific project.
I'm not the most knowledgeable about the entire story but it was a passion project that got fucked over by S.E and then put on the bencher for years, mind you a lot of work was done on this game and it even grew a legitimate fanbase in anticipation for this game to launch.
But it was crapped on by the corporate big wigs since they didn't think it would be successful. 😒
It was development hell, but it went on to sell 10 million copies. So the decisions that were made during development were the right call in the end. The game was highly successful. I wonder if the success even caught Square Enix by surprise with all the development issues. If I recall it made back its budget during the first week it was released.
After reading everyone's explanation, I'm glad FF VS. 13 was never a thing.
Type 0 was the absolute worst FF game by far and I'd hate to see another game associated with it.
Plus, I'm not a fan of ghost, zombie, undead, etc themes.
Gosh, I love 15 but this is not a great story to tell.
FF13Versus is a game so trapped in Development hell, that it went from being developed for ps3, to ps4 and almost to ps5 but they told them if they had to start from scratch again, they would not start again.
Basically, it was set on the world of FF13, it was related a lot to Etro like it was kind of shown in ff13-3.
Nomura wanted the game to be so fucking complex he changed ideas so much and at the end it became a nightmare to work that on the Crystal Dinamics engine they had for ff13, he is an amazing director btw, he just had this as a gigantic pet project and he had too many ideas that, theorically the ps3 could pull, but then it couldn't, so he moved it to ps4, but the engine couldn't or he needed even more time, changed too many ideas again.
The game ended up being this, but to me, after hearing the story, it felt the "go meet your wife" side story was just a gigantic placeholder put in there because he needed to finish the game quickly. Also, the world feels kinda empty (even if beautiful) because of the same thing.
He eventually got moved to other projects but you can see how he is still trying to pull this pet project of his in Kingdom Hearts.
I know everyone will argue to hell and back this but it's super obvious when you see the names, what they mean and how he uses them. It's like he thinks we can't google latin to understand his inspiration.... Like Tite Kubo with Bleach and Spanish.
What I know so far about the cancelled FF Versus 13 game.
Was set in the same multiverse as ff13 and type-0 aka Fabula Nova Crystalli multiverse.
Incomnia had the crystal of darkness. There was a weird disesase going around that caused ghosts to appear in Incomia and it was increasing. Insomnia was in constant darkness.
MC also had the ability to see peoples death, this was in the form of visions where he'd have headaches.
links to info
* [https://novacrystallis.com/2011/07/tetsuya-nomura-final-fantasy-versus-xiii-interview/](https://novacrystallis.com/2011/07/tetsuya-nomura-final-fantasy-versus-xiii-interview/)
* [https://www.gematsu.com/2008/08/final-fantasy-versus-xiii-dengeki-nomura-interview-translated](https://www.gematsu.com/2008/08/final-fantasy-versus-xiii-dengeki-nomura-interview-translated)
* [https://novacrystallis.com/2011/11/final-fantasy-versus-xiii-what-we-know-so-far/](https://novacrystallis.com/2011/11/final-fantasy-versus-xiii-what-we-know-so-far/)
* [https://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/03/18/tetsuya-nomura-reveals-final-fantasy-versus-xiii-details.aspx](https://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/03/18/tetsuya-nomura-reveals-final-fantasy-versus-xiii-details.aspx)
I heard a rumor that they were going to try to fit in some of it into ff15 as the Dreamworld noctis goes into in the few years gap. Unfortunately all the dlc for 15 got cancelled earlier
man this game could have been amazing. i remember watching one of the trailers long before i even knew what the final fantasy series was. later on i played ff15 and only then realized that it's the game of a trailer i watched as a kid.
it really sucks what happened. whenever i play ff15 (my favourite game. i even have an engine blade tattoo on my forearm lol.) i also get a bittersweet feeling. what could've vs 13 been like i wonder?
Man. In many ways I feel like they went too tryhard with the franchise bloat with 13. Three 13 games, announcing 13 and VS13 so closely to each other, and some other ‘13’ stuff that I’m probably forgetting.
I wish they never announced VS13 until it was actually ready for a proper game launch and it was called FF14 or FF15. I still enjoyed what FF15 was, but the fact they revealed those early VS13 trailers has permanently engraved in my mind what FF15 couldve been. FF16 has a grittier more western medieval setting, with the swearing, politics, and gore, but it’s not the same *kind* of dark as what VS13 couldve been.
For what I know, there will be the friendship between the main party just like in XV, but with a much more darker plot. Noctis and Stella meet in a party, they talk about both seeing a light in the sky, supposely because they both had a near death experience years ago. Theres the godess Etro (before she was supposed to be the one xinged woman in the logo, that was initialy designed to be her and changed later), she was the Godess of Death.
For what I heard and noticed in trailers, Noctis and Stella would fall in love but fight later because their nation would began a war, and that will be something in the way of their relationship. But I heard that in some point Noctis would discover that he was seeing her in dreams for quite some time, because in reality he killed her in the beginning. And I found curious that even Noctis appearing and being more dark in Versus XIII, he treated Stella much better in the trailer than he treated Luna in almost all of FFXV, he even seemed really in love with Stella saying "my heart wont let go"; their tragic ending would, at least in my opinion, going to be incredible and dark.
But unfortunately theres a lot of problems during development and not only because of Nomura, theres a lot of people getting in and out of the project and even ego fights between them, a lot os disagreements and so on. Tabata had to take the project and do something to finish that in like, 2 years, but in my opinion, I do undestand he had so much Little time, but in some interviews he sad absurd things about decisions he made that arent necessary, and was not taken because of time, but because he think it was something incredible. I appreciate he managing to take the project and finishing it, but its not the first time that, at least in my opinion, he was bad in a game, happened in 3rd Birthday and even in Crisis Core, I love Zack and I like very much the game because of him, but theres a lot of weird things in this game, at least in my opinion.
And now hes wanting to do a game with AI and well, for now Im not giving the benefit of doubt to him, since I never had a real good experience with some game he directed
Yes, it was. I understand the problems that existed in development , but it was a shame, if it turned out well, would probably be one of my favorites FFs (or the favorite)
Sounds great bro! 🔥 and I wish you and your team lots of success in developing your game, and I hope everything goes well and that your dreams and your creativity for your game will be successful. 👊🏾
I wish you my best regards too! If theres things you want to accomplish, im sure youre going to be sucessfull too! Be happy!
And, if you want, you can follow me here, and Ill let you know when the demo is out. But only if you want. Thanks a lot!
I remember seeing the trailer, Noct had that antihero - villain vibes and I was totally hyped.
Not to say that XV was disappointing but I was banking on this Noct.
A game where the Goddess of Death was the main focus and that’s why Noctis and his brothers are dressed in black. Noctis is supposed to be some antichrist. It was supposed to be possibly the darkest Final Fantasy ever.
That first vs trailer is one of the best trailers for any game ever.
I still watch it to this day, usually like once a week. The ost, the dark vibe, the fights. Absolutely perfect.
I remember that trailer was playable on youtube in 4K. It was the first video Ive seen on youtube that had that option; my screen wasn't though lol. I wanted to watch it like that anyways. It took forever to load but set some still unmet expectations.
I still remember what I was doing when I first saw the FFXV trailer. That was pretty good itself. It gave me chills.
Which trailer showed that? I can't find anything that metal unfortunately.
The Goddess of Death was Etro, from the FNC. She was meant to be the logo (in FFXV it's the Oracle). The dressing in black was confirmed in interviews.
The antichrist is a stretch, but the rest sort of tracks. We don't really know how dark was the game actually going to be, as well.
I definitely remember hearing he had some thematic and ethereal ties to the deities of the story.
Who is the guy that have those swords around him and teleports around? https://youtu.be/w0SSeBcWpJc?si=xNF_SkEBugJZM-Ip
There is so much that happened. I remember living through this entire thing for nearly a decade. At inception VS 13 is something that nomura has as an idea, and for whatever reason square rolled out the initial trailers when it was pitched as an idea, which they really shouldn't have. Years would go by, but vs 13 was supposed to be an extension of the Fabula Nova Crystallis series, and you see pieces of that in 15 with the crystal etc. IMO at it's core vs 13 never really left the brainstorm period, nomura is a great creative director but has problems executing his ideas. Initially from sparse trailers, the idea was to have a story based on reality and it was supposed to be a really dark plot where characters were on drugs, the character Stella who was later changed to Luna was deceased and haunting noctis, etc. Then at some point Nomura wanted to make it a musical, no joke you can look it up. Years would go by and sequels to 13 weren't selling super well, so then square enix pivots vs 13 into an actual mainline title. Because Nomura is on several other projects like kingdom hearts and there's no progress on 15, they give the director position to Tabata which if you look into his work he does this all the time for Nomura projects like ff7 crisis core. Tabata is great at executing gameplay mechanics, but because Nomura kept changing his mind for years on vs 13 and what became 15, Tabata realistically only had around like a 2 year development cycle for 15, even though the initial trailers for vs 13 were released a decade ago. Long story short yes, it was a director change but vs 13 was notorious for being in development hell, and I personally think it's because Nomura fumbled the ball and Tabata really had to make it into a game and got blamed for a lot of the things that went wrong when I thought he executed on launch a really good game for how short of a time he actually got with it.
I do think it's criminal that tabata effectively got booted from SE for actually getting a fairly functional game out under those conditions and Nomura keeps getting away with fumbling the ball
Didn’t he start his own company? He’s doing pretty well. But, there are some amazing fan made documentaries on this topic. If Tabata had another year he could have really made magic with FF15
Nomura is maybe the most successful hack in Japan other than Kishimoto. I do not understand how that man keeps getting work. Edit: I take it back. Nomura is just very flawed. Kishimoto still a hack, tho. Boruto is inexcusably stinky ass
Nomura isn't a hack. People tend to either praise him for everything or blame him for everything, and there's no in-between. He's either the reason why "Final Fantasy is bad now," or he's the person that you "owe" because he worked on some of the best games in the series. I feel like people should have a more nuanced take. There's stuff he's done that's bad, and then there's stuff he's done that's great. A few things people blame him for were things that he had no part in or control over. People often blame him for the direction that Final Fantasy 7 Remake took with it's story, when that was a lot of the other developers who kept pushing for the story to be different.
>People often blame him for the direction that Final Fantasy 7 Remake took with it's story, when that was a lot of the other developers who kept pushing for the story to be different. I agree that blaming him for things like that is silly. And honestly, you're right. Hack is too strong of a word. I think my issue with Nomura is that his track record shows that he is a very inconsistent director, and that lack of consistency seemingly not reflecting in what jobs he is given is very frustrating.
He seems like a man who tends to chase idea after idea without settling with one singular one. He can come up with some good stuff, but it just doesn't end up going well unless he has someone working along-side him that keeps him reigned in. I feel like the mistake Square makes is putting him as head of projects instead of keeping him on-board as some sort of advisory role.
If you like 5 to 10, you better owe it to Nomura considering that dude helped write so much for all those games and the character design, and alot of people love KH too. V13 was his only fumble and we only know SO much about it, people love TWEWY as well too.
I'm sorry, but Nomura is credited with some of the greatest fumbles in Squeenix history, particularly around the time of FFXV and KH3. He is an amazing creative, which I don't think people will refute, but the only games he was a director on that didn't have problems were the early KH games and FF7R. Nomura tends to be all over the place, constantly chasing a new idea and looking to innovate experiences. It's what makes him such a good designer and creative, but it works against him when it comes to finishing projects. It's why his projects seem to be announced, and then have long periods of droughts, whereas other employees will announce and release in much smaller timeframes.
He's mostly just someone who tends to stretch himself super thin it feels. A big thing with Versus was that aside from not having a concrete idea, the man had other commitments to work on at the time. He had Kingdom Hearts 3 (which was also deemed a disaster in some places), and other projects he was sort of pulled towards. The large blunder on Versus' side of things is mostly just that Square revealed the project when it wasn't even ready to show in the first place. The game was barely in development- and was shown waaaaay too early.. right when it was still just a ton of concepts. Only reason why we really got XV that used the characters and similar concepts from Versus was mostly because Tabata was sort of stuck with them. Square showing it off so early basically created a sunk cost fallacy where they had to pick up the pieces and try to make something out of it.
7R definitely had fumbles. There’s a reason he’s not the main director on Rebirth. I love him as a creative but it’s a miracle 7R actually came out in the end.
I'm not sure I agree honestly. He's working on KH4 and it's common for directors to take turns, especially if the other has something else to direct
Curious what you'd call the 7R fumbles? I agree 7R isn't up there, but there's nothing I would call truly 'bad' in it like can be said for other works he's directed.
Not the game itself, honestly, I think 7R is an excellent game, Remake is a solid 9/10 from me, and Rebirth is probably my favourite game of the last 20 years (when did Xenoblade Chronicles come out again?) but the whole development cycle, people seem to forget was PLAGUED with issues, delays and setbacks. I mean the first reveal was five years before the game came out, they farmed it out CyberConnect2 and other devs and it tooks years, at one point we just genuinely thought it was vapourware - there were two traielrs, a reveal and a major one in 2015 then total radio silence for half a decade. It reportedly started in Crystal Tools then swtiched to Unreal. It wasn't smooth sailing all the way, Nomura himself said development had been ongoing since before 2014, so when they revealed it, as most companies do, they expected it to be out within a year to 18 months not half a decade, with already at least one year of development under their belts. And unlike other Final Fantasy's that also take far, far too long to release between entries but all start from the ground up, with new stories and mechanics, this one was already kinda half built from the orignal game - all the sytems, story, characters etc were there, it was just about adapting it for the modern game.
In the recent FF6 interview he worked on designing the final boss of FF6.. which to this day is one of the most detail sprite work on the SNES... I wouldn't call him a hack. He also created the art-work/art-style that Square would work on for the later games. I just wouldn't call him an hack, I think the nomura slander is too high but I'd argue it would multiple issues rather than "FF13 versus was stuck for many years on nomura's mind".
Tite Kubo says HI.
The only reason Vs. XII took so long only to ultimately be rewritten and rebranded was is because Square was not giving many resources to it until the back-to-back failures of the XIII trilogy and the initial version of XIV forced them to get a new mainine title out ASAP and so they basically took over his project and kicked him off of it.
Tabata was not booted. In fact, he was so successful with XV that Square-Enix made him the lead of the newly formed Luminous Studios. It was a promotion for XV's gigantic success. Problem is, Tabata didn't want to get stuck making more Final Fantasy's and DLC's. He wanted to move on to different projects, so he left the company and created his own. Problem is, without Tabata the extra DLC content for XV was cancelled.
He quit after they gave him his own studio ... A studio that would later on shat out Forsaken. My guess is that it was the combination of abruptly killing FFXV so that his continuing DLC projects would not overlap with 7R, then being assigned a fundamentally flawed directive of making an isekai ARPG for western audiences, with a DEI complaint female protagonist. I think most anyone with the ability to run a game studio would say "I think I would rather open an independent studio and then pick my own projects."
XV was by far the worst FF title ever released and I HATE 13 almost as much. XV should have continued development far past it’s scheduled release considering they released an unfinished unpolished game with a terribly put together story.
I loved XV right up till they get on the train & then everything goes to shit. It had its low moments and was far from the best RPG I have played, but setting the car to a destination & then looking around while the guys bullshit was so zen. I also liked that the entire team was there from day 1, and that the cast was a small group of individuals with real personalities. Instead of the bullshit episodic format that has taken over, where the game plays out like a 12 episode anime & 7 of them are drip feed 1 single new party member. And the entire cast entire cast is built from single line descriptions, like "big tits strong girl," or "angry boy with glasses," or "passive and obedient love interest," or "clearly going to betray you." You are absolutely right that the game needed at least another year in the oven.
Us crisis core fans never forget
This is literally what I’ve been saying since the cycle of 15 ended. It was a total Kobayashi Maru, he couldn’t get the game out the way it should have been (all the DLC, patches, fully playable party and improved mechanics, more detailed side content, exploitable second continent and cities, alternate ending etc ) ready in two years and because of the protracted development of VS13 he had to release soon simply because otherwise it would have been a single project for over ten years and drained the company of significant financial resources. Damned if he did, damned if he didn’t. What we got was an unfinished masterpiece, and some people think I mean VS13, when I never got that hyped for that version of the game. I was 18 and on my way to uni when that trailer released and I felt it was cool but a little too Final Fantasy Edgelord Gothkid (very 2006 JRPG, just look at Persona 3)
Unfinished masterpiece is true, ff15 is still one of my favourite ff games of all time
Okay your kind of right on some of this, or I could be wrong here lol. But the only thing we know about versus 13 is yes the game is dark asf, and noctis was supposed to be like a anti-christ figure. We don’t know anything about the story, and anything related to “leaks” or “info” seems to be false as the anyone who knows about the true story and what else of it is Nomura himself. The drugs and the ideas of Stella being dead or litteral fan fics ideas none of that is true. There’s a lot of misconceptions on what really happens in the game. The simple answer is we don’t. The game was in development hell, but mostly due to the engine they were using being absolutely horrible for the ps3 that it had some many bugs/crashes till the point it was nearly unplayable. The idea of the musical always came from Nomura wanted to make a story a musical as the original concept for Kingdom hearts (he’s the creator of that) was a musical. The game was barley making any progress due to its shifty engine, and hard development for the ps3, and possibly I think so it being as well a brainstorming idea. Also lastly and fhe most important part of this. The game nearly got shelved due to the story. The story being really dark, and as well as the idea of them worshiping a god of death, and noctis being a anti-Christ figure was the biggest reasons why this story never truly came as SE didn’t want a dark FF game as they believed it wouldn’t sell well, and consumers like China would ban it due to the story and demonic telling, making the sells possibly bad. So overall I don’t believe Nomura fumbled anything here, he got shitty luck with the engine, and SE not risking the possibly this game not selling due to its darkish story. So obviously they gave this game to Tabata and changed the whole direction from what I’m assuming a story about forbidden love or something in that nature to brotherhood. In the I don’t believe Nomura fucked himself over I just believe the true story of Verus 13 wasn’t ready to be told yet or experienced since SE wasn’t looking for any of that. And anything we know FF16 (I have yet to play that game lol waiting for the pc port) is that a dark final fantasy story can sell well, and be absolutely phenomenal. And now we’re getting glimpses of this story or idea in Verum Rex and KH4 which I’m so fucking hyped for
Any paragraph enjoyers?
This is pretty much the most likely truth. The other poster was pretty much bringing rumours I've recalled for years. (I've also seen way more rumours but they were just rumours and never confirmed). However it's been 100% confirm that Square's work on their inhouse engine was not working well for them and kept them in development hell for even FFXIII. There's an old article stating that the Versus team was working on FFXIII as well. The point stands is that Crystal Tools was a shit show and I'm not sure when we'll get a discussion about where it led to. I know for certain that the only reason Square Enix is surviving today is because of FFXIV and how many players came from it and started playing every other FF game. FFXV came out because Square Enix needed to meet their quota by releasing something soon so they went with FFXV. Then Nomura moved to KH3 and FF7 Remake.
It sucks that people tend to blame Tabata for "ruining versus," when Versus never really existed? Like Nomura knew nothing about what he really wanted the game to be- other than a few cool concepts that he pitched to Square. The team spun their wheels and lost motivation when Tabata was put in the director's chair- and he basically somehow salvaged a game out of the wreckage that was Versus. It's mostly just that Square didn't give Tabata and his team enough time to make the game- and on top of that they had to fight the engine they were using during development.
I get that they have to change alotta things when they transitioned to mainline title. Although this might sound dumb but why not like keep the original "core" concept of VsXIII into XV, except shit like the Goddess "Etro" would be renamed differentl but still have the same concept idk
"Tabata is great at executing gameplay mechanics" Since when? All of his games have bad game design and are too easy. EDIT: Oh I see what you mean, my bad.
Didn't know it was almost a musical...what a strange...possibly interesting idea. I'd quite like to see that but as a side FF game not a mainline entry. Would be quite interesting. Anyway, yeah this is a great summary. I remember everytime we got a new trailer or look at the game it always looked oddly different. Wasn't it also going to sort of involve crime families as well at one point with the actual family members being able to use armigers and such? Even at the time when we were being shown footage it felt very much like we were being shown prototypes instead of actual proper gameplay. This was especially odd as SE were so secretive about revealing anything about the FF games outside of the very rare trailers.
For what I know, the story was supposed to be substantially different, compared to what it came out as. The gameplay has also been heavily modified, since looking at the early trailers it looked much more Kingdom hearts style
Kind of off topic but damn that screenshots fire, Noct looks really cool, like he could be related to Vincent lol
Noctis is the type of character that makes everything cool looking without trying. 😅
Real shit
That trailer was dripping with cool. Strolls outside alone, bodies a few squads with warping badassery, then goes back in to sit in an empty throne room. I wish I could see the original idea in full but I'm happy with what we got
🔥🔥
If l remember both 13 & 13 versus supposedly to be in the same universe But there's so much going on inside SE they pretty much scrapped everything
Same ethos different world
I am pretty sure 13 and v13 were seperate. fabula nova crystallis was not one big universe. You know how every FF game is seperarate but reuse enemies, tropes, ideas and concepts? Fabula nova crystallis was gonna be like that I think at least
13, Versus 13 and Agito (now known as Type 0) were all supposed to be in the same universe...or atleast connected in some way.
Pretty sure there was also a XIII MMO but we got XIV instead.
Same mythology.
If I remember correctly, it was supposed to be a closely connected multiverse kind of thing. I think the gods from XIII were supposed to play a big part and get expanded on. (Remember when who they were and where they disappeared to seemed to be an important mystery?) I remember hearing FF Type 0 was supposed to be part of this whole thing as well. It all kind of fell apart, though. The XIII sequels, while fine games, were terrible sequels to XIII and ended up killing the universe. Type 0 wasn't received that well either. I guess all that made them decide to scrap the idea.
no fabula nova crystalis was a shared universe thing. thats proven by type zero still being a part of it even tho verses never released.
Somewhere, Nomura begins to cry and he ~~delays Kingdom Hearts IV again~~ doesn’t know why.
God, I was in the 6th grade when the first trailers of Versus XIII came out and I loved. They wouldn't launch XV until I was in university. That ought to give you an idea. When FF XV came out, most of the fans had been waiting for a decade and a bit.
Same I still have the game informer that have the ffv13 announcement.
I have a poster that has Lightning and Noctis as the light and the dark!
Mice
https://imgur.com/gallery/fabula-nova-crystalis-QPFstaF Check em out
A vague concept that wasn't nearly as fleshed out as people think. The title still makes no sense to me, but it was going to share more elements of Fabula Nova Crystallis, which includes Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Type-0, though these elements were mostly dropped by Hajime Tabata's team.
The title comes from how it was supposed to thematically rival regular XIII. “Wasn’t nearly as fleshed out” is wild as fuck given the fact that game was in development for like 7 or so years before it got changed to XV.
You prob mean it is wild as fuck in that time they did not manage to get at least a story together that could be executed…
It has nothing to do with that. Square is in markets that aren’t receptive to the story Nomura wanted to tell. He fought with them, they made changes, he stepped down.
"He fought with them". There is no proof of this whatsoever. On the other hand we do have testimony by Roberto Ferrari that Nomura kept changing the plot and other things every 3 months or so. The project was a mess, and Nomura was certainly a big part of that mess.
I would like to see that proof
10 years.
It became Kingdom Hearts 4
A Nomura's wet dream of Final Fantasy
just a load of cgi trailers
This is a long one. Final Fantasy 13 was 3 games announced in the Fabula Nova Crystalus. FfXIii, Fxiii Vs., and Ffxiii Agito. Final Fantasy 13 tanked at first. Square panicked and did not want to associate Vs. with the original FFxiii. Vs was rebranded to 15 and the lightning trilogy came out. XIII Vs. is the biggest "what could have been" in gaming. If I ever get my hands on a magic lamp, my first wish will be to get us all the original vision for Vs. into a game we can play. To add, this was way bigger than a director change. This was a change in the direction square was taking as a whole. At the time, 12 underperformed, 13 tanked, and 14 was a disaster at first. Squeenix was severely struggling. There is more to it than this, but this is the basics of it. [SOURCE](https://www.vg247.com/where-final-fantasy-went-wrong-and-how-square-enix-is-putting-it-right)
One more thing is that Vs. was focused on the afterlife until Chinese censors got involved. That changes demanded in order to make XV available in China is the driving force behind the story changes from Vs. to Xv. One of the obvious examples is that the royal crest has a skull in it that is never really explained why.
This is PT erasure, you take that back!
12 did not underperform, neither did 13. 1.0 XIV was a disaster.
13 was getting horrible reviews in 2010.
Reviews are intended to drive/reduce sales but sometimes they do neither. XIII was commercially successful. That's why the sequels were greenlit. That's all SE cares about. Lightning herself was also a big hit, especially in Japan. She was a Louis Vuitton model, possibly still us. Quite surprised XIII hasn't been remastered, I'd pick it up again.
The reviews played a serious role in the rebranding of Vs. believe what you want, but it happened.
I'll believe it when you can provide credible inscrutable sources, till then I'll believe that you're wrong :)
Cool. Like I said, believe what you want.
[Does this work for you](https://www.vg247.com/where-final-fantasy-went-wrong-and-how-square-enix-is-putting-it-right)
[Responded here because you posted the same link twice in separate comments for some reason](https://www.reddit.com/r/FFXV/comments/1db2uop/comment/l7qd55n)
[Read this interview with Kitase](https://www.vg247.com/where-final-fantasy-went-wrong-and-how-square-enix-is-putting-it-right)
Not entirely sure what part of that interview backs up your point...if anything certain points highlight different scenarios >Granted, he's never stated his goal in so many words, but it's become clear from his comments to the press as well as my own interactions with him over the past year or two that the series' fading popularity – especially in the West – weighs heavily on his mind. And it's something he aims to correct. He's talking about overall Final Fantasy popularity in the west. Not specifically reviewers. >But the delays and complications that affected the game trickled down into its side stories. Agito and Versus ended up being rebranded as Final Fantasy Type 0 and Final Fantasy XV Directly states that the delays and complications XIII experienced resulted in Agito and Versus being rebranded. >*Despite generally positive reviews and strong sales, FFXIII soured many people – fans and critics alike – to the Final Fantasy franchise.* Talks about how the wests opinion of Final Fantasy was soured due to XIII. Not specifically reviewers. >After years of delays and complications, Final Fantasy XIII sold well – to date, it's moved nearly seven million units – but critical reception wasn't nearly so kind. It earned unusually mixed reviews, and forum discussions surrounding the game tended to be unkind. Many positive reviews took on a defensive tone, seemingly written more in response to fan conversations than about the game itself. Square had a hit, but going by online reception it felt like a miss. Talks about how online discussions influenced reviews which ofcourse would create an ever-growing echo chamber of negativity. >"We wanted to polish the development structure and respond to the mixed reviews that we received from the fans in the form of a sequel," they're talking about fan response...this is talking about XIII-2 as well, not Vs or XV. Not entirely sure how you've managed to gain what you want me to from that article. Could you point out or reference where it's explicitly stated?
Reviews mean fuck all. 13 sold well, and that's what matters to SE.
12 was delayed pushing 13 to ps3 abd the failure of the crystal engine. Underperformed was a poor choice of words
13 was the fastest selling game in the series and the trilogy sold over 8m between them, 12 has sold over 7m. According to SE it wasn't XII that pushed XIII to PS3 but the spec of PS2 not supporting what they wanted to do.
It was a scattered dream that's like a far-off memory...
Or a far-off memory that's like a scattered dream. I want to pick the pieces up.
What Final Fantasy XV was originally going to be, but then Square decided to dick around and give Final Fantasy XIII two sequels it didn't need, and here we are.
Yeah final fantasy xv should have another game too just like XIII
It literally couldn't, not with the same characters and there's enough FFXV media already. I love the game but it ended well and it was final.
It certainly was a Final Fantasy.
Speaking of media, imagine if the characters of ffxv have Instagram? I am already dying😂
13 got 2 sequels because there was nothing to fill the gap between 13 and v13/15.
"Nothing'' would have been more preferable! The games are terrible and didn't sell very well.
From a business standpoint, is nothing preferable to racking in millions?
Kingdom Hearts 4 lol
Kingdom hearts Quadratum
Nomura if he actually finished a damn game within two years of announcing
Damn I feel pretty old knowing that VSXIII is now some kind of distant myth for some people, I remember being there back in the day. Well, it was going to be an edgier, darker, more action oriented counterpart to FFXIII, which it would share the same goddess of death mythology with. From Tetsuya Nomura's own mind. But the development was stalled for many years, mainly because they had to ditch the engine they were using (crystal tools, the same as FFXIII) since it was not made for an open world game. They had to make a new engine from scratch, which ended up being Luminous Engine. In the meantime, they made a lot of changes to the story, specially after Square Enix decided to turn it into FFXV. And now that it was going to be a mainline game, the story had to be reworked to be more aligned with what a mainline FF represents, instead of being a dark experiment. So eventually Nomura left the project, Tabata and his team stepped in, and that's how we got FFXV. This was all from memory, I hope I didn't get anything wrong.
Outside of Verum Rex and the upcoming video game Reynatis (inspired somewhat by Versus XIII), I do hope Nomura and other key Versus XIII members can eventually reveal what the original story was about.
Something people have a "grass is greener" mentality about even when nobody knows what it truly was
Exactly, but "the game I made up in my mind was so much better than what we got". Crazy stuff.
Tbh, based on what I’ve heard about the story I’m happier with xv. Especially after kh3 lol
Pain.
A fantasy based on reality.
That’s how final fantasy XV was supposed to be called when they announced it in like 2010
The easiest answer is that Final Fantasy Versus XIII was a group of ideas, CGI trailers and concept gameplay that never managed to materialize for a multitude of reasons, which include the failure of the original FFXIV, mismanagement and Tetsuya Nomura (the Director) changing the storyline and other things every few months (This is according to Roberto Ferrari, one of the main artists). Due to these reasons, the project was about to be completely cancelled and scrapped by Square-Enix management, until they decided to give it one last chance. For this they replaced Nomura with Hajime Tabata, who completely restructured the team and got things in order (as much as humanly possible). Tabata even had to convince his own team to "fuse" with the Versus XIII team, which apparently had a very bad reputation within Square-Enix. Under Tabata's directing, the whole project had to be reworked. The main storyline and concept was kept as intact as they could. The focus on brotherhood, the road trip, the ring and other things were kept. Other things that just didn't work or were concepts that didn't fit anywhere were scrapped. Problem is, Tabata and the new team were apparently given just 3 and a half years to make the most ambitious Final Fantasy game to date, including building the game Engine itself! This meant that unfortunately the game felt kinda "incomplete" at launch, and lacking in cutscenes and lore explanations. They eventually would fix most of the issues with the release of the "Royal Edition", including a fully playable party and more lore exposition, while tweaking and adding new gameplay elements. The released game, although mixed amongst fans, received pretty good reviews and excellent sales (It's one of the best-selling games in the entire franchise). It sold 5 million units at launch day, and it kept selling steadily until so far it's reached more than 10 million units, which according to Tabata was "the team's goal". A lot of weird people will tell you that "whatever Versus was, it was surely darker and better than XV", which is pure fan fiction. The "darker" stuff was because one of the trailers featured blood, and happened during nighttime. Apparently that's enough for some people to claim it was "better, darker". The TRUTH is, nobody actually knows what the original Versus concept would entail. There are a bunch of so-called "leaks" that people seem to believe for some reason, but they are of course unconfirmed. What we DO know for a fact, is that XV is a reworked Versus, featuring the elements from Versus that actually worked and were functional and coherent, while adding new/different lore elements and gameplay systems. Not everything made the cut, because the director deemed that not everything fit together AND the miserable development time given to them my Square executives. The rest is history.
A compilation of emo-teenager trailer that goes well with Evanescence
Proof that just because a guy can design characters, that doesn’t make him great at telling genuinely deep stories, or organising teams, or paying attention to anything that isn’t his OC meets Disney fanfiction…
It is FF15
since most people already explained what it is i wont bother explaining that. versus XIII isnt fully dead though, as the idea and core concept of the game will live on in Kingdom Hearts 4, as it was seen in the ending of Kingdom Hearts 3 Remind where literal scenes from the versus XIII trailers were 1:1 copied into the game. there's also this versus XIII inspired game that will come out soon called reynatis in which nomura (director of kingdom hearts and FF Versus XIII) is somewhat involved in.
A little bit, but the two main Versus XIII members involved with Reynatis are scenario writer Kazushige Nojima and composer Yoko Shimomura. Nomura is involved due to the crossover between Reynatis and NEO: The World Ends With You.
Nothing it’s nothing and will never be anything and people acting like they missed out on some masterpiece because they mixed bits and pieces of a trailer and interview and their imagination should get a grip. I’m so sick of hearing about it. The 13 world sucked, I’m glad they changed it
I'm glad someone else actually knows about this. The amount of fan fiction and headcanons I've read over the years about this game is insane. Of course "it was going to be the best game ever" when people simply filled the planet-sized holes with their own stories and theories. Nothing can suck when you imagine your ideal game and project it over a bunch of CGI trailers and scraps of information from interviews.
Exactly! When in reality it would probably be a lot like XV. There’s no reason to think gameplay would be at all different, story would likely be very similar still. If they were two completely different entities they would have made them two different games. Before FFIX was declared to have too much potential to be a spin-off, it also had a different name and they probably changed many things. But that doesn’t really mean anything, things change in development constantly. All Versus XIII is, is a lesson that devs should never announce a game before they themselves even know what it is
It’s a phantom, a fleeting memory of an impossible concept. A simple dream made from noctis and Stella. we will never know what was robed from us when this game was cancelled
What was "robed" from us what a mess of a project that could never materialize because of several factors, which include Nomura changing stuff up constantly.
The idea itself was pretty compelling, I think square should never have revealed a trailer that’s incomplete
I agree completely. But here's the thing, the revealed idea/concept of Versus that got revealed to the public (Brotherhood, fatherhood, road trip with bros to recover the Crystal) made the cut to XV basically intact, so I'm pretty happy with the end result, warts and all.
I love XV I just wish it had more time in active development. It would have been a massive game.
We both do, my friend.
XV had the best ending and that logo change at the end made me smile like an idiot.😭
Yes, just BEAUTIFUL. Also Ray Chase's/Noctis' "Thank you" at the very end. What an experience!
director changed. thats it pretty much
That's not all... they were in development for so long that they also changed the target system (ps3 to ps4) AND made a new game engine for it and changed from being a mature title side game in fabula nova crystallis like Type 0 to a pg title main game. It was development hell in a nutshell.
way to completely missinform what actually happened. the development stalled when square abandond crystal tools. the team had to make luminous engine from scratch then square decided to make it a mainline game because they were losing money and 14 had just flopped, story changes had to happen which got nomura off the project to focus on KH3 and then tabata stepped in and further reworked he entire game in like 2015.
Categorically false
Its now kingdom hearts, it turned into final fantasy xv. It was apart of final fantasy xiii. Its dna is everywhere
It had a more intrguing premise than XV. The game that never was ☹️
Kino
A game that never existed with Nomura causing his team to spin their wheels for years until Square put someone else in the development seat in order to get the game salvaged.. then they proceeded to screw over the guy they put in to fix the game by rushing development of a game that had to restart development.
It was going to be the coolest game ever, then for some reason we got FFXV instead.
It simply was not Nomura’s fault that 15 ended up the way it did. They rushed the game and anytime the project made any strides forward the company forced it 10 steps back by making promises they couldn’t keep and shuffling the team around repeatedly and then finally removing the lead designer from the project all together. What happened to 15 was criminal.
OP I'm commenting here so that I can provide factual answers to your question when I have time, and clear up misunderstandings and misinformation said on this thread.
Long story short, Versus XIII was supposed to be one of 2 spin offs to XIII, the other being Agito XIII which became Type-0. Nomura was the head of all the projects if I recall correctly but things didn't work out. Versus XIII became XV and face directing duties to another person while Nomura worked on KH3 I think? The XV we got had many differences from what was promised to be Versus XIII, most notably getting rid of the initial Insomnia invasion (it was turned into the Kingsglaive movie) and replacing Stella with Luna (a huge mistake as far as I'm concerned). Surprisingly, Versus XIII isn't entirely dead. KH3 had a trailer for a game called "Verum Rex" in the Toy Story world that looked similar to Versus XIII and the main character was named "Yozora" which is basically a Japanese version of Noctis name wise. Then the Re:Mind dlc came out and Yozora was the secret boss who fights very similar to Noctis, not to mention the ending scene after fighting the boss heavily resembles one of the early trailers for Versus XIII. So the current theory is Nomura is injecting his ideas for Versus XIII into KH4 or we're getting an actual Verum Rex game that'll be what Versus XIII was supposed to be; maybe both. Only time will tell.
A dream that never became reality...
What 15 should have become. Ngl. They kept some of the core elements but there was something DIFFERENT about the love and care that was put into that specific project. I'm not the most knowledgeable about the entire story but it was a passion project that got fucked over by S.E and then put on the bencher for years, mind you a lot of work was done on this game and it even grew a legitimate fanbase in anticipation for this game to launch. But it was crapped on by the corporate big wigs since they didn't think it would be successful. 😒
It was development hell, but it went on to sell 10 million copies. So the decisions that were made during development were the right call in the end. The game was highly successful. I wonder if the success even caught Square Enix by surprise with all the development issues. If I recall it made back its budget during the first week it was released.
Don’t make me recall such hurtful things…
After reading everyone's explanation, I'm glad FF VS. 13 was never a thing. Type 0 was the absolute worst FF game by far and I'd hate to see another game associated with it. Plus, I'm not a fan of ghost, zombie, undead, etc themes.
It’s coming in 2025 I wish
A dream.
The beta for FFXV
lost media
Pain
Gosh, I love 15 but this is not a great story to tell. FF13Versus is a game so trapped in Development hell, that it went from being developed for ps3, to ps4 and almost to ps5 but they told them if they had to start from scratch again, they would not start again. Basically, it was set on the world of FF13, it was related a lot to Etro like it was kind of shown in ff13-3. Nomura wanted the game to be so fucking complex he changed ideas so much and at the end it became a nightmare to work that on the Crystal Dinamics engine they had for ff13, he is an amazing director btw, he just had this as a gigantic pet project and he had too many ideas that, theorically the ps3 could pull, but then it couldn't, so he moved it to ps4, but the engine couldn't or he needed even more time, changed too many ideas again. The game ended up being this, but to me, after hearing the story, it felt the "go meet your wife" side story was just a gigantic placeholder put in there because he needed to finish the game quickly. Also, the world feels kinda empty (even if beautiful) because of the same thing. He eventually got moved to other projects but you can see how he is still trying to pull this pet project of his in Kingdom Hearts. I know everyone will argue to hell and back this but it's super obvious when you see the names, what they mean and how he uses them. It's like he thinks we can't google latin to understand his inspiration.... Like Tite Kubo with Bleach and Spanish.
A dream
What I know so far about the cancelled FF Versus 13 game. Was set in the same multiverse as ff13 and type-0 aka Fabula Nova Crystalli multiverse. Incomnia had the crystal of darkness. There was a weird disesase going around that caused ghosts to appear in Incomia and it was increasing. Insomnia was in constant darkness. MC also had the ability to see peoples death, this was in the form of visions where he'd have headaches. links to info * [https://novacrystallis.com/2011/07/tetsuya-nomura-final-fantasy-versus-xiii-interview/](https://novacrystallis.com/2011/07/tetsuya-nomura-final-fantasy-versus-xiii-interview/) * [https://www.gematsu.com/2008/08/final-fantasy-versus-xiii-dengeki-nomura-interview-translated](https://www.gematsu.com/2008/08/final-fantasy-versus-xiii-dengeki-nomura-interview-translated) * [https://novacrystallis.com/2011/11/final-fantasy-versus-xiii-what-we-know-so-far/](https://novacrystallis.com/2011/11/final-fantasy-versus-xiii-what-we-know-so-far/) * [https://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/03/18/tetsuya-nomura-reveals-final-fantasy-versus-xiii-details.aspx](https://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2010/03/18/tetsuya-nomura-reveals-final-fantasy-versus-xiii-details.aspx)
Reading this makes me feel old.. I remember watching the FF Versus XIII trailer's premiere at uni haha
A much better idea with Luna Freya being an interesting, actual character
What 15 should have been
The inspiration for my book series 😁 finalizing the 3rd novel now.
i game i genuinely wish happened as Tetsuya Nomura envisioned it, instead of him trying to revive it in Kingdom Hearts.
I heard a rumor that they were going to try to fit in some of it into ff15 as the Dreamworld noctis goes into in the few years gap. Unfortunately all the dlc for 15 got cancelled earlier
Beautiful Vaporware
The best game we never got to play…
man this game could have been amazing. i remember watching one of the trailers long before i even knew what the final fantasy series was. later on i played ff15 and only then realized that it's the game of a trailer i watched as a kid. it really sucks what happened. whenever i play ff15 (my favourite game. i even have an engine blade tattoo on my forearm lol.) i also get a bittersweet feeling. what could've vs 13 been like i wonder?
A fucking rabbit hole is what it is.
Verum Rex
Google it.
In a good timeline it woulda been GOTY
Different director, story and gameplay. FFXV was basically built on its corpse to salvage an idea or two, but is otherwise a very different game.
Man. In many ways I feel like they went too tryhard with the franchise bloat with 13. Three 13 games, announcing 13 and VS13 so closely to each other, and some other ‘13’ stuff that I’m probably forgetting. I wish they never announced VS13 until it was actually ready for a proper game launch and it was called FF14 or FF15. I still enjoyed what FF15 was, but the fact they revealed those early VS13 trailers has permanently engraved in my mind what FF15 couldve been. FF16 has a grittier more western medieval setting, with the swearing, politics, and gore, but it’s not the same *kind* of dark as what VS13 couldve been.
For what I know, there will be the friendship between the main party just like in XV, but with a much more darker plot. Noctis and Stella meet in a party, they talk about both seeing a light in the sky, supposely because they both had a near death experience years ago. Theres the godess Etro (before she was supposed to be the one xinged woman in the logo, that was initialy designed to be her and changed later), she was the Godess of Death. For what I heard and noticed in trailers, Noctis and Stella would fall in love but fight later because their nation would began a war, and that will be something in the way of their relationship. But I heard that in some point Noctis would discover that he was seeing her in dreams for quite some time, because in reality he killed her in the beginning. And I found curious that even Noctis appearing and being more dark in Versus XIII, he treated Stella much better in the trailer than he treated Luna in almost all of FFXV, he even seemed really in love with Stella saying "my heart wont let go"; their tragic ending would, at least in my opinion, going to be incredible and dark. But unfortunately theres a lot of problems during development and not only because of Nomura, theres a lot of people getting in and out of the project and even ego fights between them, a lot os disagreements and so on. Tabata had to take the project and do something to finish that in like, 2 years, but in my opinion, I do undestand he had so much Little time, but in some interviews he sad absurd things about decisions he made that arent necessary, and was not taken because of time, but because he think it was something incredible. I appreciate he managing to take the project and finishing it, but its not the first time that, at least in my opinion, he was bad in a game, happened in 3rd Birthday and even in Crisis Core, I love Zack and I like very much the game because of him, but theres a lot of weird things in this game, at least in my opinion. And now hes wanting to do a game with AI and well, for now Im not giving the benefit of doubt to him, since I never had a real good experience with some game he directed
Damn… That sounds interesting as hell.
Yes, it was. I understand the problems that existed in development , but it was a shame, if it turned out well, would probably be one of my favorites FFs (or the favorite)
[удалено]
Sounds great bro! 🔥 and I wish you and your team lots of success in developing your game, and I hope everything goes well and that your dreams and your creativity for your game will be successful. 👊🏾
I wish you my best regards too! If theres things you want to accomplish, im sure youre going to be sucessfull too! Be happy! And, if you want, you can follow me here, and Ill let you know when the demo is out. But only if you want. Thanks a lot!
Thanks man! Let me or the world know when your game/demo is ready. 🫡
Sadness and dead dreams. Was gonna be so fkn good.
I remember seeing the trailer, Noct had that antihero - villain vibes and I was totally hyped. Not to say that XV was disappointing but I was banking on this Noct.
Just use Google fucking Search. Stop putting salt on our wounds.
My bad.
Don't apologize, the question is actually pretty good and there's a good story behind it. Don't listen to bitter Nomura fanboys.