After some slight confusion (“We thought you worked for Dutch TV?” “Nope, I write about games.”) and a very long wait, it is my turn to talk to Kitase and Toriyama. The two Japanese men seem relaxed and smile, but I’m sure they are at least a bit anxious about the fate of their latest creation. Reviews from Western outlets are trickling in, and I ask Kitase what he thinks about the sometimes unfavorable comparisons to more freeform RPGs like Dragon Age Origins.

Freedom

“Yes, Western RPGs are more about freedom. But Final Fantasy is a different sort of game. It is much more akin to watching a movie, where you appreciate the world and are immersed deeply in the story. You get to experience dramatic moments and big events. In that sense, the concept of FFXIII is much more like a first person shooter such as Call of Duty.”

This mention of one of the West’s most successful franchises isn’t accidental. This latest installment of one of Japan’s most recognized series seems to be built around pleasing the West. “We are very excited to see how gamers respond. We have created a completely original world. This was a huge challenge. Working for a HD system like the PS3 asks a lot of our designers. We had to model every object with so much detail, so you would believe these things where real and existed somewhere.”

HD

High quality graphics are very important to the creators. They see it as a way to please that huge and recently discovered group of ‘casual gamers’. “We hope they will be engaged by the graphics and the story. We realize this means some of our fans, who like the more traditional games, might be disappoined in some ways. But we hope they will take this journey with us. If we keep creating traditional games, we stand still, and we want to make steps forward.”

One of the most apparent changes is the battle system. Conflicts with assorted monsters are no longer resolved by issuing orders to all party members. Just one character is under your control, but the roles of your support staff can be changed on the fly from damage dealing to healing to magic and so on. “We showed a demonstration of our vision of battle at E3, three years ago. We wanted combat to be speedy, but also tactical. We told our battle director we wanted these elements to be combined. This is a difficult challenge because tactical and speedy seem to be a contradiction. They have worked for three years on coming up with what we have now. Our need for speediness resulted in the automatic behavior of the other party members. We shifted a lot of the tactics to the preparations before battle, where you assign roles to your characters. Team building has become much more important.”

Sequel

While building teams is now in the hands of the player, the responsibility of building the unique worlds of Pulse and Cocoon rested firmly on the shoulders of the Final Fantasy creators. Even after playing a mere five hours, it feels to me that there is much more to this universe than this story. It seems obvious to continue adventures on these two worlds in a direct sequel. So, will there be a Final Fantasy XIII-2? The men laugh and begin to answer very diplomatically: “That depends on how well the game sells in the West!” But after pressing a bit, Kitase concedes he would very much like to do a direct sequel. “In the past three years we worked both on the world and on the various systems. Creating these systems isn’t very glamourous and can frankly be a bit boring. If we could do a XIII-2, we could direct all our attention to the story and refine what we have already built.”

This is an advantage which will not exist for the team that might create Final fantasy XV (XIV is already announced as an MMO). Every numbered Final Fantasy game stands on its own, and is created starting with a blank slate. Still, elements carry over to become canon, like chocobo, crystals, and archetypcal spells. What elements of FFXIII would Kitase like to carry over into future Final Fantasies?

“We do not know if there will be a XV. This depends a lot on the success of XIII. Also, it is difficult to pinpoint elements that are typical Final Fantasy. They are mostly invisible: part of the DNA of the game, that everyone recognizes as typical Final Fantasy. But if there is a XV, I hope the way we wrote our characters carries over. We strived to create believable people of flesh and blood. They are not robots. And they are not super heroes. I hope this humanity is something we will see again.”

Ring Ring!

I’m in my home office. It’s a quarter past five. “Ring ring, your iPhone is ringing!” says my phone. I answer. It’s Adam Mersky, director of communications at Turbine. He introduces me to Aaron Campbell, live producer of LOTRO. It’s a bit bizarre to speak to these Americans from my study in a small town in the Netherlands. It’s the same study where I spent an almost embarrassingly large amount of time in the world of  LOTRO. This is why my inner fanboy is taking his seat next to my professional inner journalist.

“This update marks the beginning of Volume 3,” says Campbell. “Until now, new volumes started with expansions. We launched with Shadows of Angmar, which was volume 1. Volume 2 started with Mines of Moria. We now move away from this patern.” Obviously, my next question is when we can expect a new full expansion. After two sem-sly attempts from me to learn more, Mersky intervenes gently yet firmly. There will be no announcements today about upcoming expansions. “But is Riders of Rohan at least still slated for this year?” I ask. Both men laugh. “No comment.”

Elrond

Of course Campbell is more than happy to tell me about book 1 of volume 3, in which the heroes of Eriador now must rally the rangers behind king Aragorn. This time Elrond narrates the story, replacing Gandalf and Galadriel. LOTRO tells its story through its ‘epic quest line’. Each ‘book’ consists of a series of quests. Several of these are special instances, in which the player experiences the story through scripted events. “We want to make the story more personal for the player,” says Campbell. “NPCs will respond to your previous deeds or lack thereof. If you finished or skipped a book, they will react differently.” I tell them I feel little touches like that can be a huge improvement over the standard “Only you, [insert name], can save us!”

“We are working hard to make these ‘book quests’ attainable for all players.” With this, Campbell adresses one of my personal frustrations. It becomes more and more difficult to finish earlier, low level book quests without other players.

Inspiration

“We are gradually introducing ‘moments of inspiration’ for certain Volume 1 quests. This allows players to solo certain sections that previously required a group, by temporarily boosting their stats.” My hopes of now finally clearing a series of ‘epic’ instances in Moria, in which I must defend certain halls from invading forces, are crushes when Campbell tells me there currently are no inspired moments in the Dwarven kingdom. Yet. “But there are several solo paths through Moria,” he adds.  Just not the epic story.

Playing with yourself

The increased focus on solo play is a response to changing MMO players’ tastes. Fewer people are willing to play many hours in a row to achieve something. To maximize fun in shorter sessions, Turbine introduced Skirmishes with their Siege of Mirkwood expansion. Skirmishes are instanced battles in which players (solo or in groups of up to twelve heroes) fight off hordes of Sauron’s minions. “We created new Skirmishes for this update. The great thing is, they allow us to go back to older areas of the game and reuse them to tell new stories. In this book, we go back to Angmar. One of our new Skirmishes takes place in The Rift, which many of our players remember as the setting for the raid on the Balrog.”

Campbell once again confirms the team’s intent to use Skirmishes for PvP (“No, we can’t say when…”). Player versus Player combat is the most underdeveloped part of LOTRO. Apart from (necessary) improvement in balance, not much has changed in LOTRO’s single PvP zone Ettenmoors.

Enough already

Keeping classes balanced is a challenge, especially after raising the levelcap. I ask the developer if they are now done with constantly resetting experience points on Legendary Items. Their laughter tells me I sounded more frustrated than I intended. “For now we are done,” is the rather unsatisfying answer. My further attempts to break through the friendly PR wall, to get a glimps of what’s in LOTRO’s future are expertly blocked. “We just have to be very careful with what we say,” says Mersky. “Before you know it, people think we ‘promised’ a new feature that might not be feasible.” At least Turbine isn’t suffering from ‘Peter Molyneux syndrome’.

Campbell is then quick to point out that the new book update will bring much more to players. The Spring Festival will be expanded to include gardening (“No this is not confirmation that Gardening is the new hobby.”) and new recipes are added for high level crafters. But players have come to expect theses things from the game. Turbine raised the bar on what subscribers can expect from free updates. And the fact they are continuing to support the game in this manner shows how determined they are to keep their subscribers entertained.