Final Fantasy XIIIcertainly looks like a Japanese RPG, but according to Square-Enix, the game is NOT a Japanese RPG, despite being an RPG that is developed for and by Japanese people in Japan.
Game producerYoshinori Kitase does not view his game as conforming to Eastern or Western standards,preferring to seetheXIIIas a true genre-straddler. I won’t be the one to break it to him that if a game looks, feels and plays like a JRPG, it’sprobablya JRPG.
“There’s a trend these days to strictly categorize games as western RPGs or Japanese RPGs, butFinal Fantasyis something that we don’t try to categorize as either/or,” he explains.“For us, the game straddles genre.”
There is a good reason WHY we have the Western and Eastern clarifications for RPGs, because there is averyclear divide betweenFinal Fantasygames andElder Scrollsgames. Whether Kitase wants to admit it or not, JRPGs and Western RPGs are very different beasts, and I’ll be damn shocked ifFinal Fantasy XIIImanages to blend elements of both styles into one game. At least in a way that won’t totally ruin the experience and turn it into a mess.
XIIIso far looks like a JRPG through and through, and I really hope Square Enix isn’t going to piss on its own winning formula because it wants to be pretentious and “innovative.” The worst thing that could happen is forXIIIto try and be everything all at once, to the point where it doesn’t even know what it is anymore. It’s worked with the PSP enough to know how badly that can go wrong.
