What better way to “officially” start the week off than a dose of Community Speak, a spotlight article piece that shines light on articles written from people in the community.  This one was written by the United Kingdom’s own, Nanakai.

Final Fantasy XIII gets a sequel

It’s not every day that a main series Final Fantasy title gets a direct sequel.  But this morning, it was announced that the 13^th instalment of the renowned JRPG series, is getting just that!   The big news came at the premiere event of the Square Enix 1^st  Production Department (the division responsible for the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts series), held at 6pm in Tokyo today.

Titled Final Fantasy XIII-2, the game is set for release in 2011.  It is of course being released on PS3 & 360, but more importantly it’s being simultaneously developed for both platforms.  This means it’s not a port of a PS3 game like XIII was and therefore should reduce the mass internet bashing of a 360 version being inferior.

Not much is known about the game, but it does still appear to centre on Lightning, the main protagonist from the first title.  A new male character was also shown locked in a sword battle with Lightning.  I expect many details to start filtering out over the next few months.

We don’t yet have a Western release date, but if XIII is anything to go by, we should have XIII-2 by Q1 2012 at the latest.  We may even get it at the same time, as was originally planned with the first game.  An official Western announcement and release date will probably be announced at the next major gaming event which will more than likely be E3 unless Square Enix makes an appearance at PAX East.  Until then, we can look forward to an official HD trailer on the 20^th January!  In the meantime, you can get a look at the official Western site here.

For those of you yet to play XIII, I urge you to go out and buy it.  If you can get the game for $20 or less, I’d consider that a good bargain.  While it won’t be required to play XIII-2, I think it will vastly improve the experience – the story and characters will be directly related afterall.  Even if you don’t like XIII, I suggest sticking with it.  According to the developers, they’ve listened to feedback from fans to improve upon in the sequel.  So your issues are probably going to be resolved in XIII-2, a game which will definitely be worth playing.  .

Personally, I didn’t have any major problems with XIII.  It was a great JRPG, and I’ll be looking forward to nothing more than its sequel in 2011.