Artifacts

December 3, 2008 - Famitsu has delivered pretty much every scoop when it comes to Dissidia Final Fantasy, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to learn that, just two week's before the Game's release, the latest issue of the magazine is packed with an amazing 11 pages of coverage, complete with four pages of staff commentary.



There are a number of new details on the game in the magazine, but much of the attention is on the most recent character announcement, FFXI's Shantotto. This character, according to senior director Arakawa Takeshi, is different from the other characters in that his story isn't about a face-off surrounding Chaos. While not getting too specific, Takeshi explained that the Shantotto story is more closely related to the FFXI world.



During battle, Shantotto makes use of a variety of magics, including Bind to keep enemies from moving. In EX Mode, Shantotto changes clothes and makes use of powerful magics in combination. Shantotto's EX Burst move lets you select string together spells like Quake, Freeze, and Flair.



At least one more character may be on the way. In the staff commentary section, Tetsuya Nomura said that players should look forward to something related to FFXII.



There won't be anything from Final Fantasy XIII, though. Explained Nomura, the idea was put forth regarding putting an FFXIII character in the game, but concerns over solidifying the character's image and skills in players' minds and thus affecting the main FFXIII game killed it.



Regarding other characters, the magazine offers a number of interesting bits, including details on the Another Forms for Cloud and Sephiroth. Another Forms are special forms for the characters that you unlock by saving up points from battle. Cloud changes into his Advent Children clothing for his Another Form. Sephiroth takes off his shirt. His bare chest is something that FFVII players will remember from the final battle in the original.



On the note of Sephiroth, the staff revealed that psp game there was originally an idea of making the FFVII villain's EX Mode be his final form from the original. Unfortunately, the psp had insufficient memory, and the staff did not want do something like displaying the character in a smaller form.



Event scenes involving all these characters could be one of the biggest draws for Dissidia. The game has a variety of famous lines recorded for each character. Included are special lines for when facing two particular characters off against one another.



Character details aside, the magazine managed to get first word on even more new features for the game. This should be a bit hard to believe considering how much has already been revealed so far.



Square Enix appears to be trying to build up somewhat of a community with Dissidia, as evidenced by the new "artifact" system. Artifacts are items that have a special "artifact" icon next to them. You'll occasionally get this when battling human opponents. You're free to rename these particular items and can view the history detailing how they got into your hands. You'll be able to see who inherited the item from who, and who changed its name along the way.



While this system was originally envisioned, like the rest of the game, for small groups of friends who get together for ad-hoc play sessions, main programmer Ryuji Ikeda said he's looking forward to seeing what happens when players use the Ad-Hoc Party service to reach distant opponents through their PS3s.



Also likely to be big for those with friends is the game's replay feature. Players can not only save their replay data, but they can use internal tools to edit the data. Arakawa suggested that some players may be able to recreate their favorite Final Fantasy scenes. Nomura said that Square Enix is considering having contests surrounding the replays.



When they're not attempting to recreate the big psp game Cloud versus Sephiroth battle scene from Advent Children, FF fanatics will likely be in Dissidia's "Museum" mode. This mode lets you view all the movies from the game, see profiles of the characters, and view your play history. The character profiles are split into "main characters" and "summons" sections and offer details about when the character or beast appeared. Players can also access a 3D model viewer (presumably for Dissidia model data).



The Museum Mode also includes a chart showing all the icons that can be set on your friend cards -- cards that you exchange when playing live opponents. The icons include classic FF sprites, which should make series fans get a bit nostalgic.



If all that isn't enough to make you wonder how Square Enix is fitting Dissidia on one UMD, here's something that should do the trick. Famitsu also reveals that Dissidia has a "Command Battle" mode of play. Here, the normal Action-based battle system is replaced with a menu system, allowing players who aren't so hot on action games to still engage in combat. The menu selections seem to match up with the main battle system, with "Fight" resulting in a Brave Attack, and "Super" ("Hissatsu" in Japanese) resulting in an HP Attack. When you select a command, your character continues to perform it. You can press L or R to flee when your opponent attacks.



It's possible to clear the main story mode using command-based play, said Ikeda. He also revealed that players can engage in battles with one player using menus and the other using the standard action system.



As a sided note, Famitsu also provided a blurb with specifics on what all those installation numbers from our last update mean. You'll recall that Dissidia lets you perform a Memory Stick install. Depending on available memory, you can chose an installation of 245, 373 or 528 megabytes. The latter two correspond to, respectively, installing the battle and story data, and installing the full game. The 245 megabyte install, said main programmer Ikeda is for having "smooth battles." We're not exactly sure what this means.



When doing a Memory Stick install, the game displays a Final Fantasy V theme of some form. This, admitted Takeshi, is because FFV is his favorite of the FF games. Players can press L and R during the installation sequence to make the game play back Chocobo and Moogle shouts.



There's just two more weeks to go until psp game Dissidia's December 18 Japanese release. That means at least one more Famitsu, likely loaded with even more new features.



Japanese audiences can also look forward to a December 15 episode of Game Center CX, a Japanese video game television show (it's been converted into a DS game, in case you feel that you might have heard the name somewhere). According to Famitsu, this episode will feature a five minute clip of Dissidia complete with a surprise at the end. Since most of our readers probably don't get Game Center CX, we'll be sure and let you know what's shown.

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