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Final Fantasy 15 E3 gameplay shows a high level Noctis

Describing Final Fantasy 15's combat, director Tetsuya Nomura has confirmed that players won't have access to all the skills and abilities Noctis uses in gameplay footage released at E3.

The news comes from a new interview in this week's Famitsu, as translated by Gematsu and distinct from an online interview from earlier in the week.

"Noctis’ level in the E3 2013 trailer is quite high, so he is able to use many weapons and warp freely. Players won’t be able to use all of those skills from the beginning of the game," Nomura said.

The director said the basis of the new combat system is that of Kingdom Hearts, and that it's designed to be intuitive. In battle, companions will participate in co-operative attacks and also take action on their own.

Combat has an emphasis on speed, with players in control at all times, which may be difficult for spectators to understand, Nomura added.

There's a mention of 'free-running towards monsters outside the map', which may mean an encounter system similar to Final Fantasy 12 and Final Fantasy 13's, which allow you to avoid random encounters. On the subject of monsters, you'll be able to ride on some, and in battle, target certain parts of their body.

Nomura said battles will be varied and there will be some "flashy" encounters like the Leviathan battle in the E3 trailer, where the player navigates collapsing buildings.

Nomura also chatted a bit about the game's engine; it's a mix of the original engine build for the project, pieces of Square's next-gen Luminous engine; and middleware. Nomura said there are plans to "integrate it into Luminous Studio", which may mean the whole game will be converted to Square's in-house tech.

Both Nomura's development team and the Luminous development team are working on the game and the engine simultaneously, he said. Luminous's camera system is being optimised for Final Fantasy 15.

All this means Final Fantasy requires quite high spec hardware to run, hence the switch to next-generation console; a PC port isn't on the cards right now, Nomura said, but may be considered if demand is high enough. PC gaming in Japan tends to be a fairly low-spec affair.

As for staff on the project, Hajime Tabata is co-director, and Visual Works' Takeshi Nozue is visual director; the latter is bringing the production quality of tech demo Agni's Philosophy to the table.

Yoko Shimomura is the composer and Shinji Hashimoto is serving as producer.

The interview also gave a few more details on the first five characters to be revealed, which we covered last week. Hit the link above for some snippets of new information.

Final Fantasy 15 is headed to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2014.

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Brenna Hillier

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Based in Australia and having come from a lengthy career in the Aussie games media, Brenna worked as VG247's remote Deputy Editor for several years, covering news and events from the other side of the planet to the rest of the team. After leaving VG247, Brenna retired from games media and crossed over to development, working as a writer on several video games.

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