Final Fantasy XIII, The PS2 Version That Never Was

Final Fantasy XIII will be hitting us state side March 9th on the PS3 and 360, but the next gen title was first developed on the PS2 console before ultimately changing platforms. In an interview found inside the Final Fantasy XIII World Preview guide book, the game’s director, Motomu Toriyama, and producer, Yoshinori Kitase, share information on just how far the development went before being scrapped.

They say development began on the PS2 back in 2004, and stopped at the start of 2005 to develop the speculation driving Final Fantasy VII PS3 Tech Demo shown at E3 in 2005.

With about a years worth of work put into Final Fantasy XIII on the PS2,  the team made the call to end its production and start from scratch on the new PS3 console. Toriyama explained:

“In the end, we had to throw away everything that was for use with the PS2 era, and restart anew,”

The “Hanged Edge” setting shown in the Final Fantasy XIII demo, which shipped with the Japanese release of the Advent Children Blu-ray, was developed first on the PS2 with Yuna from FFX2 as a placeholder character for environment interaction test purposes. There’s no telling what it looked like though as they explained that the Hanged Edge we see on the PS3 version is much different than that of the PS2.

Those still holding on to the console of years past shouldn’t completely give up hope on a Final Fantasy port coming their way, I hear the Sega Master System Versus title is alive and kicking!

[Thanks Andriasang]