Story Has Darker Tone, Surrealism A Natural Fit

Speaking in an interview with Famitsu, art director Isamu Kamikokuryo described Final Fantasy XIII-2 as having a darker setting, noting that with that in mind, the team set out to create a surrealistic world. "The concept we used was surrealism," said Kamikokuryo. "My impression of the storyline was that it's very serious; I felt surrealism would suit it well."

Square Enix showcased quite a bit of the game at this year's E3, however, naught was shown of the original area shown in the first teaser trailer, where Lightning and the mysterious long-haired individual were fighting. Kamikokuryo explained that the setting is an area in the game that players will see, but avoided saying anything more other than it's "connected to the core of the storyline."

Kamikokuryo added the concept of "afterlife" will be explored much more in XIII-2 than any previous Final Fantasy. In fact, it's one of the game's settings. He goes on to say that while most of the game is set on Gran Pulse, there will be areas that have been developed quite far along since the crystallization of Cocoon.

One of the few regrets that the art director expressed concerning FFXIII was that some locations were not as fleshed out as he would've liked. With FFXIII-2, he's giving the team plenty of freedom to develop new areas, secrets and shortcuts: "we drew maps while making locations, and the supervisors would have to adapt through a process of trial and error. It was a lot of fun."

Finally, Kamikokuryo went on to explain Lightning's new armour. Since she's not exactly in the same reality, which is essentially a world created by the fal'Cie, he wanted the design to reflect that. As such, it was designed with a bit of an ephemeral flare, as though it were not crafted by human hands, but by the fal'Cie themselves.

As announced previously, Noel will not be the only new main character. Familiar faces will also return and Kamikokuryo is looking forward to showing how "some characters from before have grown," describing it as "a truly emotional production."

As for the image above, Noel and Serah will be coming across new enemies that are from neither Cocoon or Pulse. These enemies, like Atlas in the E3 demo, supposedly invade their reality through rifts in space and time.