Final Fantasy XIII Image Blowout

[agbulls]

Finally, a good amount of plot info and images from FF XIII have come out through Famitsu.

I want to note that I'm not trying to "pimp" my site with this link (seriously!). But, we are the only place I'm aware of that is hosting the new images in their native resolution. So, take a look:

http://www.chicagogamersclub.com/2008/01/final-fantasy-xiii-information-blowout.html

Talk about gorgeous. Oh, and if you guys wouldn't mind -- cause we'd appreciate it -- please Digg the story. Almost no one is aware of these images yet, and we're hoping to help get the word out.

[DJ Daishi]

damn, FFXIII looks better than the in-game killzone footage...do these screen shots come with a trailer?

....is it just me or does some of the pics look as if they were painted on canvas?

[agbulls]

damn, FFXIII looks better than the in-game killzone footage...do these screen shots come with a trailer?

....is it just me or does some of the pics look as if they were painted on canvas?

No, no trailer just yet. but, I can promise you we'll have it the moment it arrives. And yes...all of those are 100% definitely in-game shots.

[debian4life]

Looks fabulous! But I still need to finish X-2, XII, and IX. Hopefully by the time I get them done the price of the game and PS3 will have dropped remarkably!

Regards,

Brian

[Snapple]

I think Square is going to rethink their exclusivity and bring FF13 out for the 360 as well.

The pics look sexy. We'll have to see how faithful they are when the game's out. Shiva gives new meaning to the phrase "crotch rocket."

[DJ Daishi]

I think Square is going to rethink their exclusivity and bring FF13 out for the 360 as well.

The pics look sexy. We'll have to see how faithful they are when the game's out. Shiva gives new meaning to the phrase "crotch rocket."

I'm a huge fan of the 360 and all, but I highly doubt you can get those kind of visuals outta the green box

[Berserker]

And yes...all of those are 100% definitely in-game shots.

Is there any way to verify this? Or are we just supposed to take your word for it?

Many of these seem highly suspect, and the images themselves are way too small to be able to make any kind of accurate assessment. They're also scans out of a magazine, which doesn't help.

[agbulls]

the pictures are from famitsu. If you don't believe me, go find a copy of the newest issue.

[kainemaxwell]

Wow are those pics smexy.

[Berserker]

the pictures are from famitsu. If you don't believe me, go find a copy of the newest issue.

And I was never calling that into question.

If you're going to throw out a statement like "all of those are definitely 100% in-game shots", you should be prepared to cite some sources to back that up. Responding that the pictures themselves come from Famitsu doesn't accomplish anything except to perhaps 100% dodge the real question. If you honestly don't know, then just say you honestly don't know and that's fine. It doesn't invalidate your article posting of these magazine scans.

I'm also wondering how exactly you determined what the "native resolution" is for magazine scans, but I'll let that one slide.

[Overbite]

Hahahah "Mr. 32cm" is the worst name ever, even if it's a nickname. It just sounds so wrong.

The ladies call me...Mr. 32cm.

[agbulls]

And I was never calling that into question.

If you're going to throw out a statement like "all of those are definitely 100% in-game shots", you should be prepared to cite some sources to back that up. Responding that the pictures themselves come from Famitsu doesn't accomplish anything except to perhaps 100% dodge the real question. If you honestly don't know, then just say you honestly don't know and that's fine. It doesn't invalidate your article posting of these magazine scans.

I'm also wondering how exactly you determined what the "native resolution" is for magazine scans, but I'll let that one slide.

Why the hostility? I think you must be one of the first truly angry people ive met on DP. Regardless, if you learned to read Japanese, you'd see that Famitsu CLAIMS they are in-game. Did I do the interview? No. I'm just posting pictures, that's it!

I'm not dodging anything. You asked where they were from, and I said Famitsu. I never claimed they were 1024x768 or any specific resolution either. If you really doubt the validity of the images, then that's fine.

My recommendation? Calm the beef min.

[Dreamc@sting]

Ughh so far away, the game looks breathtaking, I was reading online that the overall look was trying to be close to how the animation in Advent Children was...which in itself is amazing...can't wait for these games..

[neuropolitique]

Highly doubt those are game engine shots. Movies from the game, no doubt.

[Dreamc@sting]

Highly doubt those are game engine shots. Movies from the game, no doubt.

So far all the words from Square-Enix are that all the shown stuff is in game - at least from what I've read on IGN, 1up and a few other sites

[Overbite]

everyone says that

[Berserker]

Why the hostility? I think you must be one of the first truly angry people ive met on DP. Regardless, if you learned to read Japanese, you'd see that Famitsu CLAIMS they are in-game. Did I do the interview? No. I'm just posting pictures, that's it!

I'm not dodging anything. You asked where they were from, and I said Famitsu. I never claimed they were 1024x768 or any specific resolution either. If you really doubt the validity of the images, then that's fine.

My recommendation? Calm the beef min.

Nah, I wasn't angry at all man. I guess there must've been some kind of miscommunication -- I wasn't calling into question whether or not the pics themselves came from Famitsu, what I was calling into question was whether or not those are actual, in-game shots. It seemed like you were dodging the question, so that might be the reason there was some hostility detected in my second post, but it looks like it was basically just a misunderstanding. Apologies for coming off like a dick.

My criticism actually wasn't directed towards you, or your article, or Famitsu at all, but rather at Square-Enix/Sony. They seem to have a pretty bad track record for posting these kinds of images that aren't representative of the actual in-game engine graphics (just think of actual gameplay if this seems confusing), but more usually some kind of prerendered movie/cutscene. EA I think it was has also been found to have photoshopped (http://www.joystiq.com/2007/08/15/ea-shows-clearest-bullshot-in-a-long-time/) screenshots, if you can believe that!

Of course, movie cutscenes could technically be considered "in-game", if they play when you run the game, but I think that's a patently dishonest way to misrepresent information. I also think it's a trick pulled far too often and with hardly anyone bothering to call foul. Journalists just go along with it and then people shell out their hard-earned cash thinking they're going to play what looks like a movie.

I think that anything that brings us new images and bits of info is awesome, so I applaud you for sharing those with us here. I also think though that it's helpful to be more objective, to operate only on what we for sure know or don't know, and avoid feeding into the Almighty Hype-Machine.

It's not a conflict of interests for a journalist to be critical of the subjects they're covering, in fact that's exactly what they should be doing. That's all I'm arguing for here.

[ProgrammingAce]

My bet is on target renders. It's what they're aiming for in development.

If the engine were already able to pump out graphics like that, then the game wouldn't be a year+ away.

Ask killzone 2 and Madden 06 how target renders pan out...

EDIT:
hehe, case in point:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2005/20050912h.jpg

[agbulls]

agreed agreed on all points above. all journalists should questions their content providers -- we're giant proponents of that. You are likely right, and they could easily be bullshots. Yet, regardless, they are still new images and story from FFXIII. So, I hope you guys thought they were cool too.

I think we might want to consider making a Bullshot thread. I would absolutely love to see every doctored picture in one fell swoop. Probably tough to track em down though, no?

[Berserker]

agreed agreed on all points above. all journalists should questions their content providers -- we're giant proponents of that. You are likely right, and they could easily be bullshots. Yet, regardless, they are still new images and story from FFXIII. So, I hope you guys thought they were cool too.

I think we might want to consider making a Bullshot thread. I would absolutely love to see every doctored picture in one fell swoop. Probably tough to track em down though, no?

I thought it was great that you broke the shots first and decided to share them with us here, and I really appreciated it. Sucks that that sentiment was lost in my other posts in here.

And right-on about the difficulty in calling Bullshots. I think the difficulty lies mainly in that a lot of them I don't think are straight-up photoshops, or doctored as you say. They're just misrepresentative. They're not from the actual GAME engine itself that you play the game with, but rather just from some movie or something someone put together frame-by-frame elsewhere, and later inserted as a movie cutscene.

Usually the only good indicator of that is when something looks TOO good, which is an unfortunate qualifier, because we WANT games to look as good as they can. For me here the thing that set it off for the FFXIII shots was mostly the fire from Ifrit, and the splashing ice/water from Shiva. To my knowledge we can't pull those things off believably in real-time yet, in a game engine for example. They have to be prerendered, frame-by-frame in a rendering farm somewhere. So there are things you can look for.

But again, thanks for sharing these with us agbulls. If you hadn't, we wouldn't even have had this opportunity in the first place! Or perhaps just way later, reading about it somewhere else. So thanks man.

[slip81]

looks great, but I got tired of the FF games right around the time they became interactive movies *cough* FFX *cough*

[roushimsx]

Ask killzone 2 and Madden 06 how target renders pan out...


To be fair, Guerrilla was able to actually hit those target renders...which I think is a pretty impressive feat. That and the only ones officially claiming those those original target renders were "in game" were the sony PR shills at e3 (even when members of the dev team were saying, "ya, those aren't in game").

Hopefully FF XIII pans out well. Too bad it'll be years before I ever get around to playing it (I still have FFX, X-2, and XII sitting here unplayed, not to mention the small mountain of other games in the queue).

Thanks to the OP for hosting quality, decent sized scans. Nothing irks me quite like someone shooting crappy digicam shots of magazine pages and posting them as "scans".