FFXIII producer says FF franchise 'straddles genre,' not just a JRPG
Yoshinori Kitase, producer of Final Fantasy XIII, is getting older. Running into his 40s and still at the helm of one of Japan's biggest franchises, the man has been employed by Square Enix for 19 years now. In his time, he's headed up production of classics from Chrono Trigger to Final Fantasy VII to Kingdom Hearts. And you'd think, after all those games and all that time, the man wouldn't react bitterly if the newest entry in the FF series were characterized as a JRPG ... and you'd be wrong.
"There's a trend these days to strictly categorize games as western RPGs or Japanese RPGs, but Final Fantasy is something that we don't try to categorize as either/or," Kitase told Edge Magazine. Forgive us if we're mistaken here, but we were quite under the impression that the FF franchise more or less defined what a JRPG is. Continuing, he says, "For us, the game straddles genre." We're not sure what game he's playing, but early reports of the recently released FFXIII demo in Japan lead us to believe turn-based battles and spiky-haired androgynous characters are still par for the course. Guess we'll have to find out for ourselves when the game releases in North America sometime next year.
