Square Enix gives Final Fantasy fans a taste of the new content that will come with the Final Fantasy 10/10-2 HD Remake, and new details have emerged about a cancelled spinoff of Final Fantasy 12, all in today's Final Fantasy roundup.
It was announced earlier in the year that Final Fantasy 10/10-2 would be receiving a new ending, and now Square Enix has released some samples of the English language version of the audio episode, which can be found below. The audio seems to hint that the new ending will be a bit happier than the original end of the games, but these samples are only very brief previews of the whole 30 minute drama. The HD remake of Final Fantasy 10 and 10-2 will feature the previously exclusive content found in the international release of the game, as well as improved visuals and a rearranged soundtrack that will be remastered for high-performance audio. The audio samples, as well as new screenshots showing off the remastered visuals of the game, can be viewed on the Square Enix European Blog.
New details have also come out about Fortress, the open world spinoff to Final Fantasy 12. The game, which was being developed by Grin, the studio behind the Bionic Commando reboot, and the team there managed to put together quite of bit of concepts and artwork for the game before it was eventually cancelled and the studio went bankrupt. Now, a NeoGAF user has put together an impressive gallery of artwork and other goodies from Fortress, which would of had players facing off against huge numbers of "Viking-like" enemies at once. Familiar characters such as Ashe, Basch and Larsa would have returned to the series, and there character models can be seen in the collection.
It appears that the game was handled poorly, both by Grin and Square Enix, so much so that concept artist Tony Holmsten revealed in the NeoGAF gallery that the team working on the concept art did not know they were working on a Final Fantasy game until late in the game's development, months before the studio went bankrupt:
"The only thing I can say to us concept artists' defense is that we didn't even know what game/brand it was until the very last two months or something before Grin went bankrupt (I have no idea what Grin's decision behind this was). So we had been working several months without any proper art direction just doing something 'fantasy-ish'. And in the end they finally told us what we were doing, and said 'Now we have to remake everything, and make it look more like... ' It was a complete disaster, a shame, it could have been good."
Look out for more Final Fantasy news as Square Enix prepares for Gamescom.