[DarkMaster]

Mmmmmmm....more info.

1UP.com

You've seen Final Fantasy XII before, and you haven't. If you played Final Fantasy Tactics Advance and wondered which "Final Fantasy" it was that the kids in that game were such big fans of, it was FFXII: that world was based on the world Matsuno was already working on for the main series' twelfth installment. So if you want to know a little about the world and its inhabitants, FFTA is a good place to start, though the two games are completely independent.

More CG cutscenes showed off other aspects of the game: large battle scenes, comparable to Helm's Deep from Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, except with the addition of airships. (The main airship in the game is a whopping 340 meters long, by the way, a little over half the length of the Enterprise from Star Trek.) An unnamed character appeared in the CG; the apparent leader of a vast army, she has short-cropped grey hair and is very thin, wearing white armor and a cape. Other characters introduced besides Ashe and Vaan were an unnamed party member who looks something like Hardin from Vagrant Story, as well as Fran, a Viera archer shown in many of the battle scenes.

Currently, Final Fantasy XII is due to be released in Japan in summer 2004. The staff cautioned to "please let us finish the game, we don't want to disappoint you," but given that the game is reportedly already 70% finished, Matsuno was pretty confident that there would be "about six more months until release." After all this, we're pretty excited.