New FFXIII Character Information

The latest issue of Japan’s Famitsu magazine has published a boatload of juicy character tidbits on Square’s hotly anticipated Final Fantasy XIII for your consumption. The publication details primarily on new girl Serah Farron, who regular visitors to PSU should recognise from last week’s V-Jump scans as Lightning’s younger sibling and fiancée to another major character, Snow.

While unable to dive in to greater detail on the design process behind Farron, FFXIII’s lead character designer, Tetsuya Nomura, revealed that the team wanted to match her silhouette to that of Lightning’s, and thus the decision was made to give Farron a ‘wavy’ hairstyle.

Touching on the character of Hope, Nomura commented that the game’s director, Motomu Toriyama, had a hand in making the character a blonde after initially suggesting the main protagonist would sport that colour hairstyle. Apparently, the team thought that Hope would be better suited as a blonde out of all party members, so Lightning ultimately sported a pink/blonde combo.

Shifting the spotlight back to Serah Farron, Toriyama and producer Yoshinori Kitase let slip that the wide-eyed beauty was the first Pulse l’Cie in Cocoon, which later lead to a series of incidents taking place, though the due wouldn’t go into any further details on the matter. They did reveal, however, that Farron gets on particularly well with Vanille; mainly due to the fact they are around the same age. Toriyama-san also spoke a little on the recent Premiere Party trailer for the game, saying that the fireworks display at the beginning takes place in Serah’s home town, where Snow and the rest of the Nora rabble lay low and manage a beach house when they’re not scrapping with the government.

Elsewhere, the pair moved on to discuss various gameplay elements, specifically some of the weapons that the characters can wield in battle. Vanille sports a fishing rod for example, while Snow, bizarrely, can utilize his Nora-manufactured coat by equipping it with various patches, endowing it with special powers.

Finally, it was also confirmed that FFXIII boasts wind parameters that will directly effect the game’s environment, including, rather humorously, Sazh’s immense afro. Final Fantasy XIII is due out in Japan on December 17, with a western release schedule for spring 2010.