Final Fantasy XIII Sneak Peek

Few video game developers are more secretive about their projects than Square Enix. Rumor has it they keep Hironobu Sakaguchi in a cryogenic chamber when summoned.

With that being said, tidbits of information about the upcoming Final Fantasy XIII games are being revealed on the Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Versus XIII websites.

The FFXIII site features screenshots, music, and a few character bios. While the music meets the melodic standards of series composer Nobuo Uematsu, the character bios (in Japanese) do very little to bait your nerdy breath.

A few things are clear however. So far, the male character models are genuinely distinguishable from the female character models. This has been a confusing (mentally and physically) feature of FF titles since the absurdly hot Kuja from Final Fantasy IX hit the scene. A second standout point is that the game looks to be very much in the vein of Final Fantasy X. While the stories have nothing to do with one another, the yellows and blues of settings and characters definitely hearken back to Tidus and company.

The FF Versus site is even skimpier on the details. The site consists of a coming soon type welcome page and that's about it. Versus' main character, who is featured in a large picture on the site, seems to be going for an emo Cloud look. Versus XIII is being developed by Square Enix's Kingdom Hearts team and is slated as being a separate story contained in XIII's universe.

Word on the street is that the FFXIII games (including another title Final Fantasy Agito XIII) will be hitting the PS3 in 2010. To keep you busy in the meantime, start playing through FFXII and you should be able to finish just before XIII's release.