FFXII: Revenant Wings flies to DS

The PlayStation 2 title Final Fantasy XII, released in Japan this past March, has already shipped over 2.4 million units. With numbers like those, it's no surprise that Square is cooking up a follow-up to the latest in the spin-off-happy franchise, as is reported in this week's Weekly Famitsu. What's more, the new game, titled Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, will be released on Japan's current reigning console, the Nintendo DS.

Famitsu revealed the game would focus on the characters Vaan, age 18, and Penelo, age 17. The DS's stylus and touch screen will be utilized, but the article did not reveal how. However, in an extensive interview with Motomu Toriyama, the game's director and scenario writer, and coproducer Eisuke Yokoyama, some tidbits of the game's creation were revealed.

"The reason we chose the DS was that we had many opportunities to see up close people playing it," Toriyama explained. "We planned to target the game at people who haven't touched games until now. The concept we developed was that of making an 'entry level FF' title."

As a result the game will apparently feature revised gameplay. "We removed anything that would look complicated [to a new player], and built the battle system with an eye towards users who were playing the game for the first time."

Although inheriting the FFXII title, Yokoyama downplayed its link to its PS2 predecessor. "It is not accurate to call this a sequel. We want people to view it as the latest FF game. This is not FFXII-2."

This is not the first time the company has made an "entry-level" Final Fantasy game. In 1992 it published Final Fantasy Mystic Quest for the Super Nintendo, a simpler, less complex spin-off of the series.