As promised, FINAL FANTASY Versus XIII was featured in this week’s Famitsu. The magazine caught up with director Tetsuya Nomura for a brief look at Square-Enix’s most mysterious title.

FINAL FANTASY Versus XIII was not at E3, but of course, it is “under intense development right now,” according to Nomura. “I’d like a chance to show everyone that development is coming along, but we have games like FINAL FANTASY Type-0 and FINAL FANTASY XIII-2 that will be released first, and the company’s also telling me to keep project details secret for now. As a result, I apologize, but there won’t be any new screenshots or other media released to the public for a little while,” he says. Most of the information shared this time focused on cutscenes.

In Versus, there exists both pre-rendered and real-time cutscenes. This is typical of most games, however, the real time events will be controllable by the player in this case. Nomura says the reason for this is, he wanted to keep the gameplay going. He claims that the scenes will feature more natural expressions, unlike the more game-centric ones from previous titles. A new system will be present as well, and is something Nomura feels has never been done before to his knowledge, but will remain secret for now. He says that the scenes will feel more like a FPS than a RPG, in that the flow of the game will remain uninterrupted.

Regarding the character models, the team has spent a lot of effort to minimize the difference between the low and high quality versions. Because of this, both versions of the models are largely the same, except the hair quality is a lot better in the higher quality ones. This allows for a much more unified look when it comes to cutscene and gameplay transitions.

Combat in Versus XIII will be dynamic, complete with changing situations to keep gameplay interesting.

Nomura had three screenshots on-hand to show to the Famitsu editors. Unfortunately, these are top secret and will not be shown to the public at this time.

The first screenshot featured an Italian city we’ve seen in some of the early trailers, complete with beige walls and a glass arcade. Noctis is seen looking up at a behemoth, ready to attack it. The Famitsu editors made comment that they couldn’t believe that this scene was in real time. The other two shots, show Noctis on the side of a highway in the afternoon, and the other in the same location in the evening to show off the game’s day/night cycle. The signs on the road read ‘Meguro’ which is an area in real life Tokyo.

The inclusion of Takeshi Nozue of Advent Children fame, and his knowledge of pre-rendering, has also improved the lighting technology for the game’s real time scenes. Even areas that have been shown in the past, have since been upgraded to the new lighting engine, to which Nomura says we will also have to wait to see.

Nomura revealed an interesting feature that will be present in FINAL FANTASY Versus XIII: the ability to take photos. Noctis will have his own smartphone, and will have the ability to take pictures anywhere he, or rather you the user, wants to.

As for the game’s development status, Nomura says that because there are so many new challenges, development remains focused on the core staff members, however preparations to enter mass production are proceeding.

Voice recording is also gradually being done. There are several scenes with the four male characters (Noctis, Ignis, Gladiolus, and Prompto) all talking to each other at once in a natural conversation, with voices overlapping. These sessions are recorded with all the actors in the room simultaneously, rather than on a single person basis typical to most other games.

As for the next time we will learn about FINAL FANTASY Versus XIII, Nomura says that the date has been set, but he declined to say when exactly that was. He apologizes for the extremely long wait that fans have had to endure, promising that the next update will come with some substantial information.