Want to know about the guy who produced the game you're going to lose 60 hours of your life to? Head on over to Eurogamer, where they've got an interview with Akitoshi Kawazu, whose last FF game was FF II on the NES. He explains the change to the battle system:

The design concept of the game was to have the player very much be exploring and walking around the world itself," Kawazu explains. "The decision to move to a system where the monsters were also already present in the world, in the same way that NPCs and towns were, and then the player would walk around among them in a similar fashion, made the switch to a real-time system a very natural one.

In addition, instead of the sphere grid in FFX, they have a system that's more "do whatever you want" in terms of what characters can specialize in.

Speaking of localisation, there's a strong feeling throughout the game that Final Fantasy XII marks a return to an almost European martial theme; one which, perhaps, will be more accessible to many gamers in the West than the Gaia-philosophy of previous games. Is this a conscious decision, given the growing success of the series in the West? Does Square Enix now take care to make games for the world, rather than just for Japan?

Our only question is does FFXII have one or two female characters "endowed" enough to be featured in various cosplay and ecchi magazines? Jason Chen

This Great Fantasy [Eurogamer]

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