I love the fact that the Entertainment Software Association gets together every year to organize and fund what really amounts to a giant, industry-wide case of blue balls. Take, for example, this footage of Final Fantasy XIII for the Xbox 360, captured yesterday during Microsoft's press conference. Without getting into any PlayStation 3 vs. Xbox 360 shenanigans, it looks awesome. But that doesn't change the fact that I'll have to wait at least a year to actually play the damned thing: as Colette announced yesterday, FFXIII will hit North America in the spring of next year. 

Anyway, the new footage (below the jump) shows off Lightning and Sazh Katzroy's English voice acting and it sounds pretty good to me. More importantly, Square Enix seemed to have tinkered with Lightning and Sazh's abilities to show off some fireworks -- even though this is the first big battle of the game, Lightning has access to summon magic and has four Active Time gauges, showing off FFXIII's chaining mechanic. If it's half as good as Final Fantasy X-2's chaining battles were, then we're in for a treat.

The E3 footage also sheds some light on how summoning will work. In the video, Lightning summons Odin, who replaces Sazh in the party line-up. Then, the battle continues as usual, except that you now have a giant f*cking mechanized hell paladin on your team instead of a guy with a baby Chocobo hidden in his afro.

Wait. Actually, having a baby Chocobo live in your afro is pretty cool.