While Final Fantasy XIII is most assuredly a current generation game from all we’ve seen development on it started before the PS3 (or the 360) were around. In two new books that Square Enix has published they’re showing off a lot of the early work on the game and that work was all done on the PS2 with assets from previous Final Fantasy games.
You can check out the screens and artwork below. I know the cartoonish look on some of the characters is simply because it was easier to do while they were designing the kinks of the gameplay, but it does look pretty sweet. I think Zelda proved that a major shift in art style for a game series welcomes nothing but anger and derision no matter how good the game is, but this different look does make you wonder how different FF could be. It’s cool to get a peek at how long this game has actually been in development and what the early plans were.
Final Fantasy XIII’s Early Beginnings [Gamesugar]
