Possible teaser websites for two popular Square Enix franchises appear

A few days ago some new teasers from Square Enix went live on the web. Speculations are running wild about then, but it's pretty safe to assume we can be sure of what they are.

Could this be a tease for the finale of the "Lightning saga.

The first being a screen shot on Square Enix's Facebook wall that shows stormy clouds and the words "A Storm Gathers." This could be a possible teaser for "Final Fantasy XIII-3" seeing as we were left with a cliffhanger in "XIII-2." The font is very in tune with the kind of text you'd see in "Final Fantasy XIII."

Square Enix is also holding a conference in Tokyo Sept. 1 in regards to "Final Fantasy's" 25th anniversary and has stated that members of "FF:XIII's" development team will hold a conference about whats next in what it referred to as the Lightning saga (named after the games' protagonist). For more about this, we'll just have to wait until Sept. 1, but that's not too far away.

The other piece of teasing goodness is the new website http://www.square-enix.co.jp/subaseka/, which displays a timer with (at the time of this article post) has roughly three days until zero. Other than the timer, the only things shown are a silhouette of a city skyline line and credits given to Tetsuya Nomura and Gen Kobayashi.

This screen captures the same stylistic feel of "The World Ends With You."

The font on the timer is very similar to "The World Ends With You's" font style, and the buildings in the background are very reminiscent in the style of art used in the game's box art. Tetsuya Nomura and Gen Kobayashi were also the artists on "The World Ends With You," so that can be a huge hint.

The dead give away is when you visit the site background music starts to play.

 The music playing is very similar to the main theme of "TWEWY," "Twister." A trick that people have been talking about is that when you move the date on your computer closer to the date the song changes to a remixed version of "Twister" and "Calling," both of which were in the original "TWEWY" game. At the time of this article being posted the song is "Calling." The date scheduled for the timer to end is Monday, Aug. 27, so check back with us then to see what this turns out to be.

On emotion and graphics in games

2K Games’ Christoff Hartmann stated in an interview with Gamesindustry.biz that photorealism is necessary for video games to be able to compete with movies at reaching audiences on an emotional level.

I completely disagree with this opinion.

Tears were shed over these blocky heroes.

How many players cried over Aeris’s death? How many players were moved by Eli Vance’s death? Why do people pee their pants while playing “Amnesia: The Dark Descent?” Do you remember that pit in your stomach that developed while watching Mario drown in “Super Mario 64?” Hell, I almost cried at the end of “Journey,” and that game is nowhere near photorealistic.

I can't list all the moments in gaming history that have had a great emotional impact on players, but here's a post on Reddit discussing several heart-wrenching moments from from readers' favorite games.

More importantly than the simple fact that humans can insert emotions into and develop emotions for literally anything they can see, video games do not need to compete with movies. They are different. 

Music, movies, books, paintings and video games are all different types of art that do not need to compete with one another. I realize that I’m taking an artistic rather than business stance here, but I do not want to see a future where video games are just films that you have to hold a controller to watch. I recently posted an article relating to this topic on the GCV blog.

Photorealism is certainly the next logical step in the evolution of computer graphics, but it is ridiculous to claim that it's impossible to elicit emotion from players due to current graphical limitations.

You can read the full interview over at Gamesindustry.biz.