It's a simple matter to peg this year's E3 announcement that Final Fantasy XIII would cross the platform boundary onto Xbox 360 as the moment when Square Enix's long-running franchise blew the doors off fans' expectations.
But the teams behind Final Fantasy have been quietly and subtly evolving their formula for the past few years, broadening traditional mechanics Final Fantasy XII, and in Crisis Core and Revenant Wings, the developer explored the art of the spin-off, a strategy it plans to continue with Final Fantasy XIII.
Speaking to Gamasutra recently, Square Enix producer Yoshinori Kitase explained, "Final Fantasy XIII, the series -- which includes XIII and Versus XIII, and also Agito XIII -- they are all based upon the same legend and mythology of a crystal, and the different directors have interpreted that in their own way, and created their own freely-interpreted games about that myth.
