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''Final Fantasy XIII'', a role-playing game released by Square Enix in 2009, revolves around the struggles of a group of humans over a predestined fate. The game's two sequels, ''Final Fantasy XIII-2'' and ''Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII'', build on the first game's story and mythos. In video game publications and among the staff at Square Enix, the three games have come to be referred to as the "Lightning Saga",〔〔〔 and the core concepts they contain are drawn from the mythos of the ''Fabula Nova Crystallis'' subseries. The visuals of the original characters were designed by Tetsuya Nomura and Nao Ikeda, while many later characters were created by other designers, including Hideo Minaba, Yusuke Naora and Toshiyuki Itahana. Their original stories were created by Motomu Toriyama and written up by Daisuke Watanabe. The series' central characters are Lightning, a former soldier and the core character in all three games; Serah Farron, Lightning's sister and the second game's main protagonist; Snow Villiers, an optimistic young man engaged to Serah; Hope Estheim, a young man who develops a strong bond with Lightning; Sazh Katzroy, a former airship pilot; Oerba Dia Vanille and Oerba Yun Fang, two women who inadvertently set the first game's events in motion. Three further characters appear in ''XIII-2'': Noel Kreiss, a hunter who sets out to change his bleak future; Caius Ballad, a man from Noel's past who wishes to bring about a predestined apocalypse; and Paddra Nsu-Yeul, a seeress reincarnated through history. In ''Lightning Returns'', two more are added: Lumina, a doppelganger of Serah; and Bhunivelze, the main deity of the ''Final Fantasy XIII'' universe. The characters in the games have been the basis of several pieces of merchandise produced by Square Enix, such as statues, action figures, clothing, and jewelry. They have been subject to mostly positive reviews; most observers favorably compared the characters to those in the previous games and praised the voice acting, however some critics have stated that the plotline of the characters have been confusing when introduced. In ''XIII-2'', the shift to new or secondary characters and the change in importance and story role of the previous game's main cast grated with some reviewers, while others applauded the new characters' development and interactions. In ''Lightning Returns'', the characters' stories were often criticized for being underdeveloped, or simply included for the sake of ending their stories. ==Creation and development== The overarching theme of the games was the effects the deities of the core mythos on the human population, especially the fate that was forced upon the main characters.〔 Yuji Abe, a designer on ''Lightning Returns'', defined it as "A battle with destiny", with the burden of destiny growing progressively heavier for the main characters over the course of the games.〔 The setting and story was written around and drawn from the official mythology for the ''Fabula Nova Crystallis'' series, which also includes ''Final Fantasy XV'' and ''Final Fantasy Type-0''. For ''Final Fantasy XIII'' and its sequels, Toriyama created a story focusing on the existing deities within the mythos and their influence on the world.〔〔 Different deities from the mythos were focused on in each installment, such as the goddess Etro in ''XIII-2''.〔 One of the defining features of the cast is the game's central protagonist: Lightning. Toriyama wanted Lightning to be an exceptional female protagonist for the ''Final Fantasy'' series, with her having great strength and combat ability, as opposed to the gentler figures of Aerith from ''Final Fantasy VII'' or Yuna from ''Final Fantasy X''.〔〔〔 Unlike those characters, Lightning's personality was conceived well before her outfit was designed or her voice actresses were cast.〔 How the character was portrayed and how her story and personality was evolved became one of the driving forces of the series.〔 Most of ''Final Fantasy XIII'' For ''XIII-2'', Toriyama wanted a dark and serious tone to the world and story, in contrast to the jovial atmosphere of ''Final Fantasy X-2'', and the story was scripted to play out as "pieces of drama" like a television series.〔〔 Its story and characters were focused around the concepts of mortality and, in Toriyama's words, the "wish for rebirth": the latter theme was directly inspired by the Great East Japan earthquake.〔 Watanabe stayed as one of the game's writers, with writer and novelist Emi Nagashima, better known under her pen name of Jun Eishima, coming on as a story consultant.〔〔 Lightning's outfit for the game was designed by Isamu Kamikokuryo, who worked from a rough outline done by Nomura, who also designed the characters' facial features.〔 Two new character designers were brought in: Hideo Minaba, who contributed to new character outfits such as Hope and Alyssa's,〔〔 and Yusuke Naora, who designed outfits for Serah, Noel and Caius.〔 Lightning and Serah's designs were created to directly reflect the environments they start out from.〔 The character of Noel was added at a later stage in the original planning, since the original plan for Serah to travel alone with the moogle Mog seemed to clash too much with the game's serious nature.〔 For ''Lightning Returns'', the developers decided to have Lightning as the sole protagonist so that players could get to know her better.〔 The story was created to bring closure for the characters of the series.〔 The core themes of the game were the "salvation of souls", and the "rebirth of Lightning", the latter being the main reason the game was not called ''XIII-3''.〔 Norura returned to design Lightning and Snow's new looks〔 and Kamikokuryo returned to design new outfits for Lightning and help with the world design.〔 Two new designers brought in were Toshitaka Matsuda, an artist for ''Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings'',〔 and Toshiyuki Itahana, who had worked on ''Final Fantasy IX'' and the ''Crystal Chronicles'' series. Both designed multiple battle costumes for Lightning, many of them inspired by the artwork of Yoshitaka Amano.〔〔 Itahana and Matsuda also respectively designed Lumina and Bhunivelze.〔〔〔 Watanabe returned as the main scenario writer, while also receiving ideas for scenes from Toriyama and other members of staff. His work on the script was slow, causing problems from the rest of the development team: in response to this, he worked hard to create an appropriate finale. During his work, he had a strong nostalgic feeling while writing the characters' lines.〔 In order to lessen the delay between the local and international releases, the English voice acting for ''XIII'' was done while the game was in development.〔 Unfortunately, it had no infrastructure to support simultaneous development and localization.〔 The lack of deadlines, poor communication and synchronization between the various departments, and continuing changes to the script and to cutscenes led to a turbulent development. One of the most notable knock-on effects was that the game's script needed to be re-translated as the various cutscenes changed, and large parts of the dialogue had to be rerecorded, party because they lacked proper emotional drive at the right moments.〔 For ''XIII-2'', a tool called Moomle, developed by English translator Tom Slattery and his Japanese counterpart Teruaki Sugawara from their experience with the first game, was used to make sure all parts of the localization process were synchronized.〔 For ''Lightning Returns'' the Japanese voice actors recorded their dialogue well after their characters' scenes had been created, as opposed to the normal procedure of recording lines before cutscene creation.〔 For the English version, the amount of dialogue translation and recording was so large that there was over two months' delay between the game's local and international releases.〔 , beings who aid the protagonists after being tamed in battle,〔 are the game's versions of summons. The ones featured in the games are series staples Odin, Shiva, Alexander, and Bahamut, and newcomers Hecatoncheir and Brynhildr.〔 Their summon sequences were designed to be flashy, but also mixed with gameplay: this approach was inspired by comments from players of previous titles who had not wanted to wait as long for the summons to take effect as in previous titles.〔 The Eidolons, which could transform into vehicle-like forms for their masters to ride, were built around the game's theme of "transformation".〔 They were to have been featured in ''XIII-2'' as part of a DLC episode, but the idea was scrapped and the gameplay was folded into one of the title's minigames.〔 For ''Lightning Returns'', although the Eidolons still exist, they were not available in gameplay and merely served as an element of the story.〔 Carried over from the ''Fabula Nova Crystallis'' mythos are the fal'Cie, demigods who work to find a way of bringing their respective deities back into the world.〔〔 The fal'Cie can choose people to become l'Cie, servants given magical powers and a task to complete within a given time, called a Focus.〔 Those who succeed go into crystal stasis,〔 while those that fail become monsters called Cie'th.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Characters of the Final Fantasy XIII series」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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