The HD remaster of Final Fantasy XII will come with a fast forward feature, letting players blaze through all those random battles and giant maps at twice or even quadruple speed.




“One feedback we got from fans who played the original Final Fantasy XII was how vast the fields are,” said Final Fantasy XII The Zodiac Age director Takashi Katano during an interview at E3 in Los Angeles today. “It took a very long time to get through those fields. So we wanted to make that experience a little more convenient for the user.”

There are actually two different modes. One lets you play at 4x the speed. “It’s probably wise to use that when you’re crossing huge terrains,” Katano said.


The other is 2x normal speed. “That’s useful if you want to get through more enclosed, crowded spaces like cities and dungeons,” Katano said.

There’s also an auto-save feature that will activate every time you switch maps, he added.

These are the type of features that make most old JRPGs better—especially the ones that are heavy on random encounters—and it worked exceptionally well in Bravely Default and its sequel. (Apparently it was also in the International version.) Ivalice will be way more fun to explore when you can speed things up.

I got a few minutes with a demo for FFXII The Zodiac Age yesterday and it certainly feels like Final Fantasy XII—in other words, like a game that was released ten years ago. I felt like the camera was a bit finicky, but that might have just been because I was jumping into it for the first time since 2006. I’ll reserve judgement for the final game (which comes out in 2017 for PS4).