Now that Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII is available in North America and Europe, it marks the end of the Final Fantasy XIII series. However, this may not mark the end of Lightning the character, as the game’s director Motomu Toriyama told Siliconera:
For Lightning, her story ends here in Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII, as this game is meant as a finale to this series. But we know that Lightning is an extremely popular character, even when compared to other Final Fantasy characters.
So there is a possibility that Lightning would appear in other future Final Fantasy titles, not as a protagonist, but as a guest character.
So, while Lightning may return in future Final Fantasy games, what about the mechanics and ideas featured in Lightning Returns? Series Producer Yoshinori Kitase revealed to Digital Spy that the team working on Final Fantasy XV is different to the one who worked on Lightning Returns, so “they’re probably going to be doing something quite different and using completely different systems in their game.”
For Kitase and his team’s next game, “It’s quite difficult to say, really, but no, we’re probably going to be doing something quite a bit different. Maybe some influences somewhere, but I don’t think we’ll be using exactly the same systems and the ideas in the same way.”
The conversation then turned to the PS4 and Xbox One, with Kitase saying, “There are no concrete plans for doing [Lightning Returns on next-gen]. Technically, it would be perfectly possible. It’d probably take about half a year to get all that sorted and get the port done. But at the moment, it’s not on the table.”
As for the Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster possibly coming to the PS4, Kitase replied, “We can’t talk about the future completely, but at the moment, no, there are no real plans for that.”
