Those of you currently playing and enjoying Final Fantasy XIII may have realized the game’s lack of towns in comparison to previous games in the franchise. This is because Square Enix has just begun developing for current generation systems and creating towns using the visuals seen in Final Fantasy XIII would take a long time, stalling development further.

“In the Final Fantasys on previous non-high definition consoles,” Final Fantasy XIII director Motomu Toriyama told GamaSutra, “we were able to kind of take everyone’s ideas and include them in the games — I call it a bento box system, where you have all of the different little things in there. So we had minigames or towns were you were able to talk to all of the townspeople. But with the HD console you’re not really able to do that because it takes so long to develop.”

However, hope doesn’t seem lost for the next Final Fantasy to include towns.

“Now that we have that base technology… The next time you see a Final Fantasy, we might be able to pack in more of those elements that existed in the past. And I also think that a game doesn’t need to have all of those items in the future. We can create additional downloadable content for people to add, too. It doesn’t have to come with that game itself.”

Can we expect towns in Final Fantasy Versus XIII? Let’s hope so.