z-o-g pictures of FF3 & GameSpy interview!

This is what I have been looking for! And I have totally forgot about this great site! (Stupid me)

I WARN everyone, because there will be Miku's cat(Yes, not Rei's) will be seen, and also some cool pictures of the game.

SPOILERS! These not not all of them!




To see more:
Sceen gallery
Costume gallery
Ghsot list galery

Totally, and many cookies thanks to Maskrider!!!

And GameSpy has this great interview on their site about Fatal Frame 3: The Tormented! It's from the trailer and interview before I think.

Inada: So, you know Mr. Kikuchi. Here's a new face, Mr. Shibata. He's actually the director of Fatal Frame. We kept him behind the scenes, because he's the one who actually came up with all of the sick ideas. He's the one who actually practices and believes in the spirit world.

GameSpy: I remember, a couple of years ago, you had the Fatal Frame II unveiling event, and Kikuchi-san said there's someone in Japan...
Inada: That's him. [Laughs] The infamous guy.

GameSpy: I was wondering if you could give me a little bit of a background on Fatal Frame III?
Shibata: The main character, Rei, gets into a car accident where she ends up killing her boyfriend. After the accident, she goes to this mansion, a ruined mansion, and starts to interact with the spirit world, and that's how the story starts. You will see a character from Fatal Frame 1, Miki, who joins the adventure. GameSpy: Does this take place a few years after the original Fatal Frame game, timeline-wise?
Kikuchi: Of course, Fatal Frame 1, II, and III are three independent stories, yet at the same time, it is a parallel story. [Fatal Frame III is] set up as a story that takes place roughly two years after Fatal Frame 1's story.

GameSpy: This is the third Fatal Frame game for PS2. Is it tough coming up with new ideas, or do you find that when you finish the previous game you have leftover ideas and you're eager to get to the next game?
Kikuchi: So of course, the underlying concept for Fatal Frame is still there. This version, in particular, has multiple playable characters. That's something we've always wanted to do. The previous version had pretty much stayed in the state of a dream, so to speak. You fought in the state of a nightmare. This game will allow you to go back and forth between the reality and the dream world, or nightmare world, and that's something we've always wanted to do.

GameSpy: Something that you had talked about earlier, Kikuchi-san, is that you don't believe in the occult but Shibata-san does. I was wondering if you could tell me more about that, and if that affects the development going back and forth?
Kikuchi: Absolutely no problem.

Shibata: There's really no problem because if I say "this is good" or "this is interesting" or "this is something that we should do," then Kikuchi can say yes or no -- mostly yes.

Kikuchi: My job is to basically balance out everything that Shibata wants to do. If we did everything that he wants to do, or what he has in his vision, it's not going to fit in our capacity that we're given. My job is to basically find ways to commercialize Shibata's ideas.

GameSpy: Japanese horror movies, starting with The Ring, have become quite popular in America, and it has continued, not fallen off, with recently The Grudge. Are you surprised that there's a staying power for Japanese horror movies in America and how that might be affecting the popularity of your games?
Shibata: The first The Ring became a big hit and I was quite surprised. But then I was pleasantly surprised that American people could understand the concept.

Kikuchi: I, too, feel scared when I watch American-style horror movies, so that basically makes me believe that the feeling of fear is universal, no matter what the style is.

GameSpy: I find it interesting that most horror games seem to come out of Japan, even though Western-developed games have become very popular in this generation. Silent Hill, Resident Evil, and Fatal Frame are the three best-known horror series. Do you have any insight into why that might be?
Kikuchi: What I think is that in order to make a good horror game, you need to know how to control yourself by not revealing the fear ... you have to fight your temptation to just do something that [puts] everything out there, everything in your face. It's very difficult to resist the temptation to not show anything in a room that has nothing, to try and create a fearful experience. Maybe the American culture and nature is to want to just show it, do it, let it out. Japanese are better at controlling their urges to hold it back and not show anything, everything all at once. Maybe that's why.

Shibata: I believe that the American game developers, they start their project by figuring out the game system. Then you move forward once you figure out what the game system should be. Japanese developers, on the other hand, go in more with the emotional aspect of the game: how gamers will feel when they play this type of game. Consequently the horror genre is a better fit for such an approach for developing a game.

GameSpy: I want to ask Kikuchi-san the same question I did the other day [then in regards to Trapt, this time about Fatal Frame III]. Why is it always a cute female character starring in the game?

Kikuchi: If I answer your question, I'm going to just give you the same answer again, so I'm going to ask Shibata to answer that question.

Shibata: It's quite simple. This is a game that is not violent. You can't muscle your way through. To portray that concept, obviously a female main character is better. We all know that females are a bit more spiritual than men. So it was a very obvious choice to pick a female character to play this role.

GameSpy: There are several playable characters in the new game. I was wondering if you could tell me a little about them, and how you came up with them?
Kikuchi: There are three objectives we had in implementing multiple characters to become playable. For one, we wanted not only to show a strong woman as the main character, but to show how a weaker character could become a playable character in the story. Number two is to show the variation on the playability aspect of different characters. It's always nice to have more variety of playability, and to do that we had to have multiple playable characters. Thirdly, I wanted to portray the characteristics of different playable characters. Some are small characters so they can hide better than others, or they're a little more nimble than the bigger character, or whatever. It was all about letting the players experience more variety of characters.

GameSpy: I'd like to finish with a question that's a bit more general. There's some debate with whether with Xbox 360 coming out this year if Microsoft is pushing the next generation too fast, or whether Sony's approach of holding it out longer is better. I was wondering if you were excited about making next-gen games, or you'd rather continue to make current-gen games longer?
Kikuchi: From a developer's point of view, I always feel the pressure from the big bosses that we need to come up with something that will utilize the new, next-generation system which will appeal to the consumer. It's moving rather rapidly, and sometimes I wish we wouldn't have to be pressured in that way. Of course, as a developer I'm challenged and intrigued with the new generation platforms, and always looking forward to see what we can do with them. From a business standpoint, it would be better if all three console makers would work in unity so that we can provide more ... so that we're not always chasing after something that is new.

Thanks to GameSpy!