Sorry, but it doesn't. Any videos you've seen are misleading you into making you think you are seeing a town like area. There is roughly 5 areas I would consider townlike. Bordam (only in flashbacks and quite small), another large town that Sazu and Vanilla visit (which again, doesn't allow direct interaction with NPC's and is very much designed to be ran from front to back in a line). A sequence on Cocoon which is in the city (Very impressive, but it is basically just a large set area for monsters).
There is also a trading town but again, you almost never interact directly with NPC's, no shops or inns here either. It's basically just a large set-piece to funnel the story and encounters. It is not in a town in the sense that you can do anything there that you can't elsewhere. It's more like a dungeon with a reskin in town like colours.
Finally there is another "town" like area in the game which is just a detroyed town filled with monsters. Very atmospheric but there isn't a single person there, just broken homes. I guess there are towns of sorts in FFXIII but they are probably not what you think they are.
Another note is that despite the large open field like area, all the areas that lead off it inevitably end up being really long runs in a single direction. If you look at the map it is hard to see this though because what appears like a short path on the map is typically 40 seconds to even 2-3 minutes running down one long tunnel. The world of FFXIII though is indeed massive and there is a lot to see. However the design of it is lacking even if the scenary is pretty amazing.
Log in to comment