As you may be aware, if you have been paying attention to the news and reviews from E3, Square Enix have announced that their tech demo, entitled “Agni’s Philosophy”, was created in real-time using their new graphics engine: the Luminous Studio engine. It comes as a welcome relief to those of us expecting a more substantial showing by the company this year (they already demonstrated the new Tomb Raider game during the Microsoft conference, but not much else).

The tech demo features an amazing amount of detail on the characters involved, including the beautifully rendered eponymous character Agni. It also features a battle scene with guns and magic (and it wouldn’t be a Final Fantasy theme without magic, would it?), and also some mythical beasts that look similar to, although more realistic than, characters from Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2.

The demo appears to start in a dusty but brightly-lit shanty town, akin to the slums from Final Fantasy VII. It then progresses to what appears to be a highly detailed place of worship, before moving back to the slums and then giving an overview of a large, diverse and highly detailed world. The contrast between the cliff-side slums and the lush vegetation and technological advancement on the horizon is typical of Square Enix’s vision for Final Fantasy games, and while the characters and locations featured may not end up exactly the same in the final version of Final Fantasy XV, it is indicative of the style direction they will continue to use, and shows the level of graphical detail we can expect from the real-time graphics generated by this next-generation graphics engine.

More information regarding the tech demo and the graphics engine used can be found here, and if you haven’t done so already, I recommend taking a look at the demo below in action.

If this is the future of Final Fantasy games, I think we should ALL be excited.