As promised, here are some photos from Square Enix’s launch event for Final Fantasy XIII. The company took advantage of the GDC setting by having numerous high-profile developers in attendance. People like Tim Schafer (Double Fine), Corrinne Yu (Microsoft’s Halo Team), Mark Cerny (Cerny Games), Yoshinori Ono (Capcom), and Chris Taylor (Gas Powered Games) were in the house. The venue was super cool, decked out in all sorts of FFXIII decorations. Naturally, my mission was to find Leona Lewis, aka Reona Rewis singer of the FFXIII theme song “My Hands”. Here’s what I saw.
I got to the party late, due to a short flight delay. Reona Rewis was not at the entrance.

Just in case you forgot what company was throwing the party and which game it was for, Square Enix had these handy reminders.

Here’s some cool FFXIII art and a poster autographed by the development team.

I still couldn’t find Reona Rewis, but Shacknews‘ Garnett Lee is always fun to hang with.

Danny Masterson from That ’70s Show was spinning. I had to ask a friend, “Who the hell is Danny Masterson?”

The excellent Joseph Olin, president of the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, is always fun to catch up with.

To the window…to the wall, the venue was decked out in cool FFXIII decorations.

I want to play games on a large screen with a DJ spinning and two girls dancing in front of it.

The girl on the left was definitely getting funky. I reviewed her — 8/10.

Still no Reona Rewis, but I found 1Up’s Alice Liang and 343’s David Ellis.

I decided to head to the VIP area. Maybe Reona was hanging out there.

VIPs got to play the game too.

1Up’s Sam Kennedy was hanging out with a woman that might have been Reona Rewis.

The chick had a L’Cie tattoo on her leg…as opposed to “My Hands”. *snicker*
