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We've been here, mere hours away from the end of the world, before. World-saving has been the defining theme of video gaming's first 30 years, from fending off shuffling space invaders to skewering ideological threats in Civilization or Call of Duty. But it's rare that a game set on the eve of the apocalypse manages to elicit any real sense of urgency. Japanese role-playing games are the perfect example: the world may be perilously close to extinction and our band of heroes will be off racing giant chickens or pursuing a side-quest to upgrade a leather coat. We understand that the world is in danger and that we are instrumental in its salvation, but we also know that ours is an appointment which cannot be missed.Lightning Returns, the third entry in the uneven Final Fantasy 13 trilogy, fixes this inconsistency. You are seven days from the apocalypse. A clock counts down in the top right hand corner of the screen, pausing only when you enter a menu screen, engage in a battle or return to a celestial waiting room at 6am to signal the end of that day. Other than these brief moments of respite, time in the game is finite - and the truth is that there isn't enough time on the clock to complete every quest and storyline before the endgame.
The world's inhabitants work to their own schedules and appointments; some missions are only available at a specific time on a specific day. The question then becomes: on what or whom will you spend your remaining time? And will your choices avert the impending disaster? As one of the game's later boss characters quips, "In this dying world nothing is more precious than time. Why do you waste it on me?"
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