Hello,

I’m more than happy to reveal the cover art of “The Thirteenth Farewell”. For a long time, I was wondering: “What kind of look should be used for the cover: official or fanmade artwork?” Since this is a “thank you” book from the fans of the Final Fantasy XIII saga, I thought it would be a great idea to arrange some sort of competition, where fans send their own art and vote the best. The most favorited work would have become the cover of the book, and, thus, representing “The Thirteenth Farewell”. The only problem was – it only highlights one artwork by a certain artist. There’s really nothing bad about that, but when creating and adding letters to the book, I saw so many amazing artworks and touching stories from you, that it would have felt quite unfair and difficult to choose the best one from them. This is why I decided to cancel the competition.

As you can see from below, the book cover is featuring official renders of all playable heroes with edited and adjusted colors. The background has been strongly influenced by Orphan’s Cradle, which was shown in the very first artworks of Final Fantasy XIII. It actually took surprisingly long time to make everything fit well together, which is why I hope you like the final results. Of course, some may think a 100% original fanart would have been a better choice and he may even be right, but this is how I wanted to do thing this time around.

Alongside the cover art, we will also reveal our new tagline for the project:

THE THIRTEENTH FAREWELL
~FOREVER CRYSTALLIZING THE LOVE OF ALL FINAL FANTASY XIII FANS~

Talking more about The Thirteenth Farewel: the book will be finished within 2-5 days, since it’s approx. 75% completed. (Let’s hope we won’t experience any problems with it) Once the book is ready, I will be sharing it with my contacts from Square Enix, who will be forwarding it to the developers and other staff. I’ll try to keep you guys updated with the delivery progress. Hopefully our little book will be reaching the main developers during this summer. They might be on  the summer vacation, which may lead to delays and we need to wait a bit longer than usually. But wouldn’t it be awesome, if one morning Square Enix Japan staff tweets something about our project on the official account?! Even I have been experiencing quite emotional moments while building the book and reading your letters, which leaves me quite confident that this will be something very special and unforgettable for the Final Fantasy XIII staff.

Thank you all who participated in this project! I and Square Portal appreciate your effort more than anything, and we were happy to see so many of you joining other fans and creating this book!

Best wishes,
Johnny | Editor-in-Chief of Square Portal & The Creator of The Thirteenth Farewell