Chocobos are incredibly useful fantasy creatures. In the Final Fantasy universe, they are one of the few things to appear in almost every game (along with dudes named Cid), although their appearances and purposes vary from title to title. In most of the FF games of the last decade of so, chocobos are used for transportation, and to help find secret items, hard-to-get magic spells, or buried treasure. They have also been used for racing (for fun and profit!), can be summoned, and live in hidden forests around the world. Though usually yellow, chocobos have also appeared in other colors, most notably black, blue, and green. Simply put, chocobos are awesome, which is why I was excited to see what they would look like in the next true installment in the Final Fantasy series.



Japanese magazine Shonen Jump had a few images of the graceful creatures from Final Fantasy XIII, as scanned by Kotaku. For the most part, they look just as you would expect—like giant yellow chickens. Actually, this particular chocobo looks even bigger than usual, unless that’s a very tiny child riding on top of him. It also appears that the chocobo is doing the fighting in that battle, which is a bit unusual. It wouldn’t be the first time they would be used in fights, but in the past they have either been summoned, or you have fought against them. It’s not typical to wander up to an enemy and have your chocobo start kicking. That might be neat, though.

I could probably write a 20-page paper on the awesomeness of chocobos, but I’ll cut myself off here. We still have at least six months before Final Fantasy XIII comes out in North America, at which point we’ll find out just what purpose the giant birds serve in the game.