People have been waiting to see how Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn will look on the PS3, and today their question has finally received a partial (as the assets are still not final) answer. Square Enix sent us a few screenshots of the PS3 version of the upcoming MMORPG and a few details on how it will work.

According to the publisher the PS3 user interface has been designed to provide intuitive gamepad control without sacrificing the depth of a MMORPG. The screenshots (that you can see in the gallery below) feature an action bar with 16 slots. The eight on the left can be accessed by holding L2, while the eight on the right by holding R2. Each of those eight slots is mapped to one direction in directional pad and to circle, square, circle and triangle. They're also visually arranged in the same position as the buttons for easy reference.

This means that each action in the bar is accessible simply by pressing a single combination of shoulder and face buttons once. This is extremely innovative and basically as fast as using a keyboard, as opposed to the rather slow and clunky controller selection we have in the current version of Final Fantasy XIV.

Players can set up to eight different action bars and cycle through them by pressing both L2 and R2 at the same time. Of course the screenshots also feature the visuals of the PS3 version, that definitely look rather fantastic for a console version.

On the side of the new screenshots Square Enix also released a few new pieces of artwork featuring Amon (from Final Fantasy III), Odin, Leviathan, the sketch of a level 40 dungeon and "skilled" Chocobos. Players will be able to raise their Chocobos focusing on different skills like healing, attacking and using magic, and they will change appearance accordingly as shown by the artwork.

I don't know about you, but I'm quite excited, especially for the controller layout, that seems to really hit the nail in the head for controlling a MMORPG with a joyoad. We'll have to see how it'll work in game, but I can't say that I don't feel optimistic.