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Forums - Gaming Discussion - This is the reason why Xenoblade X's world is top notch

curl-6 on 21 June 2016
spemanig said:
curl-6 said:

In a virtual world there is no standardized measure of size, so there is no practical difference between a small character in a big world or a normal sized character in a vast world.

There is scale, though. The overworld isn't built to scale equally with the humans. That's why the bridges are so wide and stuff like the vines are so massive when you're in your skell.

Grass, brush, many of the trees, boulders, pebbles, smaller animals, etc, are all in scale with people. Cliffs and mountains aren't any bigger than in real life. There are some giant trees and stuff, but that's the sci-fi aspect.



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GoOnKid on 22 June 2016
fleischr said:
XCX was my first JRPG in several years actually!

People call this game repetitive and full of fetch quests - and in some aspects it is - but I don't think that's a fair assessment. The fact is that this game is VERY BIG and VERY COMPLEX. And because of that - it's really best to play with as much spontaneity as possible with very few preconceived notions on how you'll actually progress in the world.

You just don't easily get from point A to point B. You go to point A and while trying to get to point B you got to point X, point X.1, point X.2, back to point A again, over to point C, point D, and then you remember you had to go to point B - but now point D looks really fun. And after point D, you check out point E. Finally 10-15 hours later, you get to point B, but only because you were on your way to point F.

That is a perfect description of how I play this game! :DD

75h in and loving it. I think I'll be needing some hundreds of hours to finish it.



DivinePaladin on 22 June 2016
curl-6 said:
spemanig said:

There is scale, though. The overworld isn't built to scale equally with the humans. That's why the bridges are so wide and stuff like the vines are so massive when you're in your skell.

Grass, brush, many of the trees, boulders, pebbles, smaller animals, etc, are all in scale with people. Cliffs and mountains aren't any bigger than in real life. There are some giant trees and stuff, but that's the sci-fi aspect.

I've gotta agree with curl here. There'd be more of an argument if the textures were stretched as hell when on foot or if there was an explicit lack of small detail, but considering the amount of focus that IS put on the human side of the game, that falls apart a bit. Unless explicitly designing a game to be detailed at two different scales is also part of the parlor tricks, in which case I feel like that's a case of shifting goalposts to fit the narrative. 

 

The only place I can say I really felt that there was a scaling problem was in NLA itself. I never bought the cars compared to skells or why the streets were so narrow, even from the previews. That sort of just felt like how poorly done the same idea was in Zone of the Enders. 



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DakonBlackblade on 22 June 2016
curl-6 said:
spemanig said:

There is scale, though. The overworld isn't built to scale equally with the humans. That's why the bridges are so wide and stuff like the vines are so massive when you're in your skell.

Grass, brush, many of the trees, boulders, pebbles, smaller animals, etc, are all in scale with people. Cliffs and mountains aren't any bigger than in real life. There are some giant trees and stuff, but that's the sci-fi aspect.

Sorry but your point isn't technical at all, it's your perception of scale. As curl-6 said there isn't an standardized measure for virtual worlds length and the scale of XenoX's world is obviously in proportion to the size of the characters when it makes sense for it to be, like in man made (allien humanoid species made) structures, the city or next to small creatures and regular sized vegetation.  And the stuff that is big are just giant creatures and vegetation that exist in droves in this world and ties into the lore/world building.



Scisca on 22 June 2016

I hope an enhanced port comes to NX soon. I don't want to play it on an emulator :-/



Wii U is a GCN 2 - I called it months before the release!

My Vita to-buy list: The Walking Dead, Persona 4 Golden, Need for Speed: Most Wanted, TearAway, Ys: Memories of Celceta, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, History: Legends of War, FIFA 13, Final Fantasy HD X, X-2, Worms Revolution Extreme, The Amazing Spiderman, Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate - too many no-gaemz :/

My consoles: PS2 Slim, PS3 Slim 320 GB, PSV 32 GB, Wii, DSi.

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dahuman on 22 June 2016
spemanig said:
DakonBlackblade said:

I'm still don't agree with you, so its a fundamental disagreement I'm afraid (not trying to pick a fight btw just contrasting my point of view against yours). The Skells are big in relation to the players when you are in confined areas. Skells also feel giant close to the creatures you normaly face on foot, and even sized x the biger ones youd dare to fight without a Skell, but they are still dwarfed by a bunch of enemies. When you are on the open world they pull the camera back and widen the shots when you are on a Skell exactly because they want to show you the world is so vast even the Skells are quite small in it. To be fair Skells are not even close to the bigest creatures, vegetations and structures in the world.  

I sorta agree on one point tough, the game 100% have a bunch of technical shortcomings, it tries to overcome them with some not so fancy shenaningas, but saying its world is a "not so big arena" and that making you feel small in it is not a stylistic choice is wrong in my opinion.

I'm not arguing view points. This isn't an opinion. I'm talking about the technical trick XCX uses to make the world seem 5 times larger than it actually is. The world isn't that big at all. It just looks big because the player is shrunk in the over world. That's why moving across the world in the Skell takes no time. Because the world isn't what is big, the player, enemies, and NPCs are just shrunk inside a normal-sized map to create an optical illusion. Oversized enemies that dwarf the Skells are also there to add to that optical illusion. It's all a parlor trick. None of it is real.

I never said that the game has short comings. I'm just saying it cheats to make its game seem much bigger than it actually is, which it does, and it isn't good at hiding it.

So, what you are basically saying, is that if humans were the size of 747 air planes and Skells were the size of the Empire State building, then the Earth would seem a lot smaller to us? Holy fuck my mind just got blown.



curl-6 on 22 June 2016
DakonBlackblade said:
curl-6 said:

Grass, brush, many of the trees, boulders, pebbles, smaller animals, etc, are all in scale with people. Cliffs and mountains aren't any bigger than in real life. There are some giant trees and stuff, but that's the sci-fi aspect.

Sorry but your point isn't technical at all, it's your perception of scale. As curl-6 said there isn't an standardized measure for virtual worlds length and the scale of XenoX's world is obviously in proportion to the size of the characters when it makes sense for it to be, like in man made (allien humanoid species made) structures, the city or next to small creatures and regular sized vegetation.  And the stuff that is big are just giant creatures and vegetation that exist in droves in this world and ties into the lore/world building.

I think you quoted the wrong guy, but I appreciate the support. ;)



Nuvendil on 22 June 2016
Mystro-Sama said:
Still haven't got it yet. How is the story? And are the pop-ins as bad as people say?

Depends.  If you install all the data packs, the pop in out in the field isn't very bad at all so long as you are on foot or just running with your mech.  When you drive or fly with the mech which is ver fast, it is worse.  The city of NLA is where the pop in can be bad, quite bad if you sprint.  Overall, I got used to it.  There is some far away pop in that you'll see due to the enormous size of some creatures but overall, in the fields (where you spend most your time) it is not bad.



curl-6 on 22 June 2016
Nuvendil said:
Mystro-Sama said:
Still haven't got it yet. How is the story? And are the pop-ins as bad as people say?

Depends.  If you install all the data packs, the pop in out in the field isn't very bad at all so long as you are on foot or just running with your mech.  When you drive or fly with the mech which is ver fast, it is worse.  The city of NLA is where the pop in can be bad, quite bad if you sprint.  Overall, I got used to it.  There is some far away pop in that you'll see due to the enormous size of some creatures but overall, in the fields (where you spend most your time) it is not bad.

Now that Monolith are working on Breath of the Wild, I wonder if it too will offer a data pack option for better asset streaming. I actually hope it does, as I have plenty of HDD space and wouldn't mind using a little to alleviate load times and pop-in, like in XCX.



DakonBlackblade on 23 June 2016
curl-6 said:
DakonBlackblade said:

Sorry but your point isn't technical at all, it's your perception of scale. As curl-6 said there isn't an standardized measure for virtual worlds length and the scale of XenoX's world is obviously in proportion to the size of the characters when it makes sense for it to be, like in man made (allien humanoid species made) structures, the city or next to small creatures and regular sized vegetation.  And the stuff that is big are just giant creatures and vegetation that exist in droves in this world and ties into the lore/world building.

I think you quoted the wrong guy, but I appreciate the support. ;)

I wanted to quote the whole tree of comment but I forgot only the last 2 get quoted.