The Wii is a very powerful console. Yes, I'm serious. People tend to get spoiled very easily, but truth is, the Wii is the third most powerful console ever created. It looks almost on par with the 360 and PS3 on an SDTV. It supporty 480p, 567i and 16:9. In fact, even most shovelware titles support 480p and 16:9.
Today, I read the IGN preview of the new Tales of Symphonia game for the Wii. It seems the game has not received any graphical updates compared to the Gamecube offering. This is very disappointing, but, Tales of Symphonia has a very clear, artistic look, so it may look just fine.
Here's the thing that may prevent me from buying the game though: the game runs in 4:3 only!!!!!!!!!! (!!!)
Does anyone know how downright unplayable ugly this makes the game on a widescreen TV? In the Gamecube era, most people didn't own HDTV's or widescreen TV's, but now, in 2008, almost everyone has a widescreen and significantly more people own an HDTV. The Wii is perfecly suited for HDTV's as long as the game runs in 480p/576i and 16:9 widescreen and you have a good TV. But not supporting widescreen results in this:
('.') -> correct image of face.
( ' . ' ) -> stretched image of face.
especially in games with lots of text (Tales is such a game) this can get downright unplayable, as all text will be stretched too, making reading very headache inducing.
As I said before, most shovelware titles support 16:9 widescreen, so there's just no excuse a high profile game like Tales of Symhponia to not support it. Tales of Symphonia is a game I'm REALLY looking forward to, but as long as it doesn't support widescreen, I'm not buying it.
