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bigtakilla on 12 May 2017
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Nuvendil said:
bigtakilla said:

Agreed on the whole sweeping vistas being done to death by now. XC the wow fatcor was that in a time where jrpgs weren't really open world 7th gen (not that there weren't any, but not a lot of big budget single player jrpgs). The game taking place on two Gods was also a really big WOW moment, as was the graphics for a Wii game (not that there wasn't better, hell as much as people love to shit on Other M those graphics dropped my jaw, but for how a gigantic jrpg looked very, very impressive).

XCX you could tell from the first trailer was going to let you explore a giant world on water land and sky through the use of Skells, and how combat has evolved in the series. The constant nods to Saga was also a huge WOW moment, as well as the graphics (and even keep this in mind, the first trailer for this came out before the PS4 and XBone) were a HELL of a WOW moment. Then as time progressed you heard from the studio that it was going to be one of the biggest game maps ever (that wasn't random gen) and you could explore it all seemlessly! Holy shit was that a WOW moment.

But XC2, even flying from one floating island to another angle (or basically a complete 360 degree area of exploration)  has already been explored in Xenoblade X. What is the new draw?  Mounts? Over skells your typical creature mount doesn't seem like a very exciting angle.  Skells changed combat entirely. We know it won't have online missions like X. There's no way there will be as much customization (unless there are skells that aren't introduced till late game, that'd be a pretty big WOW factor if you dig up the Ares 90 in a ruin excavation!!!! I really doubt that'll be a thing though). I mean, in what way is this a known step forward? You could say story, but you really don't know that yet as the story seems like a typical snooze fest of an escort mission. It could be great like XC. But how many steps back for a single great thing when in X the world, exploration, customization, and combat are almost assuredly better?

Progress isn't only made by increasing the number of things, refinement is another form of progress and lack of such was one of the major criticisms of XCX.  I fully anticipate there will be customization, I relly see no reason to doubt that.  I mean keep in mind we saw the various characters in specific outfits for a long while in X before trailers finally started emphasizing the customizations.  Also, a game having a customizable avatar rather than a fixed main character is not necessarily a step forward or back, it is more a step sideways.  It's just different. 

And saying "flight has been done, having flight in this game will be boring/not new/not interesting" is just silly.  Just because something has been done before doesn't mean it's boring, unineteresting, or indicative of something being rushed.  But if you insist on making this an issue, flight in X was very much limited in its utility since the overwhelming majority of the world is traversable without it and the majority of what could only be reached by flight had nothing of peculiar value to it.  Flying through a sky with actual variance in altituted between locals and the posibilities some locals could move would be far different in practice than the Skell's flying abilities that aside from plot progression and a handful of hidden bits and bobs mainly just served as a faster means of traversing what you could already traverse. 

The setting itself could be very fascinating IMO, we've just not seen enough to decide entirely.

But this whole discussion boils down to "we haven't seen enough".  We didn't know if there WAS a story with X until the second trailer.  We thought there were chain attacks until the first gameplay demonstration showed us there were none.  There was indications you could freely explore Mira with online players in the first trailer which that turned out to be false.  Tons of questions were unanswered then, tons of questions are unanswered now.  Which is why I have more patience.  I also have patience because Monolith Soft has earned it.   

Flying isn't boring it just simply isn't a new concept, even when looking at the Blade series.

@bolded: You obviously didn't know about the best weapon farms, super nemesis', ect. There are tons of hidden secrets in every area that can only be reached through the use of flight. The Noctilucent Sphere that has Pharsis, The Everqueen in Sylvalum. The giant flower you can enter on the north side of Noctilum. The final battle with the Almandal in the floating islands of Primordia, the volcano you can enter in Cauldros, or the land center of the bottomless pit in Oblivia are just the tip of the iceburg for things in each territory that can only be reached through flight. There are tons of other examples but it would just be cave here, and waterfall there.

For the last part, sure, we didn't get the story till the second trailer. Luckily XCX didn't need a story trailer to really get through to the viewer that this was going to be something epic. It did show the introduction to vehicles, it did show the introduction of flight, it did show the MASSIVE update of the graphics from XC. It showed combat and how that had completely evolved through melee and range weapon swapping and being able to remove limbs from monsters. It showed that gaint robots were back in the Xeno series.