Those comparing it to Xenosaga are forgetting the scale of Xenosaga is no where near what this game is suppose to be, Xenoblade is meant to be as big as games like MMOs while Xenosaga's scale is quite minimal to average at most tbh. If you look at PS2 games with huge scale like San Andreas and such it's graphics can't even hold a candle to Xenoblade and it's in a similar Scale range, even on HD consoles look at GTA4 probably the game with the biggest scale so far graphically it's behind the majority of HD games, a lot of you need to understand the technical balance with wide open scale in games.

DQ is cel shaded and FFXII isn't seamless which games like Xenoblade and GTA are, FFXII doesn't look any better tbh.

@ Wyrdness

I understand that completely, but still, they REALLY need to fix those faces.

@ Soriku

Yeah, DQVIII was cel shaded and from what I remember, its scale isn't on the same level as an MMO or a Grand Theft Auto game. Its more along the lines of maybe Rouge Galaxy (same developers too).

GTA San Andreas and MMO's are also using boring western style graphics. It's a totally different standard.

Xenosaga is a huge game, and it has plenty of huge areas. So that doesn't really validate using a more boring art style or low quality character faces which look out of place with the beautiful environments. It also does NOT excuse using lower levels of animation; Xenosaga was VERY animated (right down to hair strands blowing in the breeze, or the winds during combat), this game is stiff.

You've lost your mind. I've said it many times and I will say it again. Fanboy vision can do some amazing things to graphics. The characters models on FFXII were extremely blurry and and lacked in coloration detail. Then on top of that aside from their faces everything on them was flat. All of the detail was drawn on.

You can see definition in the characters bodies in this games then on top of that this game is running at 60 FPS where FFXII ran at 30. You are not looking at the things in close enough detail. Sure its not the best looking characters model that the Wii can do but it miles ahead of FFXII.

Artstyle complaints are always debatable and most of the time subjective, from the videos I've seen I don't think you won't be seeing much of the character's faces when playing the game and as things go the GTA point stands doesn't matter if they use a different artstyle (which is a mute point anyway) it's not a different standard because the scale has forced the dev to find a technical balance.

Xenosaga was also very minimal in scale with small linear areas I don't know where you've pulled your "Xenosaga is huge" from but it's simply not true, Xenoblade is seamless, battles and such take place in real time where as in Xenosaga it's the usual battle transition into a different screen so ofcourse they can do more with it. You have to understand the technical balance and aims of each game, the producer wants a massive game which the player feels compelled to explore every little area to discover something new where as Xenosaga was all about cinematics, when you're in battle in Xenoblade it happens in open play during real time while the game is still rendering the games large scale area and everything in that area where as in Saga it transits into a separate battle screen, it's easier to render a few characters in battle with a few nice effects then a large open seamless world with events happening in real time, if Saga was anywhere near the scale of Blade a lot of what you praise would not of made it. Tetsuya has said the game's 60hrs won't be consisting of large amounts of cutscenes but rather more on the open play.

Wait....what? Xenosaga was not huge. What are you talking about?

That is where I'm kinda worried. You see, Tetsuya writes really good stories, and I mean REALLY good stories. Better stories then alot of games I've played. While I have no problem in him cutting down on the cutscene amount he usually brings to the table, I don't want it to go down the FFXII route in which there is barely any cutscenes at all which will result in a storyline that is non-existent just to invite more gameplay. It wouldn't be worth it IMO. For people like Tri-Ace, sure, for people like Tetsuya, HELL NO.

He may just mean that rather then watch cutscenes instead the player is caught up in the action more directly.

I was going to add something like Krizzx's comment, but he said it all. But let me add this.

Look at gameplayvids of FF12 and see he's right.

cess="sameDomain" allowFullScreen

Character pan in-game engine

The design might a bit better, but the imagery not. Open your eyes, people.