Frankly, this shouldn't even be a discussion.
The fact that Xenoblade even compares to FF12/Xenosaga (especially) anyway graphically means there is something off. However, I agree that Xenosaga had areas nowhere near as large in scope, nor were the animations running at 60 FPS

But that was 2003.

Honestly, I'd rather environments take a hit than characters, because they are what I'm going to be looking at for 50 hours. Besides, there is no reason they had to compromise so much to make them look like that. The faces are REALLY plain.

Capcom didn't seem to have a problem creating large open worlds and having decent quality models with much better animation.

Also if indeed Xenoblade runs at 60 fps, then there is certainly plenty of room to add in more animations and higher quality textures to the character models. Overall, I am leaving the blame on the character model artist, the areas of Xenoblade are beautiful; there is certainly a difference in quality there. 

I am a little disappointed in the direction of this title currently; particularly:
- Lower emphasis on story from previous games
- Less expressive characters

With the Xenoseries to date my favourite thing about them, by far, was the deep and involving story. The art allowed for a good connection with the characters - but it looks very bland, stiff, and artificial in this upcoming game.

It's not like the PS2 is anywhere near as capable as the Wii either. The Wii has a CPU and GPU with almost triple the capability of the PS2, and triple the heap.


Tetsuya Takahashi, bring down the whip!

For all those wishing for the character art to change, I think it's too late - unless the trailers were made with an older build of the game, which I doubt. The game is coming out in two months or less, by now they are probably into the final debugging.

Hmmmmm, the game is coming in June to Japan..... Well, I'm still getting it.

This game is not what I was looking for from a Tetsuya Takahashi game though; especially not one with the title "Xeno" in it.

Anyway, if this one is even half as good as Xenogears, and feels like Xenogears, then I will be in love with it, bland graphics or not.