When i first heard about White knight chronicles i came across this video and i just thought wow finally a good JRPG (since FFXIII was taking its sweet old time to come out >_>) its graphics looked great and the gameplay looked awesome too. I dont know if this was a demo or anything but it just looks better than the final product IMO. Here's the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X21npM1DUqc

And here's the final product:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1sZOngjZtI

I tried to look for a better video to compare the first one to but i guess this will do. Anyway the gameplay in both videos just looks completely different and so do the graphics. 

So i ask you WTF happened!?!

Combat in a controlled cutscene is very different to when you actually have to make a game.  You're not gonna have an enemy repeatedly block your attacks and you block theirs, you'll never finish a battle.  But a lot of the things did make it through.  Block magic and attacks with your shield is still there and still looks nifty.  The combo system is there, except you can't combine multiple player's attacks (Unless you can in online) like in the video.

Regardless though the menu just looks different and even the graphics like the first video just looks better then what came out in the final build of the game.

The video that was shown at TGS 2006 wasn't running on the actual final game engine. It was pre-rendered and stuff.

Well that makes sense but why does that stuff from 2006 look better then the one that came out in 2010? =(

I actually agree, what we were led to believe, didn't turn out to be the final product, but it was done by a lot of companies in 2006. It was just how companies built up hype, and tried to live up to that hype. 

Its becuase of the create a character system

originally the game was gonna look like that

but unfortunately they decided to render the whole game using that CaC enigne which lowered overall quality of the game

the LV5 is cursed in general with having at least one huge flaw in there games

WKC looks to be a result od ideas not making it and settleing for something simpler

Pretty much this, White Knight Chronicles 2 pretty much corrects the first's problems.  Though I disagree about the graphics part, you can actually go to that area in the game and it looks just like that.  Character models don't look any worse either.  Like the game might be more aliased, and the shadows are terrible, but the game keeps up in graphics as that trailer 5 years ago.

for one, it came out well before 2010, I think 2008, but it didn't hit america ww until 2010.  

secondly, like boutrous said, pre-rendered.  Wasn't actually running on the ps3 hardware.  Early ps3 cycle was notoriously hard to develope for, so when they put the games on the system, a lot ended up getting chopped off in order to make it work.  

They might be able to make a game that looks like that now, but back then no.  Not that it really matters because White Knights was not a good game by any kind of standard.