I didn't watch much of the PAX coverage. What was a highlight for you? I saw driving around and auto parking? I popped in that other thread with a lot of people saying the battle system was kinda ho hum. After they got slammed for the last showing and talking about how little progress they made in the past half year, talk of entertaining an older system for veterans...or not ( idk) it just feels like this is some scramble to make a game with FF in the title at this point. *shrugs*
They had the characters running around with shields, Noctis using a gun, manual driving mode, spell effects, a number of monster models, and some other stuff.
Considering the last ATR was them taking questions and giving absolutely no answers to any of them, and then showing a 5 second fight clip with a Malboro where they just walk around and die, this was practically an infodump.
At the 43:30 mark, tabata says you can explore anywhere that isn't physically impossible to explore Like steep cliffs or deep waters. I don't know what he means by "deep waters" because i think swimming is in the game. Maybe he means there is no diving.
I'm sure it's like most action-RPG's where you can swim in shallow water, but darker, 'deep water' is used as a boundary to keep the player from swimming off the map.