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Game Informer: " Why Xenoblade Chronicles Makes Me Want To Punch a Kitten"

Penguin

Member
LMAO, I love this thread. "You can't have a good game like xenoblade on HD consoles guys, only possible on last gen tech, sorry".

I don't think that's necessarily the case, but more of the time and money sink it would be to create a game like Xenoblade on the HD consoles.

Like everyone says it possible, but how many games this gen do we have with the combination?
 

Seik

Banned
Wow, the guy really needs a chill pill.

He's kind of right, but its not THAT much of a big deal, not to a point of basing the whole review on this point and getting mad about it. Its like he took it personal.
 
I don't think that's necessarily the case, but more of the time and money sink it would be to create a game like Xenoblade on the HD consoles.

Like everyone says it possible, but how many games this gen do we have with the combination?

More than there are on the Wii?
 

jimi_dini

Member
Let's not pretend that there aren't plenty of quality HD games rich in content.

We are talking about RPGs here.
Tell me a few RPG-games on 360/PS3, that got glorious HD graphics and at least the same amount of content and world-size as Xenoblade.

I recall a few RPGs on those systems that got "bad" graphics (sort of the same as you would get, if you put Xenoblade on PS3/360 using the same models, etc. everyone would scream bloody murder) and a few others that got "oh shiny", but lack everywhere else.

Also why is it I never read anyone concerned about the content that will apparently be missing from future Wii-U games?

What do you expect? Posts about "oh god, don't release Wii U at all, I want to keep my ultra-rich RPGs"?

We don't know yet how Nintendo will handle Wii U/HD. I hope that Nintendo games will still be of the same quality as today w/o patching every 2 days. I hope that Pikmin 3 will have at least as much content as Pikmin 2. But we don't know yet.

Theoretically there could be "bad" looking RPGs on Wii-U, that got the same amount of content as Xenoblade. But then the graphic whores would still scream about them. I seriously don't expect Xenoblade 2 on Wii U with Uncharted 3-like graphics. I would be happy, if that would happen. But it won't.
 

Venfayth

Member
In response to the Destructoid article:

I find it hard to agree with the logic behind "we can only make these kinds of games on graphically bad consoles".

You can make bad-looking games on consoles with far more potential than is spent on that particular game.
 

Hero

Member
Jim Sterling got it right.

Like I said pages ago, there's absolutely no basis to think that if the Wii was an HD system that Nintendo would've let Monolith Soft create Xenoblade Chronicles nor that they would've had the experience and the staff to have created Xenoblade Chronicles in HD.
 
It's funny how so many people are jumping on this guy because he felt the game's graphics were being held back by Wii's hardware. He's a graphics whore, but inside I think a lot of us are. Especially considering a lot of the stuff I've read on GAF.

"Holy shit! Zelda in HD! MAH BODY IS READY!!!!!!!!!!"

Some people are just more honest about it than others.
 

Jokeropia

Member
It's been known for ~6 years than Wii doesn't output HD resolutions, so it seems a bit silly to throw a hissy fit about it now. Heck, there's even an alternative out there for graphics whores who cannot stand this; namely Dolphin.
 

NervousXtian

Thought Emoji Movie was good. Take that as you will.
Jim Sterling got it right.

Like I said pages ago, there's absolutely no basis to think that if the Wii was an HD system that Nintendo would've let Monolith Soft create Xenoblade Chronicles nor that they would've had the experience and the staff to have created Xenoblade Chronicles in HD.


Yet, look at the Dolphin screen shots. Shits already there to make it look that much better... except the hardware.


The fact we bring up Dolphin in these threads shows the problem.

I got rid of my Wii last year, my kids just didn't play it, and one of the reasons is that it looked like shit on my 50" Plasma screen.
 

zroid

Banned
You can make bad-looking games on consoles with far more potential than is spent on that particular game.

While you're correct, there's also a question of what is deemed acceptable by your audience (and Jim addressed this). As superior as the game looks on Dolphin, I think the PS360 audience would still largely shit on it in that state.

Nintendo understands this problem, and to the (unfortunate) chagrin of gamers, they made the claim that they may only use HD visuals when they feel it makes sense for what they are trying to accomplish. The bitter tears were already streaming down based on that comment from E3 2011, but it's the right call, in my opinion. Let's just hope the masses will see it that way.
 

JaseMath

Member
It might look good "for a Wii game", but it's true - Xenoblade's visuals are shit. It's honestly the one reason I will not touch Xenoblade. It's ridiculous I know, but it's true.
 

Kai Dracon

Writing a dinosaur space opera symphony
Actually, you could do a game like Xenoblade on the HD consoles and upgrade the graphics a little bit, such as better textures, some shaders for material effects, and slightly better character models.

And what would probably happen is plenty of gamers would compare that to super sampled bullshot beauty pics of Uncharted 3 and go "LOL Japanese can't make real game ha ha!"

One of the problems with the push for technology is that there's no sliding scale for a lot of people because they don't understand how scale works. There ARE plenty of people who gripe that Skyrim looks like shit and wonder why every meter of game world cannot look like Uncharted 3, Crysis 2, etc. Another example I always remember is that when Darksiders came out, I saw more than one comment to the effect of "lol this game is f**king ugly nowhere near as good as God of War III".

Techno-fetishized visual quality has been pushed by the industry as the primary way to sell games at first glance, and probably also conditioned gamers to judge all games purely by how closely they look to motion picture CG of realistic environments and photo-real characters.

From this we get the trend of developers too often falling into the trap of sacrificing everything in order to pack as much visual fidelity in as possible in order to meet those expected targets.

(After all, we already have developers talking about next gen, saying sub-1080p and 30fps is fine because it means more shaders, fuck yeah!)

The troubles that result in a mindless, non-measured push for technology for its own sake are born of an incestuous relationship. The public pushes developers for it, publishers take advantage of it by whipping the public into a frenzy for every game showing off twice the technology of the last game. Ironically, the OP article kind of plays into this by merely demanding "as much technology as possible, pack it all in, it's what we deserve!"

Ironically, a very western attitude :lol: Super size it, gimmie as much as I can eat, damn the consequences, I don't want to hear it, because it's what I deserve.
 

Sky Chief

Member
I don't think that's necessarily the case, but more of the time and money sink it would be to create a game like Xenoblade on the HD consoles.

Like everyone says it possible, but how many games this gen do we have with the combination?

I still don't understand why the same game with pretty much the same assets on an HD system wouldn't be better, cost just as much to produce, and sell just as many copies.
 

Krev

Unconfirmed Member
Very late to this party, but the article is funny for how naive Kluwe comes off. "Hey billion dollar corporation, these graphics are just unacceptable, you need to change your strategy completely and go into heavy loss leading, or just bow out of the industry!" Never mind that the Wii was a huge mass market success and the Gamecube their biggest financial failure.
The response he wrote about how he needs to speak out or nothing will change is pathetic. He can stamp and cry and scream as much as he likes, but Nintendo aren't going to give a shit as long as they are profitable and their investors are happy.

It's fine to voice a personal dislike for Nintendo's strategy, but Kluwe's lament would be so much more readable if he didn't sound like a child throwing a tantrum about the way things are.
 

NervousXtian

Thought Emoji Movie was good. Take that as you will.
I still don't understand why the same game with pretty much the same assets on an HD system wouldn't be better, cost just as much to produce, and sell just as many copies.

Especially since just running the game with Dolphin improves the visuals 10-fold.
 

Penguin

Member
I still don't understand why the same game with pretty much the same assets on an HD system wouldn't be better, cost just as much to produce, and sell just as many copies.

It would be "better" (Personally, I think the game looks great aside from character models and some.. textures)

But you don't think having to render the world/characters in HD wouldn't add to the cost of the game development?
 
I honestly believe that Xenoblade Chronicles could have been this generation’s Final Fantasy VII.

Because Final Fantasy VII had AMAZING graphics. Just kidding, the in-game graphics weren't that great, even for 1997. The blocky LEGO men made me miss sprites so much.

fotofinalfantasyvii.jpg


ZOMG SO AMAZING. Seriously, this "article" is crap. There is more to games than just graphics. Plus the Wii has been out for six years. Everyone knows its graphics don't compare to hardware today. Xenoblade's sprawling landscapes are pretty because the game has good art. Kind of like how Shadow of the Colossus amazes us - it has great art direction. Xenoblade keeps us going with enjoyable gameplay and a great story. Please tell this guy to go back and play FF13 over again.
 

mclem

Member
I still don't understand why the same game with pretty much the same assets on an HD system wouldn't be better, cost just as much to produce, and sell just as many copies.
And in that hypothetical situation, where's the money to develop the title coming from?

I'm not talking about extra money - you're right in that it could effectively look like Dolphin at little to no extra cost. I'd question whether it would sell on a par with that level of visuals, but it's by no means an impossibility. However... Nintendo wouldn't fund that game for obvious reasons, so who would? And, crucially, why didn't they do that before Nintendo swooped in and snapped up Monolith?
 

KageMaru

Member
"You can keep your prettier graphics -- I want a better game! "

PQSsk.gif

Such nonsense.

He's ignoring all of the HD games this gen with content or games that benefited from stronger tech.



Man, I don't often agree with Sterling, but he hits the nail right on the head. It's exactly what I said a few pages ago, that being on the Wii ultimately made Xenoblade a better game.

lol

Because Nintendo used to make those games that just blew me away on all fronts. Other companies have taken up the torch, but Nintendo development on cutting edge hardware gives me a stiffy. Rage against the dying of the light!

Problem is, Nintendo won't be developing on cutting edge hardware.

I'm pretty sure the entire point of Sterling's article is that yes, in several cases, they are.

Now you are free to disagree, but flippancy doesn't help anyone.

IMO Sterling is taking it to the extreme. I don't think anyone is expecting Crysis, UC, or Gears level graphics. They just don't want the game to look like ass by today's standards.

Graphics only matter when my favorite console has good graphics!

Pretty much, which makes most of the defenders in this thread hypocrites IMO.

We are talking about RPGs here.
Tell me a few RPG-games on 360/PS3, that got glorious HD graphics and at least the same amount of content and world-size as Xenoblade.

I recall a few RPGs on those systems that got "bad" graphics (sort of the same as you would get, if you put Xenoblade on PS3/360 using the same models, etc. everyone would scream bloody murder) and a few others that got "oh shiny", but lack everywhere else.

Admittedly I can't do a direct comparison since I haven't played every large game out there, including Xenoblade unfortunately.

I'm looking at it from the perspective of content creation in large games. There are good number of games that have plenty of content and look just fine. Honestly, this is the biggest issue I have with everyone generalizing that things can't be the same in HD. It all depends on many factors including quality of content, talent, content pipeline, tools, etc.

What do you expect? Posts about "oh god, don't release Wii U at all, I want to keep my ultra-rich RPGs"?

We don't know yet how Nintendo will handle Wii U/HD. I hope that Nintendo games will still be of the same quality as today w/o patching every 2 days. I hope that Pikmin 3 will have at least as much content as Pikmin 2. But we don't know yet.

I don't expect anything, I just don't get how people can cream their pants over the Zelda HD tech demo but then scream graphics whore to this article, downplaying the importance of graphics.

IMO people are ignoring or overlooking how graphics, and tech in general, contributes to our experiences with these games.

Theoretically there could be "bad" looking RPGs on Wii-U, that got the same amount of content as Xenoblade. But then the graphic whores would still scream about them. I seriously don't expect Xenoblade 2 on Wii U with Uncharted 3-like graphics. I would be happy, if that would happen. But it won't.

As I mentioned above, no one is expecting Uncharted level visuals in any RPG, that's unrealistic.
 

Kamek

Member
I thought the graphics were amazing. A creative, idea filled overworld is much more exciting than a HD kind of bland overworld a la FF13.
 
Because Final Fantasy VII had AMAZING graphics. Just kidding, the in-game graphics weren't that great, even for 1997. The blocky LEGO men made me miss sprites so much.

fotofinalfantasyvii.jpg


ZOMG SO AMAZING. Seriously, this "article" is crap. There is more to games than just graphics. Plus the Wii has been out for six years. Everyone knows its graphics don't compare to hardware today. Xenoblade's sprawling landscapes are pretty because the game has good art. Kind of like how Shadow of the Colossus amazes us - it has great art direction. Xenoblade keeps us going with enjoyable gameplay and a great story. Please tell this guy to go back and play FF13 over again.

This is such an awful post. I'll ignore the FFVII part and just say FFXIII would have been the same corridors and cutscenes fest even on the Wii. And there are more sprawling open world games, RPGs even, on the HD consoles than there are on Wii.

People who know how to make good games aren't hurt by better hardware. It just means they have more tools to work with, and that most likely translates to a better end product.
 

Bisnic

Really Really Exciting Member!
I dont understand how people can say Xenoblade wouldnt be possible on HD consoles, that it wouldnt have its huge beautiful worlds that it has on the Wii.

Skyrim got huge beautiful worlds, yet the current HD consoles didnt stop any of that to happen.
 

zroid

Banned
I dont understand how people can say Xenoblade wouldnt be possible on HD consoles, that it wouldnt have its huge beautiful worlds that it has on the Wii.

Skyrim got huge beautiful worlds, yet the current HD consoles didnt stop any of that to happen.

No one is saying it's not possible. The problem is a budgetary one. Skyrim was bound to sell millions of copies so they didn't have to worry about not pouring boatloads of cash into it.

So what is it?

There is actually a difference between people who appreciate HD visuals and people who demand them, you know?
 
It would be "better" (Personally, I think the game looks great aside from character models and some.. textures)

But you don't think having to render the world/characters in HD wouldn't add to the cost of the game development?
No? That's exactly what the emulator does.

Anyway generating low res assets is a bad idea. A dev company is better off generating high resolution stuff than can be shared among multiple projects and for different target platforms. If the target platform is below the capacities, they just down sample.

Cant believe some of the stupid arguments i just read in the 2 pages i have seen. How defensive a fanatic can get never cease to impress me.
 
I dont understand how people can say Xenoblade wouldnt be possible on HD consoles, that it wouldnt have its huge beautiful worlds that it has on the Wii.

Skyrim got huge beautiful worlds, yet the current HD consoles didnt stop any of that to happen.

Along with shit tons of bugs, ugly looking characters, and the game being almost unplayable on the PS3.

Something's gotta give.
 
Along with shit tons of bugs, ugly looking characters, and the game being almost unplayable on the PS3.

Something's gotta give.
False argument Criminal, that has been a sort of trade mark of the franchise independent of the use HD assets, it has to do more with how ambitious the design is. Morrowind was even more bug plagued than Skyrim and that was in the SD Xbox 1.
 
Originally Posted by Criminal Upper:
Man, I don't often agree with Sterling, but he hits the nail right on the head. It's exactly what I said a few pages ago, that being on the Wii ultimately made Xenoblade a better game.

lol

What a great counter point.

Would read again.


False argument Criminal, that has been an staple of the franchise independent of the use HD assets. Morrowind was even more bug plagued than Skyrim and that was in the SD Xbox 1.

So then why bring it up at all?
 

Bisnic

Really Really Exciting Member!
Along with shit tons of bugs, ugly looking characters, and the game being almost unplayable on the PS3.

Something's gotta give.

Most(all?) of these bugs wouldnt happen in Xenoblade because its really not the same type of RPG. And the PS3 issue seems more like a rushed port barely tested than anything else.


No one is saying it's not possible. The problem is a budgetary one. Skyrim was bound to sell millions of copies so they didn't have to worry about not pouring boatloads of cash into it.


I agree that the budget they got probably helped them a lot. Not sure if its something Nintendo would be willing to do on a "Xenoblade II" on Wii U since its still a new IP that doesnt sell millions like Elder Scrolls though.
 
Along with shit tons of bugs, ugly looking characters, and the game being almost unplayable on the PS3.

Something's gotta give.

Ugly looking characters is subjective. I think Xenoblade has disgusting looking art design but it's irrelevant to this discussion.

Skyrim is perfectly playable on the 360 btw, and that's an HD console.
 

NervousXtian

Thought Emoji Movie was good. Take that as you will.
So nobody thinks it wouldn't overall be a better game looking more like the Dolphin version running on the PS360?

I mean, it could be the same game, just look sharper and it'd be better.

Same game, just sharper visuals.
 

KageMaru

Member
Originally Posted by Criminal Upper:


What a great counter point.

Would read again.

I'm assuming you were trying to quote my post. I made better counter points towards you in this thread, but it seems you chose to ignore them all.

So I'll have to just settle on laughing at comments like yours instead. =)
 
So nobody thinks it wouldn't overall be a better game looking more like the Dolphin version running on the PS360?

I mean, it could be the same game, just look sharper and it'd be better.

Same game, just sharper visuals.

Just rendering the game at a higher res doesn't improve its graphical complexity. Dolphin doesn't produce what this guy wants.
 
So nobody thinks it wouldn't overall be a better game looking more like the Dolphin version running on the PS360?

I mean, it could be the same game, just look sharper and it'd be better.

Same game, just sharper visuals.

Yes, of course it would. But the Wii can't do that. So for most people, they need to play it on their Wiis, so it's a moot point that Dolphin can run it in higher rez. It's not a super easy avenue for most nintendo fans, I only have a laptop, so I don't own a computer that could run Dolphin.

So I'll have to just settle on laughing at comments like yours instead. =)

You can do that, whatever makes you feel good man. I couldn't care less.
 
So nobody thinks it wouldn't overall be a better game looking more like the Dolphin version running on the PS360?

I mean, it could be the same game, just look sharper and it'd be better.

Same game, just sharper visuals.

On a platform where more can be accomplished, the market expects more.

The theoretical Xenoblade HD is impossible. There's too many variables to give us the exact same game.
 

Arklite

Member
I think Nintendo, with their current standings, could compete well by coming back into the HD hardware race. Ignoring it with the Wii made sense, but now I feel like they're just shying away from it.

It's not like they'll be able to fund Xenoblade style titles with the Wii U being at the very least a 360 tier machine, unless they decide to continue releasing Wii quality visuals again.
 

Somnid

Member
Monolith Soft is first-party. Either they delayed the game 3 years to put it on Wii U (which wouldn't even have been a thing at that point) or put it on DS. Those are the only other options the rest are irrelevant.
 

Cipherr

Member
Why is it impossible? What variables would not make it possible?

Oh its possible, its just not probable. Its the same reason you are still waiting on FF7:R. No matter how much you want it to be, its not 1:1. If they raised the res and slapped AA on it and tossed it on an HD console instead, it would be ripped apart by people on this very board for its half assy nature. Expectations there are higher, the budget would be higher as well, All of those variables feed back on to one another.

We dont have a clue what the hypothetical Xenoblade would have actually been. Or if it would have even been greenlit. Nintendo isnt exactly big on letting their first parties do titles like Xeno in the first place. All we really know is that Xeno is what it is, and its a pretty damn great game. The more I read this thread, the more I find it hilarious that its the fact that it IS such a great game that sparked this. If it were some really bad throw away title, of which there are hundreds on the Wii. Noone would be upset.

Its a good game, and that has led indirectly to absolute kitten punching outrage. Its hard for me to wrap my head around that. But hey,

LEWVj.gif
 
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