oh man I'm pumped, but that main character design is awful. Admittedly though, I actually loved XBX's art direction (even if it hit uncanny valley a bit too often and didn't always achieve what it set out to) and just have some personal biases against the more modern shounen anime look this is going for.
(also please have mech sections please have mech sections please have mech sections)
Let's not pretend character design never was one of the strong points of this series...
I disagree. I thought XB had a lot of really great, now somewhat iconic designs. It was just held back in execution by its technical aspects. XBX, while it could have done better with facial feature differentiation (especially from a racial perspective), had some really good ones as well. Elma in particular still stands out to me.
also the character designs that really matter are the mech designs and xenoblade does fuckin great with those