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Xenoblade (Wii, Monolithsoft x Nintendo) Information Thread
- Thread starter duckroll
- Start date
It would be really difficult to have both very large environments and high resolution textures with only 88 megabytes of RAM.ILikeFeet said:
Perhaps they could do some form of sparse virtual texturing to load in somewhat better textures when you're closer, but I imagine drawing every texture at the fidelity needed to pull this off well and make it blend would cost far more than they could really expect the game to make. They could probably go with less high resolution textures if they just swapped them out, but that basically means drawing all the textures in the game multiple times, which might be even more expensive.
The best option in this situation would be to take an art direction where relatively sparse or solid color textures look good, but it's far too late to do that.
Skiesofwonder
Walruses, camels, bears, rabbits, tigers and badgers.
At least this looks like an actual INTERESTING jrpg, which I haven't seen this gen since Lost Odyssey (which I ended up not liking too much).
Man this gen has sucked for Jrpgs.....
Man this gen has sucked for Jrpgs.....
JordanLMiller
Member
*sigh* Still no gameplay in this one either, and word of this using the classic controller is making me uninterested. The environments look nice, characters not so much.
Skiesofwonder
Walruses, camels, bears, rabbits, tigers and badgers.
Any idea if Xenoblade has real-time fighting?
The way the animals were shown in the beginning of that trailer suggested real-time.
The way the animals were shown in the beginning of that trailer suggested real-time.
Please be real-time!
JordanLMiller
Member
ILikeFeet said:
Sorry, should've been more clear. It's just if time wasn't put into making the game look good, I would hope more effort was spent making the game unique in other ways, like in the battle system for instance... But if it ends up just being turn based or make selections in a menu type thing you can use the classic controller for, I'm gonna be pretty disappointed.
In other words, I just wish they'd show how this plays...
Skiesofwonder
Walruses, camels, bears, rabbits, tigers and badgers.
jj984jj said:
Please don't live up to your tag.
duckroll said:
Yep, this sounds like mitsuda, but it wouldn't be unusual for it to be a co-written song.
Edit: I'm replying to a very old post, and couldn't find out who the real composer is...so correct me if I'm wrong.
ShockingAlberto
Member
I don't think it looks that bad. >_>
Well the reveal article seems to imply this:ILikeFeet said:
AndriaSang said:
Source: http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2010/02/17/xenoblade_preview/AndriaSang said:
Bebpo said:The difference between the graphics in Xenoblade and Xenosaga have to reflect the difference between the budget given by Nintendo and the budget given by Namco.
I mean, that was one of the contributing factors to the Xenosaga series being cut in half :lol
And as long as the scale is huge, I'm fine with what we have. That horse animation was atrocious though.
Hero of Legend
Member
I don't really see the big deal about the characters, is it the same person who designed the characters in Xenosaga and Xenogears? Looks a bit similar from what I've seen of those games.
Hero of Legend said:
Yes, we get it. You have no interest in any games unless they're on a Nintendo system. You don't care about Xenogears, you don't care about Xenosaga. The only reason you're even posting in this thread is because it's a Wii RPG and you're trying hard to be excited. I get it. And I don't give a fuck.
Hero of Legend
Member
duckroll said:
That was uncalled for.
1. I am actually interested in playing Xenosaga, and I'd gladly pick it up if I can find it near me and I probably can, but I have a large backlog of games (why yes, they're on Nintendo platforms), but at least I'm just labeling that game as garbage since it's not a Nintendo as you so claim.
2. I never even said anything negative, I just thought that I myself find the character designs to be alright (maybe I should've said that more specifically), and I was simply wondering if the same character designer is onboard, and then you jumped at my throat.
3. And I'm not "trying" to get excited, I am really excited.
Come on duckroll, you have this blind hatred of me for some reason, I never did anything to you, so why are we fighting?
Don't sweat him. He's just being a troll again.Hero of Legend said:
I for one am interested in this game because I like the concept and scope. The character design certainly isn't the worst I've ever seen, though to be fair, this excitement doesn't nearly match that I have for Last Story for the time being. I need to see a bit more in better quality.
ivysaur12 said:
The main contributing factor to Xenosaga ending up the way it did is still Takahashi's inability to do things on schedule with with a sensible grasp of balancing ambition with deadlines. The same thing happened with Xenogears too. I think it's unfortunate, but we'll see if he's learned much from those experiences.
Soma Bringer showed that he at least understands now how to tell a relatively self contained story with a smaller scope, and deliver it without going overboard. Xenoblade definitely looks much more ambitious, and is closer to his console RPGs, so it'll be interesting to see how he has changed his focus in terms of development and design. In particularly it'll be interesting to see how the scope of the concept as discussed in the interview and in the teasers directly translates into scale of production.
doomed1 said:
You don't want to start this with me again do you?
Hero of Legend said:
No; it's the guy from Soma Bringer
My eyes might be deficient but it looks good to me. From an art direction point of view that is, which is what really matters IMHO. I'm relatively new here but were people always so concerned with technical
trivial
Hero of Legend
Member
Sinople said:No; it's the guy from Soma Bringer
My eyes might be deficient but it looks good to me. From an art direction point of view that is, which is what really matters IMHO. I'm relatively new here but were people always so concerned with technicalthings such as textures, animations, etc, during previous generations?trivial
Oh is it's not Kunihiko TANAKA? Odd and sad they didn't want to keep the consistency.
Then again, this didn't become a "Xeno" game until much later, the game's regardless a thing of its own anyway.
Was Kunihiko TANAKA part of Monolith or was he always freelance? I read he did the characters in the Sand of Destruction TV series.
The art direction is good, but I don't think it's so much that people are concerned with technical aspects as much as how games should be compared to their peers. They always have been, even in the NES and SNES days. There were always comparisons to how arcade counterparts back then tend to have better graphics and larger sprites, and there was definitely a technical interest both in gamers and in the press even back then.
I clearly remember reading previews for games like Beyond Oasis in EGM would mention how many frames of animation the main character had, and how fluid the animations for the attacks are as a result. When the PS1 era came around, games like Soul Reaver were extensively praised for the visual aspects and polygon count was used commonly as a buzz word for how detailed the character models were in comparison to other games.
Here we have a first party RPG from Nintendo, which sounds pretty ambitious in scope and scale, and by right should have had a pretty decent budget for development. This is not some random third party RPG from a third-rate developer and publisher with a team of amateurs or newbies at the helm. It's definitely valid to compare how it looks to games the developer has previously made, as well as that the standard for great looking RPGs are today.
Games are an entertainment medium which takes advantage of various forms of media: graphics, sound, interactivity, etc. Just as movies can be judged on their production values, acting performances from the cast, cinematography, etc, so can games. If it looks like it's not up to the standards we expect, it's only natural to voice it out.
OMG! Look, someone knows how to use google and ANN! Too bad the sources are inaccurate! Poor baby! Tanaka has had nothing to do with Xenosaga after Episode 1. There's no "consistency" anyway. He's a freelance illustrator and was never part of Square or Monolith. He didn't do the character designs for World Destruction either. Image Epoch lied about it. He was contracted to illustrate the cover of the game and he designed like, 2 minor sub-character NPCs. But after he did the illustration, they used his name to promote the game saying he's the "original character designer", and he was pretty upset about that. He posted on his blog that he clearly had no part in creating the characters or designing them from scratch. It's one big con job.
I clearly remember reading previews for games like Beyond Oasis in EGM would mention how many frames of animation the main character had, and how fluid the animations for the attacks are as a result. When the PS1 era came around, games like Soul Reaver were extensively praised for the visual aspects and polygon count was used commonly as a buzz word for how detailed the character models were in comparison to other games.
Here we have a first party RPG from Nintendo, which sounds pretty ambitious in scope and scale, and by right should have had a pretty decent budget for development. This is not some random third party RPG from a third-rate developer and publisher with a team of amateurs or newbies at the helm. It's definitely valid to compare how it looks to games the developer has previously made, as well as that the standard for great looking RPGs are today.
Games are an entertainment medium which takes advantage of various forms of media: graphics, sound, interactivity, etc. Just as movies can be judged on their production values, acting performances from the cast, cinematography, etc, so can games. If it looks like it's not up to the standards we expect, it's only natural to voice it out.
Hero of Legend said:Oh is it's not Kunihiko TANAKA? Odd and sad they didn't want to keep the consistency.
Then again, this didn't become a "Xeno" game until much later, the game's regardless a thing of its own anyway.
Was the Xeno series character designer part of Monolith or was he always freelance? I read he did the characters in the Sand of Destruction TV series.
OMG! Look, someone knows how to use google and ANN! Too bad the sources are inaccurate! Poor baby! Tanaka has had nothing to do with Xenosaga after Episode 1. There's no "consistency" anyway. He's a freelance illustrator and was never part of Square or Monolith. He didn't do the character designs for World Destruction either. Image Epoch lied about it. He was contracted to illustrate the cover of the game and he designed like, 2 minor sub-character NPCs. But after he did the illustration, they used his name to promote the game saying he's the "original character designer", and he was pretty upset about that. He posted on his blog that he clearly had no part in creating the characters or designing them from scratch. It's one big con job.
Nuclear Muffin
Banned
Looks good to me (aside from the horse animation :lol) The sense of scale is very good, no small boxy environments here!
The textures will probably look sharper when you actually play it, the low quality of the video doesn't exactly help!
Still no gameplay though
The textures will probably look sharper when you actually play it, the low quality of the video doesn't exactly help!
Still no gameplay though
Nuclear Muffin said:Looks good to me (aside from the horse animation :lol) The sense of scale is very good, no small boxy environments here!
The textures will probably look sharper when you actually play it, the low quality of the video doesn't exactly help!
Still no gameplay though
Gameplay will hopefully be next week. The trailers seem to follow a theme. The first one opened the "world" section of the site. The second one should open "characters" this week, since that was the focus of the trailer. The third would that in theory cover battle and systems.
jj984jj said:
I don't think it's all bad. They're a relatively amateur developer in comparison with most of the big boys in JRPGs, but Mikage certainly has ambitions and has been growing his company at a steady pace. I'm pretty convinced Mikage is a relatively awful director, and should stay away from game design from now on, but he seems to be able to get bigger publishers to pay attention to his company now, which is a good thing.
We'll see where they are in 5 years or so, but right now, while I disapprove of how they handled World Destruction's marketing and promotion (promising improvements for the US version which never materialized was pretty awful too), it hasn't really affected their other games so far. WD was a mediocre game with high production values, so it's no real loss ultimately that the deceptive marketing left a bad taste in the mouth of the people following in, even if the marketing didn't do that, the game itself would have.
Souldriver
Member
Yeah, I'd say the biggest issue when it comes to the graphics is the textures. When zoomed out, everything looks nice and clean. But once they focus on the characters and do close ups, it becomes a very blurry brown mess.
The game still looks interesting though.
The game still looks interesting though.
duckroll said:
You're right but I also remember the days when RPG were not judged for their graphics.
It was normal that a fighting or action game, for example, with a limited number of environments and characters looked better.
Nowadays, it seems every game has to be a technical achievement whatever its genre is as long as it's not a portable or budget-priced one.
I sure would prefer my games to be great looking but if the (hopefully not so low) budget has been used to create a huge world with things to do instead of putting everything in visuals like, say, FFXIII, it's all good in my book.
Now, I haven't compared but if it's actually a downgrade from Xenosaga III, then I admit it's concerning.