Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles X - OT

Oh, totally! I enjoyed them! You?

I thought the faces looked alright, but I thought the mechon trash mob designs were way too busy, especially for the resolution. http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/xenoblade/images/2/25/Mec...

By my reckoning the character designs in X are trending sharply upwards; https://financialpostbusiness.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/x00...

Just look how clean the new mech and monster designs are by comparison, the same goes for the armor shown thus far. + infinity points for the absence of boob windows and the like (thus far, anyway).

I think Final Fantasy's biggest issue last gen was giving a big, important project to a guy who directed a mediocre spin-off. XIII was the big break for the guy who brought us X-2, and does it surprise you? Does it surprise anyone at all that X-2, XIII, XIII-2, and Lightning Returns are all the brainchild of one man? Oh yeah, he also wrote the Honey Bee Inn sequence in VII. Guy is even worse than Nomura, but for some reason keeps getting work within SE.

I'm sorry, but I thought boob windows and the like we're why we play jprgs. No? All I can think about at the moment is Dickson having his way with Fiora right now...

NOOOOOOO, STRONGLY DISAGREE, no on all accounts. What is you brain!?!

Like really, just think about that. That is BEYOND statutory.

Remember that time that DC tried to explain Power Girl's boob window?

Worse than not even trying at all, lol.

Is that a real comic panel and not a parody? Jeez, this is why you don't do that in the first place! I hope JRPGs can focus on heartwarming character development and leave our loins to be warmed by other pursuits. I mean, really, how shallow are FF13's dress up bikinis on a character as flat as Lightning? With regards to respectful armor design I'm more hopeful for Xenoblade X than I am FF15.

http://game.ava360.com/uploads/thumbs/b2d287409-1.jpg
http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20140925183520/finalfantas...

Notice the magical golden sparkles around, presumably, the female lead in the second picture? Let's just say I'm worried about the gender politics in FF15 from what we've seen so far.

It's not even all about skin shown, you can have a respectful portrayal of a girl in a bikini. You just can't have shallow female characters that serve only as eye candy. That's just weak.

To be fair, Lightning wasn't intentionally shallow. Toriyama tried hard to spend 40 hours convincing us that she had some sort of character arc and emotional growth. She doesn't, but not for lack of trying. The fanservice stuff only came later.

And I don't mind her. Sazh is the only good character in XIII IMO, but Lightning is one of the lesser irritants. Nowhere near the atrocities of Snow or Vanille. She's a one-dimensional stoic badass archtype, but I don't mind horribly. Easily a much better character than a lot of her male one-dimensional stoic baddonkey counterparts. Kratos is one of the worst characters in history, but people love to make up excuses for it.

And yeah, that panel with Power Girl is canon, I'm afraid.

I really hope X doesn't have much (if any) fanservice like that. It just messes up games, and it makes stories harder to take seriously.

^ Also hard to take a game's story seriously when the protagonist is literally an unapologetic mass murderer, but that's not really important. Escapism is kind of the point in both cases.

I would definitely be against really distracting fanservice, like some terrible bath scene that seem to be clogging up JRPGs these days, but eh, I can live with an unexplained boob window.

I would like to take this opportunity to once again sing the praises of Tales of Symphonia and it's sequel, one of which had a not unreasonable bath scene. Sure, it's juvenile, but when I was that age I appreciated the silliness of it. That and sometimes it's nice to see the protagonists in a more human context than 'we're all chaste heroes fighting to save the world from pure evil'. And, you know what? Though they're rarely done well, it's still nice to see a love story in a game. I really appreciated that in ToS: Dawn of the New World, even if the female lead was a bit of an unrealistic character in hindsight. Still, that game had heart, a quality I didn't find in Xenoblade or Xillia.

This kind of thing can't be done in a manner that's blatantly just to show some skin, though, that just feels soulless and contrived. There has to be character development or some human meaning to that or any scene, really.

I'm a sucker for a silly romance plot, but I'm afraid I haven't played through Dawn of the New World yet. Last year I had a signature mocking that terrible "courage is the magic that turns dreams into reality" line, which should tell you how much of it I actually managed to get through.

I'm told it gets better after the first couple hours, so maybe some day. I'm still in the middle of a Vesperia playthough too, come to think of it.

Look at FF XV's obvious fanservice. Cidney is a genderbend version of a dude. Her outfit is Hentai bait and we all know it. Its whatever, though. JRPGS do that... Some better than others.

Cindey is no better or worse than any other Nomura design. He's the Rob Liefeld of video games.

Edit: No, I take that back. His designs are pretty bad, but at least Nomura knows how to draw.

Can you imagine the uproar that would happen when Nintendo inevitably offers a female Link option and female Link has her boobs all out?

With it coming out at the end of April in Japan, do we have any idea of a release in the States? August time?

Hopefully August or July. Devil's 3rd can have October while Zelda U fights in November.

Yeah, that games opening is pretty bad, looking back on it. It's both silly and morose at parts, but the character development and ending to that game are just great in my opinion.

And there's no way Nintendo, who's all family oriented, would put any boob window stuff in games (Bayonetta 2 and XC aren't by them). The closest Nintendo's ever gotten is zero suit Samus, who was all pixelated for most of her appearances. And even zero suit Samus is totally clothed except for her head, even if her suit is a bit skin tight http://www.ssbwiki.com/images/thumb/5/59/Zero_Suit_Samus_SSB4... I mean, Link has shown more skin than she has in her respective games http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v130/MasterofZelda/LinkisSh...

@Haru17 Sadly though, she got out into a semi-bikini in a Smash costume.

Smash Bros is not 'her respective games'. I don't think that was particularly egregious either, as swim-trunks-Shulk also made it in.