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[lostinblue]

I can't play my Wii U in my bed since the range is terrible on the gamepad.

I've played a bit of it on my Wii, but I'm more likely to tolerate all of the sidequests when I can stop and continue whenever I want, wherever I want. Loss of graphical fidelity doesn't mean much since I wouldn't appreciate an HD version at all. I wouldn't play an HD version (didn't play the regular version more than 10 hours), but if the framerate is solid on this, I'll play it a lot. So, yeah, makes sense to me. I'm far more interested in a portable re-release than an HD one for an rpg.

Handhelds + rpgs = bliss.

Don't get me wrong, I get the whole "portable is not so bad" thing, I have DKCR on the Wii and it's just not the sort of game that clicked for a lot of hours.

On a portable? Oh...my...god. I completed it after tons of hours of punishment. It just lends itself to it, because you leave home with a game and your ailing grandpa or something, go to the hospital, it takes 6 hours to even know what's going on. And you're been playing a hard game sans the option to swap it for anything else because you took a cartrige alone.

I love that, I would just give up and do smaller runs at home... probably never finish it unless I was set on it.

Not the case for me with Xenoblade though, game deserves to be on a big screen and the sound is so good you're losing a lot if you're playing outside without headphones... sidequests are optional too.

I do get it, but while I do understand the pick-and-play advantage of portable RPG's (and enjoy them), I do prefer them to be as involving as possible hence I usually wouldn't prefer them for a home console RPG.

I would like a cross-play feature, if they did 3DS+Wii U, but I'd never lean towards the n3DS-only version as a thing I thought was missing, as a plus... Ok, like you said sidequests make more sense when you're out and about, but proper plot... no, it's diminishing this way, in a way the Wii already sacrificed so much to pull this game's scope, I never thought I could see it downported further.

I wanted an up-port... Like Wind Waker Wii U.

 

[K-A-Deman]

I'd love to post a bunch of comparisons in response to this, but I'm sure it would be met with the typical "It doesn't look that bad on my Wii."

Dolphin is the way to play Xenoblade. Hilarious that anyone would even think of refuting this.

I'm not refuting the Dolphin play style so long as it's with an owned copy. What I contest with is how HD texture packs make everything look better. Visually, I suppose, but as far as I'm concerned, It makes all the models in the game feel and look flatter than the game originally intended. Take the indentations on armor for instance; they're more defined on an HD texture, but then the fact that there's no actual geometry accounting for it becomes more apparent. Or the stars in the sky; most screenshots with an HD pack i've seen makes them too small and clashes heavily with how they're portrayed originally. Yes, they look more realistic, but that's counter to the game, where (MID-to-END SPOILERS

Spoiler

It's revealed everything is a recreation of our real universe.

. the blown out effect does better to reinforce the feel of a 'not quite' surrounding. And all of it just brings out how striking the technical limitations of the game itself is; the lack of shadows on the ground for instance.

I'm not arguing that there's no legitimacy to the HD texture mods, but it trashes the meticulously created world that Monolithsoft attempted to create within the confines of the limited hardware: the same philosophy that Nintendo has embraced and the rest of the industry forsook for 'moar powa, moar graphix.'.

Says you, after playing it in Dolphin again for the last couple of days without a shadow of a doubt Xenoblade's environments aren't done justice in 480p on the Wii and definitely not at the 3DS' 240p. 1080p makes an already visually pleasing game like Xenoblade absolutely shine.

I'm sorry but I disagree. As I stated in my address to Ysiadmihi, I feel that the increase in texture quality brings out poorer results in the geometry and technical specifics of the game's engine. Too much is brought down to bring up a small portion of the game, and that is a philosophy that I am firmly against.

This is the stuff I've been trying to learn for years now; How to not only create good looking models and textures, but how to make it all 'work'; make it feel together and harmonious. I can't appreciate a game on graphics alone anymore, sad to say. There needs to be more than just a fancy coat of paint to make something 'better', but unless Monolithsoft releases a construction software like Bethesda or Valve, texture swaps are about the best that can be hoped for unless a dedicated fan team puts in more effort. And then what's the point when were arguing between what is essentially Xenoblade Chronicles and Project XC?


EDIT ------

Which is silly because 3DS will have more than enough RAM to have it 1:1 texture quality wise. Hopefully it's just the case of it being in beta and not representative of the final product.

With Nintendo, I don't doubt they'll make it look better

I refute it in the same way I refute Ocarina of Time or RE4 texture packs being the shit.

They are higher res, yeah. They can look better yeah. But I never like them as much as the original textures bar, a professional developer taking it and redoing everything, or having the original assets with better quality. Plus, they're limited in what they can do, sometimes to fix something you have to add extra detail like extra geometry, texture packs can't do that.

It's down to original intent.

And since I went over the over 3000 screencaps I did of Xenoblade running natively...

Game looks darn good as is, and I'd kill for a HD port. By HD port I mean up-ported with enhancements, not just in HD, I mean better models, stencil shadows, self shadowing... better "official" assets.

Without that, the game is fine tuned for the Wii and it's 480p resolution (and even then, some texture work can look hideous), it clearly has the potential to scale really well... But I won't rely on a texture pack to pull it.

Anyway, that shit looks pretty rad on my TV, HD or not. And the fine tuning it has is for 480p, without texture packs in HD it never appears crisp. On the Wii, bar some big offenders here and there, it's quite pornographic.

It's an SD game, it's not a HD game trapped on a SD console. And that's what I wanted to see changing sometime, that was before the 3DS version was announced of course.

This post is more eloquent and prettier to look at then my all-written crap.

 

[Skilletor]

Don't get me wrong, I get the whole "portable is not so bad" thing, I have DKCR on the Wii and it's just not the sort of game that clicked for a lot of hours.

On a portable? Oh...my...god. I completed it after tons of hours of punishment. It just lends itself to it, because you leave home with a game and your ailing grandpa or something, go to the hospital, it takes 6 hours to even know what's going on. And you're been playing a hard game sans the option to swap it for anything else because you took a cartrige alone.

I love that, I would just give up and do smaller runs at home... probably never finish it unless I was set on it.

Not the case for me with Xenoblade though, game deserves to be on a big screen and the sound is so good you're losing a lot if you're playing outside without headphones... sidequests are optional too.

I do get it, but while I do understand the pick-and-play advantage of portable RPG's (and enjoy them), I do prefer them to be as involving as possible hence I usually wouldn't prefer them for a home console RPG.

I would like a cross-play feature, if they did 3DS+Wii U, but I'd never lean towards the n3DS-only version as a thing I thought was missing, as a plus... Ok, like you said sidequests make more sense when you're out and about, but proper plot... no, it's diminishing this way, in a way the Wii already sacrificed so much to pull this game's scope, I never thought I could see it downported further.

I wanted an up-port... Like Wind Waker Wii U.

You say it's diminishing, I say I will never play it unless it's on a handheld. Isn't it better that people experience a thing at all even if, in your eyes, it isn't "as good." The things you mention don't matter to me. Except for music, I guess. The drop in quality will suck, but that's what an OST is for. I couldn't care less about a jrpg plot. I'm in it for the gameplay.

 

[wmlk]

You say it's diminishing, I say I will never play it unless it's on a handheld. Isn't it better that people experience a thing at all even if, in your eyes, it isn't "as good." The things you mention don't matter to me. Except for music, I guess. The drop in quality will suck, but that's what an OST is for. I couldn't care less about a jrpg plot. I'm in it for the gameplay.

The graphics for this is literally as crucial as the gameplay. I just don't understand why people act as if graphics aren't a big deal, especially for something where resolution is killer for a game like this.

 

[lostinblue]

Generally I could agree if it was a game that wasn't very ambitious graphically for todays standards. Say... Rune Factory Frontier? gimme that on the 3DS, yeah so we can finally get rid of those very chiby representations present on the DS/3DS versions. Skies of Arcadia... Majora Mask, Grandia 2, Paper Mario 2, the pre-rendered PSone FF's, FFVII and FFIX (I despise VIII) or whatever (FFVI and Super Mario RPG should have been ported to the DS alongside Chrono Trigger). Anyway - Stuff it can handle and actually make it better than before.

(I had a mental list of shit I could applaud being ported to the 3DS, dumped most of it now - Xenoblade wasn't there)

Xenoblade though, it realy can't [be better than before, from an experience standpoint], because even if it did reproduce it like the Wii did, the game would be asking for more. And sadly, it doesn't and won't. Down to resolution and actual power.


It was one of the few games I actually played doing the audio out to the hifi+speakers. I usually don't bother from the top of my head I did for Shadow of the Colossus, Twilight Princess and Baten Kaitos Origins, or something.

Once in a blue moon I'll bother if I feel it's worth it. I felt it was.


And it wasn't just that... it felt like a game that could kill, say... a PS4 if you took it and threw money at it as it put to shame the open world ambitions of pretty much everything japanese that happened last gen on more powerful platforms - but was trapped on the Wii, which wasn't bad (unlike most people state) because it looked good enough and had it been an AAA game it could still be in production, stuff like different weapons... ultimate sword could be the prior one but orange now, and dealing 5 times the damage. I don't mind that sort of cheap make believe with lots of repeats and color swaps, it's what made the game possible in a way rather than losing a lot of time modeling a blade I'll notice once. Variety in items clearly spurred from that... from the fact they knew they could get away with it made it so that creating assets took a lot less time to do.

But things changed and now it could warrant the extras it lacked a few years back, precisely because it has proven itself.

Animation-wise, and cutscene-wise, it was all there, just not fleshed out to said hollywood wannabe standards but if you did polish the assets, you wouldn't have to redo anything, individual finger animations, skeleton animations, inverse kinematics... it was all there and they didn't cut corners, all they did was in order to make that scope possible on the Wii. It was a balancing act because the Wii wasn't powerful then, and sacrificing graphics for scope could make it look ridiculous, but they aced it.

Now, downgrading it further is compromising a very thin balance in my book. I really believe this... it's one of the few games that I find sad, compromising further.


Anyway, it's so well directed it was one of the games I enjoyed playing on a home console the most in the last few years, precisely because it felt better than a portable, it was down to immersion, pace, music... I never felt like I wanted it on a portable like the 3DS. HD version on the Wii U and using remote play on it? sure, I've thought about it.

I agree to disagree nonetheless, and I do get your point. It's just not something I actively wanted. Sometimes we don't know what we want until someone offers it, in my case I think it's the opposite, this product didn't come to fill a hole we hadn't thought of, there's no hole.

 

[K-A-Deman]

The graphics for this is literally as crucial as the gameplay. I just don't understand why people act as if graphics aren't a big deal, especially for something where resolution is killer for a game like this.

Personally, I'm not arguing that graphics aren't a big deal, only that they're a small part of the greater whole that the game is made of; the world design, characters, music, and gameplay. A new coat of high quality paint only makes the technical limitations of nearly everything else more apparent, and that sacrifices how well the game balanced all its aspects in the power of a SD console.

 

[vareon]

The correct solution is of course to have both Xenoblade HD and Xenoblade 3DS with cross platform save.

Which Nintendo will implement in 2 x 10^3 years.

 

[Ysiadmihi]

It's down to original intent.

This means nothing to me when it looks so much worse.

I also doubt the original intent was for the visuals to be destroyed by upscaling on HDTVs anyway.

 

[lostinblue]

This means nothing to me when it looks so much worse.

That's down to opinion.

Like someone said, texture packs have more of a tendency to have stuff appear out of place or flat.

Because it's a cooperative effort, even if some dude is almost as good as a pro doing it or takes huge care in reproducing something, he can only do so much, which for a game this big could be... I dunno 5%. There's no Quality Assurance and never enough qualified people for these.

Because qualified people work, and get paid to do this on tons of games who get remasted or done from the ground every year, they don't have the free time to do it pro-bono for an emulator for 20 people to play (more like in the hundreds but you get my point).

They also realize whoever did the game probably has better assets, so all the work they're having gets more and more frustrating.

I've used several packs, I was there when they first appeared and even contributed, but they never satisfied me, I can appreciate them for what they are but I want Xenoblade HD done by Monolith and published by Nintendo sometime, properly done. Not a HD pack... HD pack doesn't cut it for me, and due to that I prefer it as is on my Wii in low res.

I also doubt the original intent was for the visuals to be destroyed by upscaling on HDTVs anyway.

Looks fine on mine otherwise I'd play it on a CRT instead.

Like I said, shit TV's.

 

[Ysiadmihi]

Looks fine on mine.

This is why I didn't want to bother getting into this. Common sense and an understanding of what upscaling does to an image means nothing when people have magical consoles/TVs.

 

[Chance Hale]

Don't know what you'll are talking about, game looked great on my t.v.

Spoiler

thanks dolphin/780ti

 

[lostinblue]

This is why I didn't want to bother getting into this. Common sense and an understanding of what upscaling does to an image means nothing when people have magical consoles/TVs.

Good upscaling does miracles.

Apart from re-rendering it in HD, that it doesn't. rule of thumb is upscale can only make it look as it should, not any better. But bad upscale can make it look a lot worse.


anyway it doesn't look bad compared to a CRT (although not as good because aliasing is more evident) and I prefer the extra inches.

In case you're wondering by CRT's I mean Sony PVM's not just any crap. I like to treat myself well just so if a game's image quality is ass, I know it's not my TV. Xenoblade is not ass, a lot of Wii games are though.

 

[K-A-Deman]

This is why I didn't want to bother getting into this. Common sense and an understanding of what upscaling does to an image means nothing when people have magical consoles/TVs.

It's not magic; it's an understanding that a lot of people put time and a significant investment into having a game viewed a certain way, and that the 'vanilla' way is already completely drop dead gorgeous. And we're arguing that upscaling textures alone doesn't do the game justice and shouldn't be held to as high a standard as it is (at least that's my stance, I can't speak for the fellow that seems to be misplaced in colors.).

Actually that reminds me; do we know if Monolithsoft is having a hand in this port? if they are, we might be getting a little more of a proper quality shift than just an engine port.

 

[lostinblue]

Actually that reminds me; do we know if Monolithsoft is having a hand in this port? if they are, we might be getting a little more of a proper quality shift than just an engine port.

I'd wager it's probably TOSE.

... Or Grezzo (but I hope those are stuck with Majora Mask).

 

[Skilletor]

The graphics for this is literally as crucial as the gameplay. I just don't understand why people act as if graphics aren't a big deal, especially for something where resolution is killer for a game like this.

Graphics are a big deal. If the gameplay is in tact and it looks good for a handheld game, I don't care how it looks on the Wii. I don't think the game is some amazing looking game on Wii or Dolphin, so I don't understand what all the fuss is over the graphics in this game.

And I would never, ever, ever say graphics are as crucial as gameplay, so we have a fundamental disagreement there.

 

[Easy_D]

I'd wager it's probably TOSE.

... Or Grezzo (but I hope those are stuck with Majora Mask).

I swear, if Grezzo is working on anything but Majora's Mask I will be so mad. They did an outstanding job on Ocarina.

 

[Nostremitus]

The correct solution is of course to have both Xenoblade HD and Xenoblade 3DS with cross platform save.

Which Nintendo will implement in 2 x 10^3 years.

The corect solution would include cross-buy.

 

[K-A-Deman]

I swear, if Grezzo is working on anything but Majora's Mask I will be so mad. They did an outstanding job on Ocarina.

Isn't it a touch selfish to be mad at a studio for working on a game that's not the one you want?

 

[Orniletter]

Looks fine on mine otherwise I'd play it on a CRT instead.

Like I said, shit TV's.

My relatively new Sony TV is pretty damn good at handling 480p content.

I was shocked just how bad my old Toshiba TV made everything look in comparison.

I agree.

Fake Edit: I´ll still get Xenoblade 3D day one.

 

[Gonzo The Great]

Isn't it a touch selfish to be mad at a studio for working on a game that's not the one you want?

Everybody wants it, so he's not being selfish at all.

 

[K-A-Deman]

Everybody wants it, so he's not being selfish at all.

I must be no one then...

Spoiler

Whatever Greezo's working on, I'm confident they'll be giving it their all. even if it's Majora's Mask.

 

[Easy_D]

Isn't it a touch selfish to be mad at a studio for working on a game that's not the one you want?

No, to give players an oppurtunity to play that magnificient game is justice. Honestly, the original release is awful to play today. It's sub 20 frames per second. Also really curious whether they'll add a Hero Mode to it as well.