Yea, FFXI has some awesome character art, best in the mmorpg genre imo.
Anyway
Jehuty
Anubis
Leon
The boss
Anyway, i absolutely love ZOE2's art, konami's best imo and it would be cool if they would make a game inbetween the Metal gear and ZOE universe, its pretty close afterall, look at the mech design, the articulation joints of jehuty and metal gear ray of mgs2 are pretty much the same, along with the text writing on the plate armor. Would be cool to mix in a tactical espionage stealth action game with mecha fighting, go steal the super duper cool mech from the bad guys by stealth, then have fun causing carnage with your new toy
Rei_Toei: It does look like NI work; I wouldn't doubt the guy freelances like alot of art directors, (translation: OMG, that looks cool, is it coming over to NA?!?!?!)
Prince of Space: Bingo; it's like they slapped a tiger's head on a man's body; then got busy with the stencils and spray paint for stripes. Meh.
Alex: I like that Pally's armor because it's detailed without losing the form or looking "busy".
Bloke: I used to think that there's something in the water over there that allows Japanese art directors to blow people away with designwork that is extravagent and flashy without being goofy and pointless; now, I figure most western AD's rarely involve themselves in video game designwork. Maybe this will change with the onslaught of game sales and media coverage.
Semjaza: His work is done justice by the coders that crafted the shading algorithms, the sound guys picking SFX with the same grab-your-attention style as the visual, and the guys who did the animation work for each entity in the game. Bless those guys.