Fulgore lookin good, interesting to see some of the details, like him avoiding moves while going into Predator-cloak, and the inclusion of his triple projectile, DP, and what looks like a boost-dash. Is MAXIMA BEAM his Instinct? Talk about something that looks like a Super. I really like the Factory Steam / Lazer Beam sound his section of the trailer ends on, giving characters individualized sounds (like Spinal's bone rattlings) is one of the things this game does very well.
His stage finally gives us a glowing Reddish / Brownish tone background, something in nice contrast to the strong use of Blues seen in many other stages.
Iron Galaxy... no idea what to feel yet. Sure, the work on 3rd Strike OE is great, and Divekick is a nice beginning to an emerging property, but this feels like an even more blank set of expectations than Double Helix. Even following Double Helix' and Microsoft's Internal Team's layout, there's still going to be a signature style and change that comes from a new set of devs, and I've no idea how that's going to feel. Will be very interesting to see how it all turns out!
On Art Direction changes... I think DH takes more flack than they deserve. I'm sure everyone of the vocal fan complaints could have been overcome if the game was just focusing on delivering near clone-like characters, and a music track to go with them.
But we got lively Stages, Accessories, Retro / Alt Costumes, and Alt accessories for them, along with 12 colors that often had some decent changes within them themselves. All while already-released characters were being updated with stuff along the way, too. I really like the ambitious foundation they set up for content going forward, and I wouldn't have traded any of it to fix some of the minor-as-hell quibbles that came up. The gap of time between S1 and S2 would have probably provided a good space to work on refining elements that came up lackluster.
What's IG's art direction looking like? Wish I knew! I wouldn't mind seeing Artgerm turn out some portrait art for the game, but I'm sure the use of Udon artist in III OE has little to do with the designs coming to KI! And I was really happy with the animation quality in KI as well, will the new team have as innate a sense of timing? I mean, Divekick barely HAS animation! ;-)
And on to Story / Arcade Mode... Ok, we have some in-game cinematics shown off as examples. Good. I'd much prefer in-game stuff, especially if it allows the use of your own customizations, over pre-rendered CGs for the sake of CG. Now how many will we get per run? Just an intro, or an ending?
Lobbies look good... design is nice enough, doesn't give much away about functionality, yet. We'll see how it all works out soon enough.
Personally, I've enjoyed the incremental growth of KI over this time. It's been great having a fighter that has worthwhile content to come back to every once in a while, rather than just color palettes and gameplay flow-altering reactionary balance changes. Especially nice to pay for it all up front, and not have to worry about having the money on LIVE upon release day, or having to save it up, for some unknown value at a later date. So much better than going through months or years of silence between useful content delivery.