Crossing from the green continent to the white continent looks fun. Although the white continent looks pretty ugly in the preview vids.

I agree, the rest of the game looks gorgeous but that continent looks downright ugly and uninspired.  Its just lots of white bland textures with a couple weird looking trees. Although, the large super hollow mountain thing looks promising!  But other than that, it looks to be the only flaw this game has.

Wow, you learn something new every day! But believe me, I know what snow is. I live in a small town on Lake Erie near Erie PA, and believe me, I get 140-150 inches of snow yearly. That's more than 10 feet.  And snow worlds in video games always feel boring and uninspired to me.  That was my only beef with Skyrim was that it was pretty much... snow.  Snow by its very nature is boring.  But fine, they want to have snow, cool (see what I did there), but make it something different than a enormous field with a few cobweb trees.... I guess I just have a personal vendetta against snow because I deal with ten feet of it that I have to stare at for 7 months of the year. I hate snow. but I will get passed my deep antagonistic attitude about it and have fun with this game so CHEERS

I've actually recently got my hands on the original xenoblade, and I've already logged nearly 50 hours in and i do not see an end in sight.  I cannot wait for this game.  If it is anything like its predecessor I will be a very happy man! I do not care as much about world size as world life, and looking at the trailers i think this world has plenty of that!  Hopefully Aonuma  is taking notes and asking questions.  I'm also quite excited for the online implementation, and to take on some of those late game beasts shown off! 

That music from the latest video though <3

Good lord when will this game stop looking so freaking good! The new environment screenshots released to day made me nearly die! It is so beautiful, there could be no missions or plot in this game and I would be content with just browsing the environments!!

I wonder if there is any more continents or regions.. 

At least we get the tropical lush forestland to counterbalance it... That place looks insane and I cannot wait to delve into its enormity.

Alright Next time it turn mine on I will add you.  I am so amped fo this game, the world looks so varied and crisp.

Having a BLAST!! get it?!

This was the worst E3 show/direct form anyone I have ever seen.. I just wasted 45 minutes of my life..

I really do not know what to think of this.. I'm happy they are planning things but I am also a little bit worried they are announcing it this soon.  If it is a third pillar, I have no idea other than maybe a phone or a tv streaming box thing... But still, I am only worried.

Truly, I don't know what to expect from Nintendo, but I honestly think they might delve into virtual reality, it has always seemed like something Nintendo would do.  I also think that they will release a system that will cater to Nintendo fans more, due to the hardcore nintendo fans being the only ones who have seemed to buy wii u's, as opposed to the targeted "casual" gamers.  I'm not hoping for something that competes with PC's, but rather something that lets me experience my favorite nintendo games in a new way, something Nintendo has always done well with.

I still can't figure out for the life of me Why Microsoft and sony went with x86..

I guess it's just the developers that get the most media coverage and buzz are the ones that I really hate the most, like activision and EA.. So it feels like there is no good devs. But yeah there is still Ninty and FromSoftware and IMO Bethesda although I know someone is gonna flame for me saying that (please don't).. And a couple other ones that I can't think of right now.  Still not that many.

I do think kyoto is a stretch for the size, but it also does make sense, because the original Zelda was supposed to capture the feeling Myamoto had of exploring the woods and landscape of the region in his childhood, and the full scale of it couldn't be used then because of severe limitations of hardware and knowledge of development at the time.  With all the back to the roots talk of this game it would make sense that this is finally the game that realizes that exploration feel that was intended for the original, but couldn't be realistically done until now.  So I do believe that if it is not the size of Kyoto, it will at least be larger than almost any other game we have seen.

In skyrim mountains were background objects blocked off by invisible walls.

in Xenoblade a mountain is a hollowed out dungeon labyrinth. You know, once you fly all the way to the top and into the hollow peak.

 

Well some of them were, but there was actually a massive amount of mountains that could be climbed and a huge amount of dungeons (cookie cutter yes, but still worth exploring) within the mountains. While skyrim's world space is considerably less than XBX, the game world was ingeniously designed with the layout of mountains to appear much larger than it actually was.  I am in no way degrading the genius of the people at monolith, who I agree can layer a world with amazing skill to add tons of 3 dimensional  space, but I am arguing that Skyrim is also designed quite fantastically when you come to terms that the world is no bigger than its predecessor (even a little smaller) but feels enormous do the the elevation differences added.  Almost any open world game uses mountains or ocean to conceal invisible boundaries, even Xenoblade.  It will be interesting to see how XBX is received in the west, and to see if it lives up to its hype.

I did some research and according to some figures on the internet, Zelda Wii U will have 5 times the space (square km) of Skyward Sword's world. Xenoblade X will, likewise, have 5x the space of Xenoblade.

It was also estimated on these forums that Xenoblade would have massive amounts of data, close to 50GB. Well it has been revealed the game is 22.7GB, less than 4x the size of Xenoblade. That's not much for the upgrade from 480p. http://nintendoevery...es-x-is-22-7gb/

I'm saying to get hyped and have fun with these games, but try to leave room for some realism as well. These games will be great, but probably far from godlike. The next generation of consoles should have maps at least 2-4x the size.

I guess you have never heard of compressed data.. Something Nintendo has always been a master at.

Dang, sometimes I feel like no one cares about making good games any more other than Ninty..

The vast majority of them were. The number of mountains you could actually scale, and werent props blocked off by invisible walls can be counted on your hands.

The games world is HORRIBLY designed, using a much loathed shortcut that should have died with the n64 era called spatial compression. Often called potato land/ potato scape, potato worlds, etc.

"You are Krutor, a wild barbarian from the land of Morkroch. You have travelled a very long journey, across high mountains to the famous imperial city of Lhota, the capitol of the world and largest agglomeration in the known universe, whose fame touches the stars.

The city consists of precisely fifteen buildings (one of which is the imperial palace); the town is inhabited by 30 NPCs, including Emperor Lojza, Archmage Lotrando and all of the members of the guilds of thieves, mages and warriors.

You visit the emperor, who sits alone in the throne hall, and he assigns you with an quest. The land is terrorised by an evil dragon from hell and Lojza is powerless. He has sent an entire imperial army against it, but the monster has killed all five soldiers. Now, he needs a hero like you! You have to find and climb the mystical mountain, Lohen, on which no human has ever set foot, and behead the dragon.

You accept the quest and set out from the town gate. The mystic mountain Lohen is precisely 150 metres from the gate and is about 50 metres high. All of the inhabitants of the city are either not good, blind or crippled if they have not managed to notice it for centuries. After an approximately 30-metre walk to the mountain, you come to ‘no man’s land’ and are attacked by bandits. During another 120m walk to the peak, you also notice an ancient fortress Rumloch, a secret dungeon of doom and a bandit hideout. At the peak of the mountain, you kill a one-hundred-metre dragon by beating its foot with a rusty sword and drinking potions. Then, you rob the corpses of the imperial army (all five) and on the way back to the castle are killed by a wild boar.

Welcome to an average RPG.

This environment compression however negatively affects the graphics. In order to place a castle, cave or bandit camp every ten metres, you have to create a lunar landscape and hide the locations in nonsensical craters or beyond a hills that you must make as high as possible so that it would not be possible to see very far behind them. The result is an environment which is miles away from a real landscape, it is absolutely impossible to orientate within it without a map and in most cases looks bad. I call it a potato landscape, because the terrain surface is reminiscent of a potato’s surface.'

Its a bad, old, used up design trope that needs to die in fire.

This was originally done because games simply couldnt handle the actual scale, it was a shortcut and a compromise pioneered by games like the first 3d zeldas, and the sandbox equivilant by modern elderscrolls (Notably after elderscrolls 2, which was a computer generated landscape, that really WAS that big....) instead of artist designed landscapes). Unfortunately, instead of realizing this was a shortcut and a compromise, it was just aped into oblivion, even long after the power to do more was plentily available.

This is done so that players (Purposefully conditioned) ever dwindling attention spans are given a trinket every 10 feet so the game doesnt feel boring, because todays game designers are simply not capable of designing a world that is just plain interesting to explore, or fixing problems with traversal, they choose to focus on either designing a game that is small with stuff every 10 feet, or one that is big, where you move really fast over vast quantities of nothing, because none of them want to take the time, or are even capable, of doing both. Todays world designers are not capable of transitioning the snes era rpg/adventure game worlds into proper 3d. We are still using all the same shortcuts to fake them. Modern publishers feel that kind of time and money is far better spent on marketing. Which is why all those 'if you can see it you can go there' blurbs are pretty much all lies.

Xenoblades guilds arent mage guilds theives guilds assassins guilds- the standard and run into the ground tropes, who all have the same objectives, kill mofos. They are Cartographers, treasure hunters, philanthropists, resource gatherers, technology creators... And then, only two of the 8 are directly focused on killing things.

Since your only method of interaction with the world is no longer fricking killing everything in it, or talking to the guy who tells you to go around the corner and kill everything in it, it doesnt have to be designed around the ludonarrative dissonance, of your only interaction with the world is killing the crap out of it, so that you are killing a bunch of bandits around a fire place, or a ramshackle village, (Full of people you are obviously going to kill and reload and kill, in a variety of ways) where you are told to go kill.

THis spot is good for a data probe, this spot has a peice of wreckage to salvage, this spot has good resources to send back to the town, this spot has a lifepod full of people to recover, and yes, this spot has herds of dangerous creatures to subjegate, and that spot over there has an extra powerful unique monster.

Since there is so much to do, you dont have to design the game around not showing that everything is literally the same exact thing (mofos to kill, or mofos telling you who to kill), and its all right next to each other... You can move beyond the potato landscape design.

Which means, now 90% of the mountains are no longer off limit barriers with invisible walls there to make sure you dont find out the big bad guy who you are supposed to journey across vast distances to kill, is really just 50 feet behind the hut you accepted the quest from, on the otherside of the mountain. you are just forced to go the long way, all the way around.

No short cuts, no cop outs, no potato design.

Look, I'm not saying Skyrim is the best game ever, and I am certainly not saying Xenoblade looks worse, but I have to disagree with your brutal comments about Skyrim.  I definitely believe that they did use some cheap methods to make the world, and it should have had an extra year of development because the original release was almost unplayable.  But it was a game with about 3 years of solid development, and I believe that part of the reason the game is designed the way it is is because of the modding community, which consists almost entirely of amateurs, and Bethesda literally supplies all of us with beautiful kits to mod the game. After 5-10 mod downloads, the game world can be completely overhauled into literally whatever you want it to be! Also, if you ever listen to Todd Howard (the producer of ES 3-5) he agrees with many of the points you make, such as lazy developers and what not.  While Skyrim is in now way a perfect game, it is also by no means a terrible game, and I think most of the Gaming community would back me up with that.  Compared to today'sAAA carp such as CoD, Assassin's Creed, and all the other movies trying to be games that get released, Skyrim is far superior. It may be a tired rehash of a formula that has been used for 20 years, but it doesn't pretend to be anything else, and it is a formula that works and that I enjoy.

I am extremely excited for Xenoblade X, as I have just finished the first, and I do agree that the world design is fantastic and beautiful.  I will admit I have only a fraction of the technical knowledge that you do, but I like it that way because the less thinking I do then the more pure enjoyment I can get out of these games.

There'd be a massive graphics downgrade in order for that to happen.

Considering the team making Zelda U is at least twice the size of probably closer to three times the size of the Monolith team, it really isn't a huge stretch.  Also, I guarantee the monolith studio in Kyoto is helping Ninty with development.  So that even adds more to the dev team. Also, it has been in at least some state of development for 4 years, that is a huge amount of time!  Also, judging by the videos of the two games, X's environment does look more polished, but that may be because it is 7 months closer to release, which is also a massive amount of time!

Wow.. Probably zombiU and some dumb game that was released three years ago that we are now just getting a port of and the rest of the gaming community will rainbow on us some more but than I can shove X and Bayonetta down their throats

I get the feeling it wont matter. The games already been falsely labeled.

 

This will be the game known as 'That nintendo game with no voice chat or local bots' Loooooooooooooonnnnggg after its been disproven.

Kind of like how the wii u is labeled as the system without enough power to compete yet mario kart 8 and Smash 4 and xenoblade x all look par if not better than almost all top PS4/XB1 games. Plus they run at 1080 60fps, something that even naughty dog isn't able to do with U4(though that game does look leagues ahead of any console game in terms of realism).  Though i now own an X1 and am happy with the purchase I really don't see any major difference in quality of graphics over wii u.  But yes, once a game or system has been labeled it is very hard to loose that label.  

smash is 1080p 60 fps, Zelda WW is 1080p 30 fps, Mario Kart is 720p 60fps,  and Xenoblade is proabably going to be 720p 3o fps.

 

Interestingly enough, thats a strange little pro wii u label of misinformation gamz girrnalisz spread that has also stuck. Particuarly hilarious to see the sony/xbox fanboy meltdowns over the fact they thought all these wii u games were 1080p, as if resolution itself was the only aspect to graphical fidelity. Theyve been brainwashed well....

 

Really just goes to show just how much damage gamz girnoliz who dont get their crap straight can cause, and just how far and long the misinformation they spread can go.

Wow, that is interesting.. But still these games are all fantastic and That is what matters, the days of graphics actually enhancing gameplay were ended by the HD generation, and now I look to interesting and new gameplay as well as just the overall fun I can have playing a game.  It is why i will replay Banjo Kazooie and Tooie every single year no matter how old and outdated the graphics get!