Xenoblade X Live Stream

For those interested, here is the link to the live stream that is happening today!

EDIT: The live stream has ended, but you can still watch it here.



My gosh, the hype! NLA looks pretty huge. But I really just want to go cruising in a mech.

Town really surprised me, it looks a lot better then it was show in one of gameplays, mostly I didn't like residential area but they had fix it, still idea of pool inside escaping ship feel strange XD.
I think we will restore that part that is still unbuild like we did with colony 6. Shopping district look the best for me for now, gotta love it.

This world is huuuuge, O_o, I feel my boyfriend won't get to play his Smash Bros for long time when I will buy this game XD, he will regret telling me it's ok to use his console and not buying my own XD.

Oh and Rin and Emma are mt favs, going to be my main team ^^. I stated to wonder if Rin don't have the same VA that MOMO has. It's really similar.
I hope it will come out in EU i NA in summer.

System looks like one from Xenoblade, they only upgrade it and that's good, from new things that I like, monster encyclopedia with monsters, their items, this what XB missed.
I wonder about Dolls, you find them, buy them, and what if you run out of fuel?
Anyway I can't wait . When this game come out, no one will see me for 3 moths at last XD.

Figures that the city 'seed' is obviously a luxery item. Looks like only the richest 'bought' themselves escape from earth. At least in the city seed.

That arc ship must have been huge, all the lower social classes probably had incredibly humble acommodations inside of the ship, instead of the nice roomy city with artificial sunlight and night time, and huge houses with pools, and malls, and pizza parlors.... And they all but died. Only the rich were designed with survival measures if the ship was going down. Maybe some of them made it to escape pods, and they are the ones who are frozen in the zohar-esque caskets waiting to be released? So... its the poor who do all the work rebuilding humanity while the rich sit on their butts by their pools, eating pizza and drinking mimosas?

Gotta admit that gyroscopic city design is pretty awesome. rapidly crystalized spikes are shot out to secure and anchor it to the terrain, and then the land inside levels itself.

Wonder if any other arcs made it?

Dolls look to be handled a similar way as in xenogears. You have to upgrade thier parts, and keep them fueled.

You eventually earn a doll, and can upgrade it through finding parts from fallen peices of the arc (Rewards from the testament union will no doubt be recovering doll parts amid the wreckage of the white whale), as well as rewards for the arms union (Which is about developing new doll and weapons technologies).

If you run out of fuel your best option will likely be to quick travel back to the nearest point you can refuel.

Seems like fuel economy is going to be a huge factor on exploration. Obviously, the amount of fuel you have sets a radius to how far out you can travel. Increasing fuel capacity, increases that radius. Gives a slight starflight vibe.

Pathfinder and Colepedian play into this, as they discover land marks, and survey areas, which then become quick travel points, to which the player can quick travel to without expending fuel, making that point a forward 'base' (These spots will probably be built up into the outposts we saw in the tree house videos as we survey and conquer areas.) from which they now have from thered to explore as far as they can.

English translation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtNzxuly294

So, apparently, the citizens were in suspended animation carrying pods in the hull of the ship called 'life', which evacuated the individual pods during the crash like pinecones spit out their seeds in a fire, and the city seed was pretty much empty, and was built up to what we see, in the two months after the crash, while we, the pc, has been in suspended animation in a life pod.

Its all actually seeming really sensible and cool.

Too sensible and cool. Wheres the god? Got all this cool crap and I dont see any gods in need of a good killing!

For the best. Its going to be great discovering what lies beyond alien meanies as antogonists organically.

Looks like I'm going to be playing this game forever when it comes out. Like how people still play Morrowind.

I'm warming up to XBX. Not that I still don't have a few worries and sad feelings about a few things but I still really want to play it (also incredibly hyped for Persona 5... what a trailer Atlus gave us).
Now, if only the internet could shut up about Tanaka's "horrible/offensive" characters based on the non expressive 3D character models we were shown. The complaints are just insane, so much that Kotaku does articles dedicated to bashing the characters.

I love Tanaka's art (in general and for this game... plus he's definitively part of Xeno's DNA like Amano and Nomura would be for FF) and I feel horrible for him. It gives me Xenosaga 1 to Xenosaga 2 flashbacks, when it comes to western gamers reaction. I really hope it doesn't drive Takahashi to quit working with Tanaka in the future because of these insulting reactions I've seen blooming on the internet .

Based on the same kind of people... graphics/general animations are shameful for "today's generation" and the map is too small ( ). We're talking about an open world game announced 5 time bigger than Xenoblade developped for the WiiU, from a team who is doing its first steps at HD gaming. Same WiiU that can barely contain the actual game, according to Nintendo.

Wait, people are dissing on Tanaka????

Where do I point my flame thrower? >:[

katimus_prime wrote:Wait, people are dissing on Tanaka????

Where do I point my flame thrower?  >:[

The internet. Kotaku. Neogaf. Lots of places where Xenoblade X is talked about actively. Lyn in particular get the most hate (she actually looks cute *she did in the latest video, despite not emoting much, but that's not a design problem but an animation one*, but most people seem to think she looks like a creepy monster doll who needs to be "killed with fire").

Suddenly I'm glad for being a little insular. ._. I guess when anything gets big press, people will pick on it. G4 would not stop ragging on Xenosaga for the longest time, so I've kinda backed away from any sort of bigger VG news sites that aren't dedicated to JRPGs. :/

I don't know his work very much (I listened to a few tracks here and there and I find him rather good with an eclectic touch... not unlike Hamauzu or Yoko "the anime music goddess" Kanno *when I think about it, I would have died on the spot if Takahashi had hired her, I'm a huge long term fan*) but Sawano gets hate as well. There have been a few comments about all the music from the recent XBX video being terrible (I think it's good... maybe the techno song with the male singer is a bit weird *in what context can it be used?* but that's it). Other people will have a total opposite opinion on the tracks revealed.

From what I heard from people, it seems like this composer is either adored or hated with the passion of a thousand suns. He's accused of repeating himself, putting too much engrish lyrics in his soundtracks, being "bombastic"... It's funny because it reminds me of some complaints people had about Yuki Kajiura (at the end of the day, she did great and I loved her work on Xenosaga 2/3).

How do you feel about Sawano ? Any fan here ?

If the tracks posted to the official site are all by Sawano, I'm really digging his stuff! It sounds similar to some of the stuff from the first Xenoblade. Songs with lyrics generally tend not to be so good for overworld music, but there's nothing I've heard that I actively dislike. I like techno to begin with, so maybe I'm the choir and he's the preacher, though. XD

(Also, props for Yoko Kanno. I just started re-watching Cowboy Bebop this week. X3)

I'll be devil's advocate and say I'm not a huge fan of the character models. Tanaka has a great art style, but it hasn't transitioned well into 3D. However, the amount of criticism the character models have been given is beyond ridiculous. I read the Kotaku article and really wish I hadn't. It just felt like propaganda against the game, ignoring the beautiful world and everything else the game has to offer.

If I remember correctly, Sawano has done music for Attack on Titan, Kill La Kill, Aldnoah/Zero, along with a bunch of other anime out at the moment (thus why some people say he is over saturated). I at least liked his work in Attack on Titan and Kill La Kill, especially the latter. The bombastic music really went with the show itself. I usually like soundtracks with songs with vocals, one of the reasons I like Kaijura's music in episode II and III, so I'm being optimistic about Sawano's work. That and Takahashi chose Sawano specifically, which which he seemed a real stickler when it came to the first Xenoblade's soundtrack.

...I guess I did right when I decided to insulate myself from what passes for gaming press nowadays. (And I believe that the current state of affairs around the upcoming X is, unfortunately, could very well be a hired smear campaign.)

As for the content of the video itself:

Gorgeous.

Personally, I think that characters look less... giddiness-inspiring when compared to the landscape, buildings, flora, fauna, various machinery and mecha and all that stuff. I'm just an amateur at this, but, in my opinion, the people models are just not detailed enough for more close-up shots.

And the eyes are set a bit too wide for my liking, but them's the artstyle, I suppose.

And the glow effect around some of the electronics looks a bit too thick if looked at too close.

I also like the guns they carry around more than anything else on their person, but that may just be me.

I do think that 'sci-fi looking poncho' is a much better concept for (what seems to be) the game's frontwoman than a... number of other possibilities they could've went with, even if I don't necessarily like the execution.

I do have to say that a character doing that thing with their legs that the other NPC does looks painful to me though.

Being able to launch a flying camera directly upwards and then rotate it around to get a better look around? Awesome!

EDIT:

As for the size of the regions, the only game I can remember off the top of the game that could top that is Planetside 2 (which has trouble making like half of that real estate look natural and definitely doesn't have enough details to persuade you that anyone actually lives there.)

So, yeah.

Jintoki wrote:I'll be devil's advocate and say I'm not a huge fan of the character models. Tanaka has a great art style, but it hasn't transitioned well into 3D.

I actually agree with you. I mean, I'm not bothered by the models too much and I love his actual designs here... but it's a valid criticism to say that Tanaka's art would be better suited for 2D animation/cell-shading. I just get angry when people bash the artist because at the end of the day, it's Takahashi who is going to decide if he's going to go with full 3D or cell-shading and it's the model artists who are going to reproduce the characters and animate them. Tanaka and his art can't be blamed here, imo.

Yikari wrote:
I'm just an amateur at this, but, in my opinion, the people models are just not detailed enough for more close-up shots.

They look alright to me. The only thing they need is good animation. The first Xenoblade's models improved so much every time they were actually animated (in contrast with all the dialogue sequences *I think there are more of them than fully animated and directed sequences overall* where they all have blank faces... even when they're supposed to be crying like I just saw with Melia

SPOIL:

... Melia also happens to have big eyes... I think some people may have forgotten about this, mainly because you don't mind the weaker looking scenes while you're into the story and are familiar with the characters... and you end up remembering the stronger looking cutscenes at the end of the day because they are used for key moments).

I will give you this on the Tanaka in 3D thing, though. Younger characters with rounder faces are hard to model and look nice in that style, so I understand a little, but perplexed that people are really agressiv about throwing mud. O_o They haven't really shown a whole lot of emotional scenes to us yet either, so I don't think we're getting the whole picture on the characters just yet. I would love, LOVE, to see the 2D designs for all of them.

katimus_prime wrote: I will give you this on the Tanaka in 3D thing, though.  Younger characters with rounder faces are hard to model and look nice in that style, so I understand a little, but perplexed that people are really agressiv about throwing mud. O_o They haven't really shown a whole lot of emotional scenes to us yet either, so I don't think we're getting the whole picture on the characters just yet. I would love, LOVE, to see the 2D designs for all of them.

I dont know. I think they nailed the style they were looking for.

They look like dolls (No implied relation to the new gear names). Pretty standard traditional japanese beauty norms. Western society used to have similar expressions of youthful beauty, and thats where those creepy porceline dolls came from.

But thats not viewed the same way anymore out west. Now we use those creepy dolls for horror movies, because they make us uncomfortable. Maybe that has something to do with the abrasive response...

I am really liking just how creative you can get with the bone structure of the create a character. The preset of the young black man with the braided hair has fantastic bone structure, lot of character. If I could take that and extrude the cheek bones and chin, and change the hair, I could easily make a Big Joe, who will then have to be my mc.

I am really blown away by the texture work in this game. It is really fantastic. Almost beyond belief. And im not talking resolution or anything like that, but simply the fact that its damn near impossible to distinguish individual texture tiles, because they hardly appear to repeat like they do in most games from last gen (and even this gen).

Usually, you get up on top of a hill, and realize 90% of the ground is covered by that one 2x2 ft square texture. Makes it look like the land below is a checkerboard.

But here that camera just keeps zooming out, and although you can see several lod switches, it never resorts to the obvious tiling pattern we see on 360/ps3/wii games.

Gottfried wrote:

katimus_prime wrote: I will give you this on the Tanaka in 3D thing, though.  Younger characters with rounder faces are hard to model and look nice in that style, so I understand a little, but perplexed that people are really agressiv about throwing mud. O_o They haven't really shown a whole lot of emotional scenes to us yet either, so I don't think we're getting the whole picture on the characters just yet. I would love, LOVE, to see the 2D designs for all of them.

I dont know. I think they nailed the style they were looking for.

They look like dolls (No implied relation to the new gear names). Pretty standard traditional japanese beauty norms. Western society used to have similar expressions of youthful beauty, and thats where those creepy porceline dolls came from.

So, "standard traditional japanese beauty norms" are to look like a cartoon character ?

I don't get what you're saying. And the "porceline" effect is pretty much a result of the HD technology used on anime characters. Maybe one thing we could say is that their bodies look more realistic while their faces are cartoon-esque. Is this what bothering people in the end ? People are talking about "uncanny valley" when they're talking about the faces. Usually, it's used to describe ultra-realistic 3D characters with flaws (dead eyes in particular, but also awkward gestures *both of those things are an animation problem*) that break the illusion of reality.

The first Xenoblade had low res models and the cartoony style was therefore more evident (but I'm sure people would be more weirded out if all the characters looked HD... in fact, the characters end up looking weirder on Dolphin when people try to "improve" the graphics).... If you use more realistic textures and body structures with HD technology, people expect the characters to look realistic from head to toes. Not cartoony. Hence my reasoning that maybe cell-shading is better for anime/creative styles in this day and age (I, for example, prefer Yoshitaka Amano's art when it's in 2D... a FF6 console remake would be 10 times more beautiful and creative looking if it was in cell shading/2D instead of full 3D). Unless you can hire Pixar/Disney for continous flawless animation (remember though, at the beginning of 3D animation, cartoony human characters looked weird, like in the first Toy Story).
Well, I'm trying to make sense of all this fuss... even if I personally like the designs and ain't bothered by the faces.

By the way, did you see the female preset models for the MC, Kat ? Most of them are actually pretty (particularly the ones with the bigger eyes, actually... I see nothing ugly about them).
One of my favs I may use (really cute) :



It's the guys I'm not liking as much (besides the Yu Narukami model and a few others). Especially the more "realistic" ones who look kind of constipated (and what's up with the mohawk hairstyle? It's like it ends up in every single character creation tool). And of course, the red-haired one chosen for the game's promotion.
Honestly, the other guy party members look better to me (I like Guin for example, I do find Lu/Lou a bit weird but it's not even Tanaka who designed him).

Also, talking about the options we have but... I kind of have a problem with the character creation tool, as a woman. Some of the voice description for women can be awful (spoiled?ditzy?sexy *where is my sexy dude voice?nowhere*?). Some would take a bit offense with the boob size thing, because it has no male equivalent (chest/muscles size). I don't take much offense with that, though I recognize the issue. What bothers me more is that you can't make an older lady at all while it is allowed for the guys. Mustaches and beards are only limited to certain male faces too (it's not the fact we can't give beards to ladies that bother me lol... it's just the fact we apparently can't apply them to any male face we want).

And looking at this, I wonder how deep this custom system really goes...

RadicalDreamer wrote:

Gottfried wrote:

katimus_prime wrote: I will give you this on the Tanaka in 3D thing, though.  Younger characters with rounder faces are hard to model and look nice in that style, so I understand a little, but perplexed that people are really agressiv about throwing mud. O_o They haven't really shown a whole lot of emotional scenes to us yet either, so I don't think we're getting the whole picture on the characters just yet. I would love, LOVE, to see the 2D designs for all of them.

I dont know. I think they nailed the style they were looking for.

They look like dolls (No implied relation to the new gear names). Pretty standard traditional japanese beauty norms. Western society used to have similar expressions of youthful beauty, and thats where those creepy porceline dolls came from.

So, "standard traditional japanese beauty norms" are to look like a cartoon character ?

I don't get what you're saying. And the "porceline" effect is pretty much a result of the HD technology used on anime characters. Maybe one thing we could say is that their bodies look more realistic while their faces are cartoon-esque. Is this what bothering people in the end ? People are talking about "uncanny valley" when they're talking about the faces. Usually, it's used to describe ultra-realistic 3D characters with flaws (dead eyes in particular, but also awkward gestures *both of those things are an animation problem*) that break the illusion of reality.

The first Xenoblade had low res models and the cartoony style was therefore more evident (but I'm sure people would be more weirded out if all the characters looked HD... in fact, the characters end up looking weirder on Dolphin when people try to "improve" the graphics).... If you use more realistic textures and body structures with HD technology, people expect the characters to look realistic from head to toes. Not cartoony. Hence my reasoning that maybe cell-shading is better for anime/creative styles in this day and age (I, for example, prefer Yoshitaka Amano's art when it's in 2D... a FF6 console remake would be 10 times more beautiful and creative looking if it was in cell shading/2D instead of full 3D). Unless you can hire Pixar/Disney for continous flawless animation (remember though, at the beginning of 3D animation, cartoony human characters looked weird, like in the first Toy Story).
Well, I'm trying to make sense of all this fuss... even if I personally like the designs and ain't bothered by the faces.

By the way, did you see the female preset models for the MC, Kat ? Most of them are actually pretty (particularly the ones with the bigger eyes, actually... I see nothing ugly about them).
One of my favs I may use (really cute) :



It's the guys I'm not liking as much (besides the Yu Narukami model and a few others). Especially the more "realistic" ones who look kind of constipated (and what's up with the mohawk hairstyle? It's like it ends up in every single character creation tool). And of course, the red-haired one chosen for the game's promotion.
Honestly, the other guy party members look better to me (I like Guin for example, I do find Lu/Lou a bit weird but it's not even Tanaka who designed him).

Also, talking about the options we have but... I kind of have a problem with the character creation tool, as a woman. Some of the voice description for women can be awful (spoiled?ditzy?sexy *where is my sexy dude voice?nowhere*?). Some would take a bit offense with the boob size thing, because it has no male equivalent (chest/muscles size). I don't take much offense with that, though I recognize the issue. What bothers me more is that you can't make an older lady at all while it is allowed for the guys. Mustaches and beards are only limited to certain male faces too (it's not the fact we can't give beards to ladies that bother me lol... it's just the fact we apparently can't apply them to any male face we want).

And looking at this, I wonder how deep this custom system really goes...

Well, yes, actually, traditionally it was incredibly attractive to look more like a drawing, to the point Geisha's would put ultra white powder all over their face, and draw upon their face to exaggerate/reduce wanted/unwanted features.

typical anime typically represents traditional japanese cis beauty norms yes, and western media typically encapsulate their cultures cis beauty norms.... Which is why most western women who are designed to look attractive have the high cheekbones, which make them look like fricking skeletor to me. Guess I don't identify entirely with my cultures beauty norms. Its pretty standard psychology.

Lets see, the Japanese beauty norms:
1. Light/white skin
2. Thin high bridged nose
3. Small/slim face, tapering off into that cliche anime pointy chin.
4. Petite/thin
5. Double eyelid- This is probably the most famous one. Everyone knows this one, wether they know they know it or not.

The double eye lid makes asian eyes appear bigger. The japanese will go to astounding lengths for this, from glue, to tape, to it being the countries #1 cosmetic surgery choice.



Every japanese cartoon woman or girl, has double eyelids. Its depiction is pretty much universally known as the tell tale sign for japanese animation.

So lets see, a face thats petite, tapers off into a thin chin point, has a thin but high bridged nose, light skinned, and has double eyelids to make the eyes look super big.... Put em all together and...



Oh, hey, its lynn.

Takahashi and Tanaka are HUGE on cis japanese beauty norms for women who are supposed to be young/attractive. You can see all the same facial features down to the cheruby mouth in characters like Ellie, KOS MOS, MOMO, Shion, Maria, and Now, characters like Lynn.

Yes, Japan enjoys their delicate looking girls (and boys). But you're going to have to explain to me the existence a tons of big eyed american children movies too. Recent ones. Like say... Frozen.
Anyway, I just like Tanaka's cartoon/manga stuff and don't find it much creepy and I'll leave it as that.
Lyn is a cutie, btw.

RadicalDreamer wrote:Yes, Japan enjoys their delicate looking girls (and boys). But you're going to have to explain to me the existence a tons of big eyed american children movies too. Recent ones. Like say... Frozen.
Anyway, I just like Tanaka's cartoon/manga stuff and don't find it much creepy and I'll leave it as that.
Lyn is a cutie, btw.

Thats Lisa Keene. She recently, (well, 'recently' for me) moved out of being a background artist starting in 1985 with the bklack cauldren, to character designer/lead art design. Went bolt ->tangled -> frozen ircc.

She does the character concept arts, her stuff is absolutely fantastic, except for this strange obsession she has with smirks. Being that she is considerablly younger than the generation shes replacing, she has different inspirations than them, it turns out she was a fan of some Japanese animations, and found the enlarged eyes to be very expressive.

She never mentions why she has such a huge obsession with those obnoxious half smirks though.

http://breebird33.tumblr.com/post/12845833335/interview-with-lisa-keene-part-1

But its not necessarily pieces or parts that are giving people these reactions to Tanaka's character designs. Its the specific combination, and intent, to make the characters look like dolls.

Keene's characters for example, dont have that cheruby lower jaw and mouths. A lot of people had the same exact reaction to Shion and Kos MOs when Xenosaga was unvieled.

For people who never had any intention of ever considering the game, its simply something for them to crap in their hands and throw feces at. Which they were going to make some reason up to do anyways. For everyone else, the faces will become less and less problematic, and will grow on them, as they enjoy the game more and more, Halo effects work both ways.

Gottfried wrote:
Being that she is considerablly younger than the generation shes replacing, she has different inspirations than them, it turns out she was a fan of some Japanese animations, and found the enlarged eyes to be very expressive.

But really, it's not just Tangled/Frozen. Disney used the "big expressive eyes" before Japan got influenced by Disney. I found this on the internet :
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=A0LEVien999UukYAu0SPAwx.;_ylu=X3oDMTByMG04Z2o2BHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMQRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkAw--?qid=20060927233627AA363iQ

Appparently, the reason why characters have large eyes is because of how emotional the characters are. Girls tend to how the large rounded eyes the most, but there are boys who have them as well. Also, Osamu Tezuka is (basically the godfather of manga) initially drew characters with large eyes, and his technique caught on. Tezuka was influenced by Disney artists and decided to emulate that art.

While the art can be incredibly realistic or cartoonish, it is often noted that the characters have large eyes (female characters usually have larger eyes than male characters), small noses, tiny mouths, and flat faces. Large eyes have become a permanent fixture in manga and anime since the 1960s when Osamu Tezuka (see above) started drawing them in this way, mimicking the style of Disney cartoons from the United States.

So, this just means things went full circle.

Gottfried wrote:But its not necessarily pieces or parts that are giving people these reactions to Tanaka's character designs. Its the specific combination, and intent, to make the characters look like dolls.

I just disagree with this. I don't think they meant to purposely make the characters look like "dolls". I have a hard time having this discussion because... big eyes were used for so long on cartoon characters for expressiveness and to represent youth that I don't ask myself such questions. By the way, everyone complain about Lyn about being "the worst" but she's only 13 years old.
However, I do think there might be a clash between the models' bodies and the cartoony style of the faces (and maybe the small size of the head compared to the bigger more realistic body... the red-haired preset for the MC look unpleasant because you could fit his head into his neck for example... just realized that lately).

Look at this for example. The body looks like it's from a fashion magazine while the face is cartoony :



Note : I don't think this character/preset look anything like a doll. However, the HD realistic body (I'm honestly surprised at the normal sized hips) + the cartoon head could be seen as "jarring".
Note 2 : the game seems to have issues with shadows (I've also seen a huge running monster not connecting with the ground in the latest direct). I don't care much, though.

Gottfried wrote:Keene's characters for example, dont have that cheruby lower jaw and mouths.

You're telling me Disney characters, female characters in particular (especially during the 90's) didn't have cheruby faces ? Really ? Frozen's girls don't look cheruby ? I beg to differ.

Gottfried wrote:The double eye lid makes asian eyes appear bigger. The japanese will go to astounding lengths for this, from glue, to tape, to it being the countries #1 cosmetic surgery choice.

Reacting late to this part but... you do know that asian people generally do this in order to "look more like westerners" and not "dolls", right ?

RadicalDreamer wrote:

Gottfried wrote:
Being that she is considerablly younger than the generation shes replacing, she has different inspirations than them, it turns out she was a fan of some Japanese animations, and found the enlarged eyes to be very expressive.

But really, it's not just Tangled/Frozen. Disney used the "big expressive eyes" before Japan got influenced by Disney. I found this on the internet :
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=A0LEVien999UukYAu0SPAwx.;_ylu=X3oDMTByMG04Z2o2BHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMQRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkAw--?qid=20060927233627AA363iQ

Appparently, the reason why characters have large eyes is because of how emotional the characters are. Girls tend to how the large rounded eyes the most, but there are boys who have them as well. Also, Osamu Tezuka is (basically the godfather of manga) initially drew characters with large eyes, and his technique caught on. Tezuka was influenced by Disney artists and decided to emulate that art.

While the art can be incredibly realistic or cartoonish, it is often noted that the characters have large eyes (female characters usually have larger eyes than male characters), small noses, tiny mouths, and flat faces. Large eyes have become a permanent fixture in manga and anime since the 1960s when Osamu Tezuka (see above) started drawing them in this way, mimicking the style of Disney cartoons from the United States.

So, this just means things went full circle.

Gottfried wrote:But its not necessarily pieces or parts that are giving people these reactions to Tanaka's character designs. Its the specific combination, and intent, to make the characters look like dolls.

I just disagree with this. I don't think they meant to purposely make the characters look like "dolls". I have a hard time having this discussion because... big eyes were used for so long on cartoon characters for expressiveness and to represent youth that I don't ask myself such questions. By the way, everyone complain about Lyn about being "the worst" but she's only 13 years old.
However, I do think there might be a clash between the models' bodies and the cartoony style of the faces (and maybe the small size of the head compared to the bigger more realistic body... the red-haired preset for the MC look unpleasant because you could fit his head into his neck for example... just realized that lately).

Look at this for example. The body looks like it's from a fashion magazine while the face is cartoony :



Note : I don't think this character/preset look anything like a doll. However, the HD realistic body (I'm honestly surprised at the normal sized hips) + the cartoon head could be seen as "jarring".
Note 2 : the game seems to have issues with shadows (I've also seen a huge running monster not connecting with the ground in the latest direct). I don't care much, though.

Gottfried wrote:Keene's characters for example, dont have that cheruby lower jaw and mouths.

You're telling me Disney characters, female characters in particular (especially during the 90's) didn't have cheruby faces ? Really ? Frozen's girls don't look cheruby ? I beg to differ.

Gottfried wrote:The double eye lid makes asian eyes appear bigger. The japanese will go to astounding lengths for this, from glue, to tape, to it being the countries #1 cosmetic surgery choice.

Reacting late to this part but... you do know that asian people generally do this in order to "look more like westerners" and not "dolls", right ?

Ugh... I feel like I must apologize because my post organizational skills pale in comparison to yours. Sorry for the block responses.

Yes... But also, and mostly, no. Disney was a huge inspiration, to the point that early Osamu Tezuka worked with Disney, providing japanese manga adaptations of works like Bambi. But this inspiration is not for the 'anime' eyes. The stuff he grew up with, the characters that inspired him had big eyes for exaggerrated expression, however, they were big, vertical oval eyes, the 'Mickey mouse' eye, Not the 'anime eye'. It was the Mickey mouse eye Osamu drew inspiration from, for his more cartoon like child safe characters, like astro boy and Kimba.

He used the Disney eyes up until sometime after princess knight/twin knight, where he decided it didnt look as well on characters that werent proportionally cartoony or highly exaggerated, or that he wanted to have raped constantly, have tons of sex, murder, commit suicide, etc.

Osamu dropped the Disney eyes after twin knight, and came up with his anime defining eye style during the 60's, a smaller actually, realistically shaped, and double eyelided eye design that is now synonymous with anime. He wanted to distance himself from the images of media that was safe for children, the thoughts of disney, and needed a design that was more suitable for depictions of constant sex, rape and murder, and mickey mouse eyes on characters that werent meant to be comical werent going to cut it.

Mr. Tezuka begin a series of expirimenting that eventually destoyed his company... ending with iirc the truly bizarre Cleopatra, queen of sex. (It was VERY hard finding a picture of that anime I could use on a forum, for exactly the reasons you think it was XD)


Astro boy uses the mickey mouse eyes that Mr. Tezuka was inspired by. Complete with 'pac-man' pupils/irises.

Cleopactra uses 'the anime eyes'

1001 nights, Cleopatra etc, is the style where Mr. Tezuka's double eyelid design, that set japan on fire, despite being a complete and absolute disaster. Maybe because of all the sex? Who knows. This quickly became the now 'cliche' anime eye style of today, not the mickey mouse eyes he took inspiration from disney with for astro boy.

I know Im being blunt, but I dont think it really matters that you 'refuse to accept the idea', when Soraya saga explained (with irritation lol) Takahashi and Tanaka were purposefully using the 'ultimate japanese feminine stereotype', and have been doing since gears with Ellie 'Takahashi's ideal woman', the doll face.


The eyes, the nose, the cherub mouth (This mouth/cheek style is very specific to the Xeno series minus blade 1, and is not really comparable to 90's cartoon or frozen/tangled). Yup, its the xeno dollface.


And again...


And here we are today. These faces have garnered these same reactions every time they are used. (With the exception of gears, because its only instance was that portrait, and nobody could really tell on that low res psx)output)

As for your example of the red head, no one really has problems with her face, in fact, most people REALLY like it (Its the same face base used for the universally praised 'space rianna'). It goes fine with the body, and no one else ive seen has pointed it out as bad. Its pretty much all lyn, all the time, who is the standard xeno face. (and the mc derp face, but thats a custom character created face, any game that has a create a character feature can have truly horrible faces created with it) Im pretty sure we both know why western audiences tend to be uncomfortable with 13 year old girl characters in japanese style gamess like lyn/momo. Fortunately, it doesnt appear like Monolithsoft has any plans whatsoever to use lyn like they did momo. Nintendo's Monolithsofts depiction of women/girls in general is light years beyond the square/bandco days.

Yeah, I saw the giant floating frog monster too, pretty funny. Probably not going to be fixed, going to have to see if I can replicate that glitch at will for chuckles.

One other problem with some of the faces in past iterations of Xeno (I think it wasn't mentioned yet, but I may have just missed it in the mass of text above) is similarity where there should be none (or much less).

For example, Xenosaga episode I: there are a bunch of actually similarly-looking people (mostly genuine clones deliberately made to look identical) running around, but, if I remember right, neither Shion, MOMO, KOS-MOS or Jr. are supposed to look much alike, plot-wise. But that's not what their in-game models would have you believe, now would they?

I take it all back.


Please dont eat my soul raging skeletor space marine Douglas.

People be crackin' jokes about Space Dunban, but I'm losing my shite over Not As Skeevy Robot Mumkhar up there.