Lost Odysee Screens

There's no way the scene with the lava liquid physics pouring down from the sky everywhere is real time, even the very best Novodex fluid dynamics demos which use up 100% of a P4 3Ghz end up using bowling ball sized particles and look more like a vectorballs demo with gravy than the kind of liquid physics shown in that CGI.

 

No one said that scene was real-time...

 

It's obviously CG, no one disputing that.

 

just amazing

 

On the battle system:

Yes it was boring and no the addition of "missing" key features would not have made a diference.

If you've played alot of these games you know that they all start out pretty boring. The introductory battles are more often than not "gimmes" where the player does nothing more than repeatedly attack to progress. Usually a little experimentation is possible with the availability of a few simple spells or techniques. Note the player casts a fire resistance spell fighting the machine.

I've never been able to come to a solid conclusion on the quality of an RPG's battle system with anything less than 20 hours of play. These things tend to be a slow burn. I'm suprised so many are commenting on the battle system when in my opinion, we haven't really seen it at all.

On graphics:
Excellent lighting and shadowing aside, I can see where people are not being impressed. The main character detail is just awesome, but the enemies and all battle animations are a step down. Nonetheless, it's technically up there with the best we've seen. The main static character in particular is on par with the girl from FF13, even if lacking the awesome animations.

 

Thats very impressive. The visual quality of this game judging from the screens is superb! I have to download a video though since I an currently not using a PC with fast connection.

Whats the best part of the game's visuals for you who have seen the video?

 

So impressive. Just watched the CGI to Game transition...amazing. Downloading the 106MB IGN video now. Maybe this game will be the RPG that Xbox/Xbox360 has lacked.

 

Footage from the TGS demo room . Very long.

http://www.jeux-france.com/downloads6562_video-lost-odyssey.html

 

Take it with a grain of salt but I heard one of the key features, "controllable", would allow you to move your character around the battlefield in realtime, that would make quite the difference.

 

Off screen capture from the demo..

 

Something like that, hopefully. What I'd like to think it is, is like, you still have your attack guage, but instead of being inmobile, you can move about, and you can jump, parry and block. The bad guys will keep going towards you, and the more you succesfully block and parry attacks (onto other guys...?), the faster your attack guage goes up.

 

Holy shit, I just saw this game for the first time. well that cleared my pipes out.

 

This and blue dragon are easily the most wanted games for me on Xbox360, to bad I don't own one and probably won't own one for awhile but if I'd buy Xbox360, these games would be the reason. Screw Gears of wars when you can have this!

The graphics look really nice but I couldn't help to get quite bored by the combat, however it was certainly the start of the game, so it could explain the lack of moves..hopefully and I'm pretty sure it will, the combat will improve.

 

Is this and Blue Odyssee coming to the US?

 

Yes..Blue Dragon is January 2007 (December in Japan), and Lost Odyssey I believe is late 2007 (worldwide release).

 

First of all it is Blue Dragon and secondly, most certainly so.

 

Yes.

Well, I've just gone and reviewed a number of movies of titles I've been interested in including these three XB360 JRPGs, and I have to say the Japanese way of doing things has inadvertently disappointed me no end. Having heard this game was realtime, I grab the Gametrailers footage. There was only one, marked as an intro and not gameplay, but I foolishly thought 'if this is the one they're talking about, I'll take a ganders.' Of course it was fantastic, and of course it was CG. So when it cuts to the actual game, one guy and a horde of mostly static clones, suddenly it's lost all it's lustre. As stills, graphically they look pretty high quality, but the gameplay footage, lacking any whizz in the actual gameplay and having been introduced by some high-drama CG, it's a case of setting hopes for something that's not going to be delivered on (gameplay, not so much visuals).

Similarly watching BD, there were some awesome visuals there that I was thinking 'wow, they got pretty much CG quality going on there. That's really impressive.' And then interspersed there were a number of frames, tiny little segments, that didn't seem the same quality. My feeling is they've mixed game-engine with CG footage into a montage, and the actual game I'll be comparaing to the best-looking visuals from that trailer probably won't look so swish.

I really don't like that, and I think it's mostly a Japanese thing (are SE entirely to blame?). In western games it's more common to use game-engine than CG trailers in my limited experience. GOW or HS don't jump to expensive render-farm footage and then drag you back down to the limited realtime abilities. I'm happy to accept the limits of realtime visuals when they're shown for what they are, and for some reason I'm happier with mo-cap game-engine even though the animation is beyond the real game. Mixing in CG just keeps reminding me how real-game is by comparison! FFX I think was my first taste of this and most games I play avoid it. I don't mind render story-scenes either. They're obviously separate from the game. eg. XMen Legends, when it cuts to a movie cutscene, you know it's in story mode and that's different to game mode.

How did everyone else feel? From all that action based, mixed up, dynamic combat, with the hero slicing and dicing, to suddenly being dropped into a turn-based combat that wasn't even showing the real combat, didn't you feel someone had accelerated you to 150 MPH in 15 seconds and then suddenly applied the brakes to take around a almost straight track at 30? I was expecting the guy to go through some fantastic HS/GOW (the original PS2 GOW and not the XB360 GOW!) style realtime gameplay.

Note to self - never check out trailers! Wait for gameplay vids!

 

I thought the realtime stuff was really nice, I especially like how you can see the battle raging in the background the whole time. It would be nice if they added more variety to the enemy soldier animations, but if you look at last generation turn based games, and then look at what is going on in these battles, it's totally a generational leap.

The real highlight is the battle with the siege machine, did you make it that far in the trailer?

As for BD, I'm not sure what videos you watched, but there are ones that feature 5 or 10 minutes of straight gameplay, and it looks really smooth.

 

IMO I think this game is a landmark. It's the first time that I've seen a transition from CG to gameplay without a noticeable drop in fidelity. Obviously there will be a difference, but what really stood out for me was the lighting looked the same. Or similar enough. Couldn't see something like that on PS2

 

And it's a long way before shipping too.