Realm Reborn = downgrade?

[LlenCoram]

I think the issue is being lost here. The current issue isn't that "clunky controls are RUINING gameplay!" or that "backpedaling is bad!", it's that, based on what we've seen from the gameplay vids, the current movement animations are bad enough that people who play Elder Scrolls/Fallout 3/most Gamebryo games would blush. On first seeing the movements I chuckled and said to myself, "Luminous is the Gamebryo engine! Good thing this is pre-alpha."

A more realistic running animation without start/stop animations does nothing to gameplay. I can fully understand lowering the quality of the animations to better suit a faster-paced game, but c'mon. The current animations in all the videos we've seen so far are just plain bad. There are no redeeming qualities to them. Surely there's a way to mix fastpaced gameplay with better quality movement animations? I can't see why they said, "We need this game to move fast. Let's throw all of the animations in the bin."

EDIT: To point out, I squealed like a girl at the gameplay videos. The landscape is gorgeous, the jumping looks fun, the flappy-wing hop the chocobos do is an 11 on the cute scale, and the lighting looks fantastic. My above statement is purely about the running motions.