Quote Originally Posted by Gramul View Post
As someone who's been studding game, cinematic, and traditional animation for over 4 years now, I think I'm fairly well qualified to discuss it.

As for why include it? Because it would make a difference to those of us who would want it. Like Shadows, Depth of Field, Physics, Ambient Occlusion, and to a different extent, things like Helmet, Weapon, and Meteor Mark toggle.

I don't know why that would upset you. Square's done toggles for aesthetics before, and replacing the animations and allowing them to be canceled out of shouldn't be too much of an issue at all, unless they got a really bizarre structure going.
Yet again, lighting, shadow and physics toggles have no effect on actual gameplay mechanics where as movement animation have a direct effect on them, there is a reason why in every game in the market you can turn off physics, lighting and shadows, but not a single one allows you to change basic movement and gameworld interaction animations. There is a fundamental programming aspect into HOW your character moves that goes on behind the scenes that, allowing you to "toggle" a completely different animation set would need to address