Translations (JP to English)

[AkiRouscelia]

I read the game watch impress article before bed last night. A couple of highlights until Rein finishes it up:

The water shaders and indoor lighting systems aren't finished yet. A few more reflective detail shaders need to be applied and they're just working out the appropriate layers to do it right. Indoor lighting system will include a kind of ambient lightning they call "all direction lighting". Yoshida is very critical on all of the lighting being top-tier, no matter where it is.

The rivers and oceans will have separate animations but they are not high-tech wave simulations. (ie: crytek engines and so on) due to scalability. They did this in order to lower the tax on low end systems. Waterfall animation/texture and lighting is already completed.

Oh and that previous interview (can't remember who posted it) when they said something about no Crystal Tower at launch is a misinterpretation. They're aiming for launch. It's a long instanced raid with special featured (undecided as of yet) but aiming for a length of around ~3 hours.

Ishgard being destroyed is incorrect too. That's Ishgard's fortress or something rather, the actual city is fine.

One more since I've got time: Yoshida wants to place the alpha test around Gridania. He thinks it's one of the more pretty zones and has changed the most dramatically. The alpha test is specifically to test the game and not so much a player experience. He expects people to enjoy (in a free play sense) themselves from beta.