Quote Originally Posted by KiriA500 View Post
Actually...

Final Fantasy: Spirits Within didn't bomb because it looked bad, it bombed because a) it wasn't Final Fantasy VII related, and b) it was boring as hell.

Square has always been known for their visuals. While yes, the PS2 did hold back Final Fantasy XI, it was the first platform the game was released on (in Japan), a whopping 4 years prior to the PlayStation 3/Xbox 360. They were pushing for quality graphics at the time, they just aged, which all games do.
Square was known for their story telling LONG before they were known for their visuals. The early games, most people couldn't tell them apart from other games of a similar structure. It wasn't until VII that they became known for their visuals.

Now about the game being able to run on lower end systems for 2.0. From what I'm told from a friend, and also have read in many places around the net, FFXIV is coded poorly (or mediocre, it's all relative), and that 2.0 is supposed to be highly optimized, only time will tell......or Yoshida might tell, but you should never trust a salesman, you might be buying snake oil.

I actually think the screen shot they released looks pretty cool. It's kinda like the surrealist look from 300 applied to FFXIV. I didn't like the look for 300 but I think it looks really cool for FFXIV, though hopefully it's something that you can turn on or off for people who don't like it, or incase it begins to give me a headache.