Thread: FFXIV - The 7.0 Digital Foundry Analysis

I know it's only a small section of the video, but it boggles my mind that there are people who want realistic textures closer to what we see in the cinematic trailers. Not only because artstyle > "graphics", but because could you imagine how weird that would look next to XIV's simple, sometimes wooden animations? Or the extremely rudimentary cloth and hair physics? Realism on that level would require a total overhaul of character models and animations, and square enix couldn't even get the faces right and screwed up the expressions when adding more bones.

Originally Posted by noumen0nn

I know it's only a small section of the video, but it boggles my mind that there are people who want realistic textures closer to what we see in the cinematic trailers. Not only because artstyle > "graphics", but because could you imagine how weird that would look next to XIV's simple, sometimes wooden animations? Or the extremely rudimentary cloth and hair physics? Realism on that level would require a total overhaul of character models and animations, and square enix couldn't even get the faces right and screwed up the expressions when adding more bones.

I've never been fond of SE's high-graphics models they use for the trailers anyway – I always feel they make the character designs look worse even if they're better detail – and I do think they've been trying to work towards that unsuitable degree of realism in the main game for some time. Gear has become literally too detailed to display properly on the screen at a normal viewing distance without some parts of it turning into a twinkling mass of pixels, and their way of adding more texture to materials stops gear from dyeing properly. Now we get the character graphics update and it feels inaccurate to the previous character appearances in the same way the trailer models are.

Realism is not good, stylistic graphics are not bad.

Just wanted to thank OP for posting this. I wouldn't have found out about it otherwise, and it's surprisingly interesting/useful information!