EDIT: so in light of this years E3, this was obviously CGI? Or not?
Why did you assume any of it was pre-rendered? Anyhow, the game looks good, but nothing that current gen+ couldn't handle. Sure, the actual geometry of the landscape has seen a drastic improvement, but there's still a lot of flat textures being used for foilage and stuff. Textures are much better then we're used to as well, but this is an aspect in which the WiiU has a clear advantage over the current gen, namely twice the amount of RAM.
I wonder if you'll be able to chose wether to go by mech or by foot. I read something about not being to be able to use the mech at any given point in time, and when I look at the area's in the trailer where you're in the mech, I doubt you'll be able to traverse those on foot. The trees and such appear to be flat textures, which is more or less acceptable when they're tiny compared to your on-screen avatar, but won't cut it if you're up close to them from the perspective of a normal person.
SupremeAC said:Why did you assume any of it was pre-rendered?
That section looked too good. And also because it wasn't Xenoblade camera angle, normal gameplay.
I think the video and gifs, look better than current gen personally and is fairly contrary to the established narrative of Wii U = worse than 360. Weak cpu, slow memory, not enough shader cores etc.
I think they said the mech combat was for specific sections?
Half the gifs are down 
So it's a cutscene. That doesn't mean it can't be in-engine. Also, as Billy Amaro used to say concerning machinery in next-gen games: it doesn't count, because it isn't organical and much easier to make good looking 
As for this looking better then current gen games: I'm sure Monolith learned a few tricks to make huge open area's look good without wasting too much power on it during the development of Xenoblade. I'm not saying it doesn't look incredibly pretty, and more so then about all current gen games, but I wouldn't go so far to squarely put it beyond current gen hardware, or at least not much. WiiU does do a lot of things better then PX3/Xbox, like lighting and textures. I would expect 2nd party games to be built from the ground to capitalize on this.
That's the thing, not all of it was a cutscene the fixed perspective of the character walking was not a cutscene, it was a predetermined camera angle. In engine cutscenes, there is a fuzzy line with these as devs swap things out for higher quality etc that would not run normally. Yes, I would put it squarely above, textures and lighting do make large differences and aren't small things.
360
Wii U
I really need to see the battle system in action, but the design of the game so far looks so much better than anything Monolith Soft has ever done before.
On the one hand I thought it would be good to use touch screen icons for the stuff like the icons in Xenoblade but then you would constantly be looking between screens which might get annoying.
The design looks exactly the same as that of Xenoblade, only with a higher polygon count. The art direction is a straight copy.
I could really see the GamePad being used to control the mechs. There clearly are enough displays that some could be shown on the GamePad's screen and it makes sense to have to shift your attention from the action to some perhiperal screen when steering a mech. Then again, they could just opt for the 'push forward to go forward' approach
Anyone remember XWing on PC? Would you ever want like a touchscreen dashboard in a game like for mechs for instance? Having to regulate fuel, speed, pitch weapons etc?
I didn't play Xwing, but I did play what I believe was Xwing vs TIE against my mate. Man, those were the days. When online gaming was more then something to tick off on a list of features.
And yes, I'd love for a game like that. Hell, give me competitive Rogue Leader with a GamePad and I won't ask Nintendo for anything else for the duration of the gen. Except maybe a new WaveRace.
Imagine the Star Wars games Factor 5 could be doing on PS4/X1/U?
gamingeek said:Imagine the Star Wars games Factor 5 could be doing on PS4/X1/U?
Don't. Don't say stuff like that! You'll have me upset, sniggering in a corner thinking of what could have been for the rest of the day!
Sucks so bad Lair killed them.
And how the Stamper Bros greed basically wrecked Rare while they bathed in champagne and retired as mega millionaires.
Most pics are captures from compressed youtube videos.
I like this pic for some reason. It just looks like what a normal gameplay session will look like I guess.
I think they've very obviously rewatched Jurassic park recentely. The giant Brontasaurus and herd of stampeding creatures show that.
I watched this last night on the plasma screen via Wii U's net browser. It doesn't look as good full screen, nowhere near as sharp and obviously the same textures on a big screen don't look as detailed as they do in a small youtube window. But what was surprising is that everything in the game appears to be realtime like it was in Xenoblade. Even that epic cinematic walk towards the mech in the armoury room, which I assumed was CGI. I've lost the screen I had of it which showed it was realtime, it's somewhere in the N.Direct thread I think. And even the city camera swoop was realtime too and actually not that impressive.