Just dropping in with my opinions.
Overall, the art direction is... well, I'm a fan. I thought that character design from an art perspective really peaked in SC2 (I still treasure my SC2 art book), and SC3 was a big letdown for me... I found 'hammerhead' Astaroth and 'virgin-white' Ivy and 'squidhead' Yoshimitsu were just too much for me to take, amongst other many artistic sins of SC3... some of which I have probably simply blocked out from memory, they were so numerous and so bad.
But SC4 seems to have learned its lesson. For me, it incorporates the misguided wierdnesses of SC3 with the core believability of SC2, and does it damned well. The 'big boob' question aside, I'm pleased and a bit relieved that I can give SC4 art direction an overall thumbs-up. I just wish they had brought back some form of Ivy's 'red dress' outfit... IMO Ivy never looked sexier and scarier than in that SC2 outfit.. and probably never will.
The SC4 Intro Movie... it is overall pretty useless although it does have a few good moments. I do like the fact that they brought Algol in and developed him as a character, the ancient King that first forged Soul Edge. I enjoy the first part of the movie in the respect that it's very epic, even Biblical if you will, and this suits me just fine as far as delving deep into the origins of Soul Edge. The only problem is that it makes absolutely NO SENSE unless you've read the Soul Calibur history in depth. Since they were too (lazy? stupid?) to show Algol forging the sword in the first place, and too pussy to show Algol actually slaying his own son who had dared to wield the sword that Algol forged, you don't understand that Algol is consumed by guilt which drags him down into the abyss. Seriously, this part oscillates between current-day and flashback with no regard for the audience at all.
The rest of the movie is ass. I could give a crap about Yoda vs Astaroth... although I guess if I worked in FMV's and my boss came to me and said 'make a Yoda vs Astaroth fight sequence' and I didn't have the balls to say 'Boss, this is a bullshit assignment!', I guess I couldn't have done better, personally. I can only guess as to how badly they butchered the Darth Vader scene for the PS3. And please don't get me started on that BS piece of shit scene where Ivy fights Hilde. So much is wrong there, and #1 is simple quality of graphics. Would it have been that hard to put some realistic shadows in on those characters? I mean, really, could you at least try to make them look like people instead of cardboard cutouts on a CG background?!?
The SC2 movie, where they went back and forth between Ivy/Taki and Astaroth/Maxi, interspersed with scenes of Mitsurugi charging the riflemen across multiple boats and Raphael hiding from Napoleon's soldiers, and showing Yun Seong jumping over the wall and Talim 'speaking to the wind' and all sorts of other cool stuff, was miles and miles better as far as overall quality and also in terms of direction and storytelling. It really got you interested in the characters. A whole cast of characters got at least a frame or two of screen time.
Point is, the SC2 movie is very tied in with the in-game characters, whereas the SC4 movie doesn't seem to give a shit.
As far as the story mode goes, I kind of like the text-heavy direction that SC4 takes. Overall, I feel better informed by the game, overall, about the various characters and their stories. More than I did in previous SC iterations, anyways. A few of the ending cinematics are cool but most are a disappointment, but I appreciate that they are dictated by your success / failure. With so many characters to handle, I guess there's only so much you can do. And I do appreciate that a lot of characters have been split up and are no longer mostly clones of other characters as much as they used to be. So, ya know, that would make for a lot of endings to write and animate. Even given that, though, SC4 seems to fall down on the job in this respect.
The art gallery is appallingly sparse. Especially for a next-gen console. Especially since there is clearly a shitload of awesome artwork that went into this game. Why can't Namco share more of it? I don't know what else to say about this, but it's a big letdown especially compared to previous iterations of SoCal. 20k Gold will buy pretty much everything in the Gallery. Which makes me wonder what I am supposed to do with the remaining 900k Gold that I have accumulated in only a few weeks of online play.
Finally, on behalf of a friend, I'll point out that SC4 didn't give us the MoCap theater that previous iterations did. Remember that shit? It was called Weapons Demonstration or something like that. You could just watch a character go through all of their animations, some of which were used in-game and some of which weren't. But it was always beautiful and cool to watch, and a wonderful way to really appreciate the combination of athleticism and artistry that goes into producing a game like SoCal. SoCal Aesthetes Unite! And call upon Namco to bring this feature back in SoCal 5.
Selah, Nuff Sed, etc.
