Well, to be fair, a lot of people have noticed this. For example take a look at the biggest chunk of gameplay footage we've seen so far:HankMan said:
http://www.swtor.com/media/trailers/taral-v-developer-walkthrough
However, some valid points that can be made are that this game has spent a LONG time in development, which means that a lot of the code and artwork is as much as four years old in places. "Old Republic" presumably looking to be a smooth experience, and have a lot of actual content as opposed to going for the most bleeding edge technology (which it is obvious it will not have). Not to mention that one of the apparent design priorities was that since they are planning for the long term, they want this game to be relatively "light weight" and run on a lot of older systems, laptops, and similar things. I've even heard some speculation that they want this to be able to run over Ipads and such through 3G and 4G networks. Another point also being made is that a lot of parts of the game we aren't seeing are apparently very busy. The game has to be able to track things like parrying, blaster deflection, and a LOT of projectiles whipping around given the autofire and so on. This means that to avoid lag the quality has to suffer so it can render and track so many things going on. It's like comparing "Grand Theft Auto IV" to "Saint's Row 2", GTA4 has better graphics, but at the same time SR2 has a lot more going on at any time where it will be tracking battles involving like 3 differant sides while your cruising around in real time with a pretty customizable character that can be wearing literally hundreds of differant outfit combinations pretty seamlessly.
To some extent the somewhat stiff motion and so on have done a bit to sell me on the game, because it seems like we might be seeing an unusual occurance for the gaming industry: truth in advertising. Typically you see all these slickly produced, picture perfect examples of gameplay meant to illustrate everything from the best possible angles, with the slickest animated moves being performed... all expertly directed. When you get the actual game and play it on your actual home computer as opposed to a developer's console... well the game winds up being a lot differant in the way it looks and handles. People complain about it all the time. I'm guessing this is a more honest presentation of what the game will look like in practice, and if that's true it's fine.... of course there is the danger that this is the ultra slick, expertly directed version, and in actually playing the game it's going to look a whole heck of a lot worse than that. If that was the case though I'd imagine EA would have killed the project instead of continueing to pipe an uber-budget into it, since there would be no way to salvage something that is that big of a train wreck.
Of course, with all the delays I do confess to becoming increasingly concerned despite my high hopes and a budget that seems like it could lead to them being met by the developers. We were supposed to get a release date this month, and really all we've gotten is more promotional trailers.
Given how many years this game has been in development, it's not going to get any newer, and pushing the game up until next year (which keeps happening every year it seems) seems like it's going to do a lot of damage, I have to fight to keep interest in this game despite the high hopes, because there is a point beyond which they are going to lose quality through the passage of time, no matter how many delays they put in with the motivation of increasing quality.
I don't want to see the game rushed out, but let's be honest, this game has been "coming out in a few months" for two years now, plus all the development before that. It hasn't been being rushed.
