I have a feeling that XIII's story mode has the *potential* to topple BlazBlue's as there seem to be plenty of paths to take, but more to the point, *if* story mode has animations throughout it will be a huge advantage for KOF (console footage has already shown some animations). Can't remember which vid it was, but they showed Ash receiving the letter which animates as well as his arms (think there were some other bits like that too). < this could be mainly limited to the three main intros tho! The official site mentions that the final chapter will be using movie bits.
It still stays true to its premise (is visual novel style), but the KOF team mentioned that they put an extreme amount of work into it in one of the blog posts. So what I'm really hoping for is voice acting and lots of it. BB literally has hours worth, but can be slow paced and drag quite a bit leaving folks wanting for more fights or more rounds of it. IMO, voice/dialog is what drove BB's stories as visuals were limited to around 5-8 slides per character and maybe as few as 10 backgrounds (ignoring the comedic bonus bits for now, but those were along the same lines too).
If they are using voice, I think there'll be plenty of potential to beat out BB.
Now this amount of voice would certainly be unprecedented for the series so have my fingers crossed. What keeps my hopes up is at gaming conventions SNK has done special events bringing in their regular voice actors to talk and also act out script dialogue as the characters. PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE!!!
To my knowledge I don't think Yamamoto has ever been questioned about voice/animations for story mode in any of the interviews.
Sure I'll be plenty happy with it anyways - just having story mode is very cool for me as it is. I think we can at least expect animations/movies at the beginning and end.
You guys think my hopes are completely unrealistic? You think they would be conspicuously presenting voice as selling point if such were the case?