Spoiler: Differences in the character-selection screen



Obviously the first thing to note here is the absence of Azwel, whose place is occupied by one of the mysterious white circles. This lends credence to the idea that the circles represent unlockables and not DLC (though I could see them serving both purposes). Sadly the player cameras cover the bottom of the screen, so we cannot see whether those two small circles are still at the corners.



Interestingly, the character slots are now grayed out while the cursor is not on them—a design choice abandoned in the E3 build. For reference, here's the CSS from most recent press build:

In the video we see a new CSS:Obviously the first thing to note here is the absence of Azwel, whose place is occupied by one of the mysterious white circles. This lends credence to the idea that the circles represent unlockables and not DLC (though I could see them serving both purposes). Sadly the player cameras cover the bottom of the screen, so we cannot see whether those two small circles are still at the corners.Interestingly, the character slots are now grayed out while the cursor is not on them—a design choice abandoned in the E3 build. For reference, here's the CSS from most recent press build:

Spoiler: Differences in the stage-selection screen



Why are do so many stages lack their screenshots? This seems like a rather odd thing to remove. The characters are also not shown in the background here.



Stages without a proper screenshot have a curious placeholder: the coliseum from SCV. The stage they chose here was Kunpaetku Shrine, but they all have this same image.



Upon closer inspection, it also looks like the positions of the stages have been rearranged. Here's the arrangement from the older builds:

The stage selection screen is also quite different from what we've been seeing:Why are do so many stages lack their screenshots? This seems like a rather odd thing to remove. The characters are also not shown in the background here.Stages without a proper screenshot have a curious placeholder: the coliseum from SCV. The stage they chose here was Kunpaetku Shrine, but they all have this same image.Upon closer inspection, it also looks like the positions of the stages have been rearranged. Here's the arrangement from the older builds:

Spoiler: Differences in graphics



Taki's face looks different, with deeper shadows around her eyes. There also appears to be a general reduction of shadow contrast. Hair rendering also seems improved, but again that could just be the low-resolution recording.



Also Taki's protruding nipples have been nerfed pretty hard. It's hard to tell because of the low-quality recording, but they've done something with the lighting and the textures. It's very subtle so you'll probably miss it if you're not paying attention, but something about Taki's face looked odd to me so I started to do some comparisons. You can see the new build to the left, and the older version to the right:Taki's face looks different, with deeper shadows around her eyes. There also appears to be a general reduction of shadow contrast. Hair rendering also seems improved, but again that could just be the low-resolution recording.

Spoiler: And most interestingly of all...



At first I thought it was an optical illusion resulting from the poor white-balance of the recording, but nope! All the other colors remain identical, it's just the 100% health color that is now different. I played around with the brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation of these screenshots to match the deep blue we've been seeing since the E3 build, but I couldn't do it without massively distorting the image. The lifebars at 100% health are now violet!At first I thought it was an optical illusion resulting from the poor white-balance of the recording, but nope! All the other colors remain identical, it's just the 100% health color that is now different. I played around with the brightness, contrast, hue, and saturation of these screenshots to match the deep blue we've been seeing since the E3 build, but I couldn't do it without massively distorting the image.

I'm surprised there aren't more people talking about the suspicious new gameplay that surfaced this morning from Bamco Latin America. The absence of Azwel was brought up briefly, but there is plenty more going on in the video. The build they show differs significantly from the beta and everything else we've seen so far.Overall, it looks like the UI in thisis substantially different from what we've seen in the press builds and in the online beta.So what does all of this mean? I think we might be seeing the final build of the game on the disc, before the day-1 patch. I can't see them dramatically changing the UI and upgrading the graphics two weeks before release for a simple press build. It makes more sense that this official namco subsidiary had a copy of the final game and decided to stream some matches for promotional purposes. Since we know there will be a day-1 patch, adding missing stage screenshots could be among the things it fixes. @Sectus proposed it might be an older build, but that's inconsistent with the upgraded graphics and the presence of two characters announced after Azwel. It just seems implausible to me that a pre-release press build was developed, never seen, and replaced with a different build which removed all the graphical improvements of the previous one. It makes more sense that the Azwel build was sent out to press outlets before the implementation of these final touches, and the game was later finalized and printed onto the discs. As @Frayhua pointed out in the roster thread, a closed press build with at least Astaroth's stage has been around since NVIDIA's video in June. That could very well have been the build we've seen this past month. The strange situation with the stages is the only thing that puts this timeline in question, but that doesn't particularly favor one explanation over the other.Regardless, the main takeway here is that. Get hype?