Agreed. Tetsuya Takahashi has an amazing story in his head, but he and his team don't have the technical know-how or vision to turn it into an amazing *game series* imo. And it explains why Xenogears turned out as well as it did (aside from the rushed Disc 2), it was created under the watchful eye of Squaresoft. Back before Squaresoft became Square Enix and started churning out a non-stop stream of pseudo-sequels and remakes.
But, I digress. I'm reading about this new Xenoblade on the Wii and it looks underwhelming so far. I wish the man would write a book instead.