It is, Murray made a comment I think on PS blog or something saying "here's to 2015, the year when No Man's Sky comes out!"
It's looking like 2016.
Well blame the other person who put FFXV in there thing I was just going off of that.
Although as for my turn I would say that XII HD remaster probably won't happen... it's more of just random rumors and stuff as far as I know.
Yes, the protagonist however is incredibly annoying, from what I've gathered, and he basically loses all relevance half way through, but I've heard a lot of good things about the game itself and Balthier seems to hug all the good characterization for himself. Perhaps that's enough, I'll see for myself in the future.
Anyway, MGS has so much lore that it's hard to follow, by merely reading it. The games have a lot of incredibe details, and trivia, that aren't necessarily laid out in the main plot, a lot of conversation and dialogue with your support members are optional in previous games.. Anyway, I humbly suggest playing the other games as well in the future. Just saying.
I didn't think he was really incredibly annoying... mostly (as I was explaining on a different thread) it's a Yasumi Matsuno game which means there are a lot of heavy politics and political intrigue like in Final Fantasy Tactics, Vagrant Story, etc. I sunk bazillions of hours in those games and was excited for XII. However, he left halfway through the game and I think it kind of shows.
At the same time, on balance it was more enjoyable than most games I played that year, by the standards of pretty much most games I'd say it was pretty fun. Honestly if you like Balthier you should be fine because it seems like he had a much bigger role than I'm guessing originally intended. He's more of a typical anime cool guy character whereas I think the rest of XII was supposed to revolve more around Basch. That said, it was not nearly as cool as FFT or Tactics Ogre: LUCT, IMO.
A better idea might just be downloading Crimson Shroud for the 3ds (it's like 3 dollars). It's a Matsuno game through and through and if you don't like the style there, probably shouldn't bother with XII. If you want more though...