It didn't take us long to realize that there was something strange going on with the character, though -- it was blurring with the movement, only the blur was disappearing from certain camera angles. The Mistwalker rep made Shu run, then froze the frame and rotated the camera around. Viewed from the side, the motion blur was most apparent, but from the front, the character looked perfectly sharp.
"We're using 3D motion blur," Sakaguchi explained. "You can see the blur effect only in the direction that Shu is running. If you change the direction, you cannot see the blur."
This description should make sense if you consider what causes character motion blur -- that is, the character's motion. When a character is moving from one side of the screen to another, there is a clear difference between the position of the character in one frame compared to the position in the next. Motion blur should be at its most dramatic in this situation. Turn the camera so that the character is moving in to or out of the camera, and the apparent motion is lessened, with the motion blur all-but disappearing accordingly.