Proposed Game Resolution and Interface Changes

A note about this article: the images have been reduced in size to help the reading experience, but it's recommended you click the images to view their full size to fully understand the proposed changes.

Since the beginning of its development, I've constantly swayed back and forth on increasing the resolution for Legends of Astravia. It currently uses the RPG Maker XP default, 640x480. The "Double Window Size" command allows the window to be resized to 1280x960. I sort of intended this to be the default view, since it gives a nice "pixelated look":

[Media deleted: Please check out the dev archive for the game's visual history!]

The issue with this is that the character busts end up looking really fuzzy, and text boxes have very little room for dialog:

[Media deleted: Please check out the dev archive for the game's visual history!]

Increasing the resolution would have a lot of benefits, the biggest being user interface space, which is really an issue for more complex menus such as the item menus:

[Media deleted: Please check out the dev archive for the game's visual history!]

640x480 feels cramped and difficult to use especially by modern gaming standards.

However, if I simply up the resolution, the user gets an unusual viewport:

[Media deleted: Please check out the dev archive for the game's visual history!]

Having this much "information" visible is overwhelming and breaks the intimacy of the game.

The proposed solution? 1280x720 resolution with a double-size map viewport:

[Media deleted: Please check out the dev archive for the game's visual history!]

I believe this is the perfect design. It allows for large amounts of user interface space, beefy text boxes, and pretty, HD busts that don't look rasterized and blurry.

Here is the side-by-side of the old resolution vs the proposed change:

[Media deleted: Please check out the dev archive for the game's visual history!]

So, as either a developer or a player, what are your opinions on this change? It would be a lot of work, but I think it would really pay off in the end. Please comment below, or, if you have a twitter account, you can cast a vote here.