Damn, you beat me to it! I like the new UI look.
That location looks gorgeous: tropical-ish locations are some of my favourite (after snowy ones, that is). Man, I'm pretty excited about the XV world. Hopefully it's as varied as a FF world should be. Also, I hope they make it look a huge, rich one (the only one where you can actually tell it's more than a few small towns is XII, even if you only go to a "few" places).
Yep, it seems like in the middle one is Prompto, Gladio, Regis, Noctis, Luna and Ignis. So I guess they all know each other since childhood.