[kupoartist]

and with the website came the offical unveiling...

That IS a FF Tactics Advance Judge in the rather cool looking FFXII logo! In fact, Final Fantasy XII takes place in a world called Ivalice - a name it has in common with both tactics games. However, the world itself is only loosely related to those worlds - Judges and the FFTA races (such as Bangaa) seem to be the only relations. Gameplay wise, it'll still be classic FF, more or less. You can also expect to see FF trademarks like Cid, Moogles and Chocobos in there as well.

What about the story then: the Hero, Vaan is a teenager (surprise surprise) who lives in the kingdom of Damaska, ruled over by the (probably) evil Arcadia Empire. His parents were killed by the aforementioned empire, so he stands as yet another example of why you should never give birth to an FF hero (you end up dead, duh). The Heroine, Ashe is the previously missing princess of Damaska (not sounding very good in the originality department then). She forms a resistance group and meets Vaan at some point. and they'll probably like each other a bit, or somthing. (Unless Vaan turns out to be gay, in which case I think people will be crying for less originality).
Also worthy of a mention is that the Judges aren't good guys, or referees like in Tactics. They like hitting you with swords or somthing and go under the suitably corny "knights of terror", presumably with the intent of inciting... terror, into people.

The concept is one which Matsuno (Producer) came up with when working on FFTactics: an immature world culturally, where the rights of the people are undeveloped and one with many castes and deprived peoples. The visual aesthetic is apparently supposed to be a melding of European and Arabic architecture and culture. Technology wise, the FFXII engine is cutting back on the ammount of polygons that FFX showed, but improving the shading and texturing. Animations are apparently smoother as well, and it was said that the whole thing looked better than FFX.

IGN Article containing the above, but written by someone who actually got paid for it: https://ps2.ign.com/articles/441/441084p2.html