Xenoblade Chronicles X

I'm not sure if anyone caught it, but they did have a second gameplay video that focused on playing as a female character: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTW1sjmoY2c

Since I made a forum subsection for XBX, I've moved this topic. Carry on. :D
I also made a website page for it - http://xeno-underground.net/info_xenoblade_x.html
Please yell at me if I got any info wrong, or if I should add something.

Well, it certainly looks nice. I catch myself consciously avoiding the fan speculation and official teasers on the project besides the pure gameplay videos though. I find that going in into a game should be done with as little preconceptions as possible usually allows me to weight pros and cons more clearly.

Yes, we are all a little (or not so little) crazy about various things Xeno, but my biggest worry currently is whether I'm gonna be able to buy both the console and the game in the city I live in, or there would be some trouble with buying and shipping it from somewhere else.

I was thinking of detaching myself from all discussion/speculation on XBX until it came out, but I'm not sure if I have the willpower. I do hope it becomes available where you live, tho.

Hi, long time no see.

This is a post mentionning an interview of Takahashi Tetsuya about the game :
http://t011.org/game/84226.html

see also there :
http://mori-meikyu.jugem.jp/?eid=1964

Hmmm... Map in Xenocross is going to be 5 times bigger then in Xenoblade.

/flops around like an excited fish

More user-friendly quest log and interface: http://www.rpgfan.com/news/2014/1925.html

This is full of excite. One of my least favorite things about XB's quest interface was that NPCs and things you needed in-world were never marked on the mini-map and only ever came up in your view when you were close to them. /excitedddd

kare_reiko wrote:Hmmm... Map in Xenocross is going to be 5 times bigger then in Xenoblade.

That equally makes sense as well as worries me.
Of course, they were going to adapt the world to the mechs (at least, with them, the size of the world might feel less overwhelming so that's nice). But I'm afraid this will affect sidequests even more. Bigger world means more work on quests... which makes it tempting to rely on boring fetch/hunt quests. One of the things that made Xenoblade tiresome... and so many modern open world RPGs with it. So many developers need to learn that bigger open world doesn't mean a better experience. Nor the quantity of quests. It's the quality that matters.
I'm a bit worried but... who knows... we have yet to know if they improved the sidequests themselves. They only talked about making it easier to find the NPCs (which is cool, I guess).

Yeah, I'm not sure how they're going to fit JRPG-depth story into such an expansive world without making it too Elder Scrollsish. Just as long as the battle system doesn't turn out like Xenosaga II's, I think I'll be okay with it, though.

Who knows. I think there might have been one or two sidequests in the original Xenoblade that actually had stories to them. If they could do that more often, instead of just having a person want you to collect item A for no reason at all, that would be great.

Tokyo Game Show is September 18th. Here is hoping Xenoblade Chronicles X will be there!

*boop*
Sssooo there's an official twitter now. https://twitter.com/xenobladejp

^Woot! And a spring release date for Japan:  http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/daily-briefs/2014-11-06/xenoblade-chronicles-x-slated-for-next-spring-in-japan/.80712

Now an official website :
http://xenobladex.jp/

Besides, Tetsuya Takahashi, Soraya Saga and KunihikoTanaka confirmed again in development team !

Oh gosh in the end this game will feature online elements !

http://www.siliconera.com/2014/11/11/monolith-soft-confirms-xenoblade-chronicles-x-will-online-elements/

Ohhh man, I really do hope it's optional online multiplayer tho. O_o

katimus_prime wrote:Ohhh man, I really do hope it's optional online multiplayer tho.  O_o

Who knows. Honestly, if it's something like Assassin's Creed Unity where some chests can't be opened unless you play online... I would consider online play required to fully complete the game. And I cringe at the thought a bit. I know, sidequests would be considered "optional". Just like the hunt/fetch sidequests in Xenoblade are "optional".

But to me, they're a big part of the experience. Take them away and you're left with no side content AT ALL (and what's the point building a huge world if you have nothing worthwhile to do in it?). 98 % of them were lame in Xenoblade. Optional or not, they were part of the full package I bought and weren't satisfying (the sociagram slightly made up for their dullness though, but not enough). That wasn't something I could ignore. Not that it was a game ruiner (in another jRPG, those quests wouldn't be quests... just you kicking monsters' asses all over the place in order to level up/grind), but it was still weak as the only real side content of the game and can be vastly improved upon. In Xenoblade X, I (still) hope.

But well, yeah... the online thing. Honestly, I wonder how Takahashi and his team managed it.
Co-op hunting would be nice and the least intrusive thing they could do.
Oh well... as long as I don't need to put more money into this game after the initial purchase, I will be fine... I guess.
We still need to know more, anyway.

By the way, I think there were new tweets, today. Something about ups and downs during the making of the game but that they were finally able to make it, as initially planned.

^To go along with that, it also looks like the game is almost done: http://rpgfan.com/news/2014/2230.html

But yeah, I wouldn't imagine online play would be mandatory, then it would just be a straight-up MMO. Unless it does have a feature to be always connected, in which case my internet is terrible and I couldn't play the game...but I highly doubt it.

Sorry to double post, but here are a few more details:  http://www.siliconera.com/2014/11/25/xenoblade-chronicles-x-will-deep-sci-fi-story/

Deep sci-fi story?  That sounds promising!  It bothers me that Takahashi isn't the main writer, though. So, if anything, it might be on the same level as first Xenoblade Chronicles? Or, well, who knows.  It's kind of hard to say.  And I've heard rumors that Soraya Saga is involved, but are there any sources on that?  Or is that something completely imagined in my own brain?  I'm still stoked for the game, but I'm just not sure if I should be eager for the story or not.

Jintoki wrote:Sorry to double post, but here are a few more details:  http://www.siliconera.com/2014/11/25/xenoblade-chronicles-x-will-deep-sci-fi-story/

Deep sci-fi story?  That sounds promising!  It bothers me that Takahashi isn't the main writer, though. So, if anything, it might be on the same level as first Xenoblade Chronicles? Or, well, who knows.  It's kind of hard to say.  And I've heard rumors that Soraya Saga is involved, but are there any sources on that?  Or is that something completely imagined in my own brain?  I'm still stoked for the game, but I'm just not sure if I should be eager for the story or not.

Did Takahashi really said that ? I got the impression he said that he asked Xenoblade's scriptwriter to write something more predominantly/deeply sci-fi than Xenoblade was (which was more fantasy than sci-fi for most of the game).

Here's the translation of Takahashi's tweet I read on gamefaq :

[Takahashi]Today I'll talk a little about the development staff. Yuichiro Takeda is the main writer for this games' script, following on from his work on Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii. He's written a more heavy sci-fi story for us this time, compared to the previous games' classical fantasy. For sound, we asked Hiroyuki Sawano. He is a very busy composer and we are very grateful that he has written his first game soundtrack for us. The character design was handled by Kunihiko Tanaka, whom you all will know. We have known each other for a long time and he assisted in drawing out a 'Xeno-ness' for the game.

I also did worry about Takahashi's involvement in the story while reading the tweet. But you have to consider one thing : Takahashi always had scriptwriters since Xenogears. Actually, Xenogears' was Masato Kato (and we all know the Fatimas were all Soraya's... the entire Xenogears story wasn't written by Takahashi alone). I don't exactly know about Xenosaga 1. I think it was Soraya Saga but I'm not sure. Xenosaga 2 had a different scriptwriter and both Takahashi and Soraya Saga were credited as "original authors". Xenosaga 3 had another different scriptwriter while Takahashi has some sort of supervisor role (but he wasn't credited as director... apparently). Xenosaga's anime scriptwriter was Yuichiro Takeda (Takahashi never worked on the anime though). And finally, Xenoblade had 3 scenario writers : Tetsuya Takahashi, Yuichiro Takeda and Yurie Hattori.

If Soraya Saga is involved, I can see Xenoblade X having 3 scenario writers as well... just replace Yurie Hattori with Soraya Saga.

I admit having some distrust at seeing the scriptwriter for the XS anime on the roster, but mostly because the anime kind of lost the forest for the trees for me when it paved over large chunks of the original plot, but that might not really be their fault. I'm still gunna get XBX, but this info has me in a :I place.

I didn't mean to come across that Takahashi wouldn't be involved, only that him not being the main writer disheartens me. Soraya Saga also wrote for Xenosaga episode I and Pied Piper (she made a big post about how much her content was cut from episode II back in the day). I suppose I shouldn't be fearing the worst, but as Kat mentioned, The Animation had its rough parts, and Xenoblade, though not having a terrible plot, was lacking in comparison to other Xeno titles.

Another tweet translation by duckroll from Neogaf :

"Today's update is at least more interesting than the previous ones where he just repeated the same stuff everyone already knew. Firstly he mentions that aside from Kunihiko Tanaka's designs, they have many other artists working on different types of designs. There are various alien races in the game, and he wants to really bring out the various unique characteristics in their cultures and so on. For the graphics in the game to be able to reflect the different cultures, they have different artists fleshing out the details in the design phase. He teases that we have already seen one of these unannounced races on the early teaser site for the game that Monolithsoft put up. (lol)

He goes on to talk about the writing in the game. He says the script isn't written by Yuichiro Takeda alone, because compared to Xenoblade, this time there's a lot more text to handle. They brought in Kazuho Hyodo (an anime script writer) to help with the workload, and since he has a lot of experience working on scifi works, Takahashi is not worried. Next week he's going to introduce some of the design staff. That should be interesting too."

Hmm...this kinda seems a lot like the previous update, but I don't keep up with tweets like I should.