http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wiiu/xenoblade-chronicles-x/0/0
Iwata asks - An interview with the Xenoblade Chronicles X team. A good read if you're thinking about getting the game.
I'll add some info about the game from the interview. But I'll put it in spoiler tags so you can read the interview unspoiled. It's a TLDR of the interview.
Iwata asks - An interview with the Xenoblade Chronicles X team. A good read if you're thinking about getting the game.
I'll add some info about the game from the interview. But I'll put it in spoiler tags so you can read the interview unspoiled. It's a TLDR of the interview.
- The game is designed different to the Wii game. This game started out as a whole planet where you can go anywhere and do anything (to a point).
- The five game continents are roughly 400KM squared
- The developers want the you not just to go from point A to point B for a quest. They want you to smell the roses along the way, so to speak. Explore and be rewarded for doing so.
- The basic hexagonal grid was thought up for two reasons. So players would not get lost. And so players had something to fill in. Players like to complete things. And completing everything in every hexagon is something they thought of. Also they said it's a good way to progress in the game without feeling too overwhelmed with the massive scale of the game all at once and the ability to go anywhere right from the start (if you can avoid all the things that kill low level heroes of cause)
- Monolith collectively said at the start of the project, we will finish it no matter what the personal cost is to ourselves. They even put in their want ads to hire people for the project "you can't pull out on this project". They were all dedicated from day 1.
- The original plot for the game was as large as a fat novel. Then excerpts from this were used for the many many different quests. They even joked that this original game plot manuscript should be published as a book as it was so good and so long. The whole process took 1.k years to do.
- Turning the manuscript into game quests and lore was such a huge task they hat to hire a 2nd person to help out.
- Most games have a strict regime of what can and can't go in the game because you don't have enough scope or open areas or whatever in the game. But because XCX is so huge almost any idea the quest writers had was approved. That even includes making up their own NPCs. They said the game was so big there was ample land space to put all the ideas in somewhere.
- The main story might be shorter than on the Wii game. But the quests have more depth. They realised the people who could get a hold of the Wii game played it over and over. They wanted the WiiU game to have way more content. But outside the main story line. 3000% or 30x more they said.
- They said XCX can be enjoyed for 5x longer than the Wii game if you want to complete everything the game has to offer
- Online play came in the middle of development. Basically because they thought playing on your own in such a huge would would be lonely.
- Most of the online content looks to be loosely connected players as they put it. To me I read that as up to 32 players are connected to each other via the internet. Each person is playing their own instance of the game. But if they want to, they can do shared quests. Like collect 20 fruits. And even you're playing your own game. If you choose to do this quest all the people out of the up to 32 their collected fruit counts to the quest. And when the quest is done everyone gets a reward. Even the people who chose to ignore the quest and get no fruit.
- You can give unwanted items to others you are connected to.
- You are automatically put online and are connected with up to 32 other players. Think of like each of you are all on your own World of Warcraft server. Just you and no one else. You can't meet up in game but you can do quests like the 32 people have to collect 10 fruit. Doesn't matter if one person gets all 10 or if 10 people get one each. Best way I can describe it.
- If enough of these multi player missions are done a special boss battle might activate. This is 4 players only but all 4 together fighting the same boss. They say it's the only time you'll play with other players directly.
- This loosely online feature is the reason why you are more of an avatar in this game and less like a character as in the Wii game
- The original story manuscript for this game was written with a specific hero and characters in mind. That was totally re-invented when the playable character became an avatar. This was a difficult change to accommodate.
- They recorded 3000 lines of dialogue (audio) for the Wii game. The Wii U game on the other hand has 11000 lines of recorded audio dialogue. Expensive and Monolith said because of the cost they all had to be used, so they are all in the game. Re-recording all that in English (in my opinion) will make the localisation process take a lot longer.
- The game developers felt sorry for the localisation teams from Club Mario. The developers joked a little about it but they realised localising this would be a mammoth effort. The invoice to Monolith from Club Mario to do this shocked Monolith. But they understood why later, just so much to do.
- The Robots are called Skells according to this translated interview unfortunately. Terrible name but that's what it is.
- They wanted to make these robots more on the cool side and less on the balanced side.
- Certain enemies can destroy your Skell in one shot.
- There is 2 kinds of insurance for Skells. The first is the 3 strikes then it's gone insurance card. The 2nd is the ability to jump out at just the right time so it does not blow up. The 2nd one was snuck into the game at the last minute and the lead dev was not so happy about it but he ended up being ok with it. If your Skell blows up 3x ie use up all 3 ticks on your insurance card, it's gone and you need to pay the expensive cost to reaquire it.
- The main story is only a small part of the whole game in XCX.
- A lot of the game lore is not told to you by a random NPC. Your own avatar will make comments on it as they discover it giving you a sense that you are discovering things for yourself.
- The X in Xenoblade Chronicles X symbolises the unknown. Their example was like a crossroads. You don't know who you will meet there or what you will do there. So it's all new, unknown and exciting. And that's why it's XCX and not XC2.
- The game music is amazing they say.
- Iwata keeps saying in different ways that the game is gigantic.
- First HD game from Monolith.
- "We took everything we had at Monolith Soft to make a non-linear game with a strong focus on the x-axis." I would understand that there is jumping and the like and even limited flying but no hardcore Z axis game play (as you would see in a slight sim, or possibly all range mode of Starfox)
- "Since the game is first coming out in Japan, it will be released in America well after everything about the game has been revealed to the public. That raises the hurdle, but on the flipside, if everyone who plays the game in Japan talks about how much they enjoyed the game world, and how their experiences were different from one another, that would be something great for the western audience to hear. If people outside of Japan hear a lot of positive news about the game, I feel like we can throw an answer to the question of what the future holds for JRPGs. It would be this game, this is the answer to that question, in the form of a video game."
- So basically if you hate spoilers and want to play the game spoiler free and are not from Japland, you have a near zero chance of this. Nintendo know it and they are embracing this fact.
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