Finally going to say my piece about this game:
I absolutely cannot wait.
I remember reading about Xenoblade from Nintendo Power (RIP my childhood) way, way back. I've always been an enormous fan of Final Fantasy and most JRPGs in general, so the concept of Xenoblade really appealed to me - a truly open-world RPG boasting humongous environments on top of having a story on part with the best of Final Fantasy? I was completely on board, and didn't waste any time on doing the pre-order thing from Gamestop, as I believe it was the only possible way to get it in North America at the time. Speaking of that, how awesome of a success story is Xenoblade? Went from something that surely only would succeed in Japan, to just barely being localized for a small international audience, to being one of the most critically acclaimed titles of a generation, to getting a representative in Smash Bros, and now to this. It's just great to see that things like this can happen in this industry with brand new IPs in a sequel-heavy market. But I digress.
I sunk so many hours so quickly into the first one that it's not even funny (I want to say 100+). Perhaps my biggest gaming regret is that I never actually finished it. When it was first released, I was all over it. I explored every nook and cranny of every single one of the massive areas I came across, tried to do as many side-quests as possible, constantly upgraded my gear, the works. It was just unfortunate that I left for debate camp that summer all the way up at Dartmouth, and didn't take any video game consoles with me. Life kind of took a turn for the worst from there, and by the time I was back at home again, I didn't feel like playing anymore because of other things. When I eventually got everything together, I realized that I kind of forgot about most of the plot. Since the story is so important to me in RPGs, I didn't want to go further on my initial save file when I probably had forgotten critical plot points or information.
I also didn't want to start over completely because I remembered how long it took to do all that exploring in every area the first time. The whole thing seemed like a daunting task, and before I knew it, college was about to start and I once again left my video games behind for almost an entire year. These days I definitely don't have the time to make another run at Xenoblade because of all the newer games I want to play, work, and all that kind of stuff. For reference, I believe I stopped playing when Shulk's group arrived at the Mechon city on the Mechonis. I couldn't tell you how they got there or what they were doing.
In a way, Xenoblade Chronicles X is my chance at "redeeming" myself for having not finished a game I adored so much in so many ways. Even apart from that though, all the the videos you guys have been posting look absolutely amazing. The sense of size and scale, the impressively detailed environments, the familiar-but-different combat system, having an IRON MAN MECH to fly through the air with.... This is going to be the game that I waste my life on during the holiday break for sure.