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Xenoblade 2 official Japanese twitter account and website thread

Fireblend

Banned
You could call it the bolded but to me that just honestly looks like a lower amount of effort put into it having that distinction as a byproduct.
I mean from what we can see every character will get at least 20 ( more if you can replace / delete?) different non-story Blades.

Eh, I wasn't really calling one artstyle inferior to the other. If anything I feel like if all of the art was in that "rougher" look it wouldn't look bad or out of place. My curiosity is more about the two clashing artstyles being there.

And that's a big assumption about the amount of blades each character can have in the game, or the degree of visual variation between them. I'd say it's more of a wait and see thing on that front.
 

MicH

Member
Damn, that's a lot more slots for Blades than I thought we would get. Possibly that many per party member? Wow. Picking and choosing is gonna be fun
 

foxuzamaki

Doesn't read OPs, especially not his own
S
I'm super glad we have a nopon that fights again, I remember doing a sidequest in XBX in which I got to know tatsu's family and by the end of it how I wanted his mom on the team
 
Surprised they felt good enough about showing this build on treehouse for an extended period.

They did say they're working on polishing the game up and 5 or so months should be enough to make a notable difference, but I don't imagine many would watch the demonstration with some lighting pop up and grass fading in a few feet away and walk away impressed.

The Xenogames are usually super solid tech wise so I imagine they'll iron that out eventually. Interested in seeing how the final game will end up looking.

A bit bummed that it seems considerably less ambitious than XCX, but Interested in seeing them take the first game to the next level and fixing any issues they had with it. Hope the seemingly short-ish dev time doesn't hamper it.
 

Vashzaron

Member
maybe they threw in a concept art version of that one and there wasn't a final one ready yet. seems a bit late in the game for rough stuff like this but who knows.

Both of them are like that.
They look very generic in the first place and if I'm not mistaken there is even more of these kind of guys to get.
Down the treehouse video they kill that guy by the wanted poster who's blade was a similar but slightly different ...actually it may be the same model as Kirim... looking version of these guys and "is a spear," you can also see what I believe is him in the Blade Menu.

Lez4rq5.jpg
kEUn9a8.jpg
 

TheMoon

Member
Both of them are like that.
They look very generic in the first place and if I'm not mistaken there is even more of these kind of guys to get.
Down the treehouse video they kill that guy by the wanted poster who's blade was a similar but slightly different ...actually it may be the same model as Kirim... looking version of these guys and "is a spear," you can also see what I believe is him in the Blade Menu.

hmmm they look like grunt enemies.
 

Fireblend

Banned
I assumed the difference in art styles for the Blades is because different artists are designing them. Kirim reminds me of Yaldabaoth, and the drawing style looks very similar, so it might be the same artist.

https://xeno-underground.net/katimus/monado_archives/xba_186.jpg

That did cross my mind, which is funny because I associate clashing character art in the same game more with gacha games than, well, anything else. I wonder if they're really going all out with this gacha-like blade system and we're gonna have some radically different character art in that menu eventually.
 

Waji

Member
No problem, I was just following the discussion of how they're used in the menu compared to previous games. I'm quite fond of the art in this game, so it doesn't really matter to me whether the menu goes with 2D or 3D.
Oh ok sorry. I probably didn't follow the 2D discussion with enough focus or something ha ha.

Surprised they felt good enough about showing this build on treehouse for an extended period.

They did say they're working on polishing the game up and 5 or so months should be enough to make a notable difference, but I don't imagine many would watch the demonstration with some lighting pop up and grass fading in a few feet away and walk away impressed.
I walked away impressed. But I also don't have high standards.
I think we reached good enough graphics a long time ago anyway.

Both of them are like that.
They look very generic in the first place and if I'm not mistaken there is even more of these kind of guys to get.
Down the treehouse video they kill that guy by the wanted poster who's blade was a similar but slightly different ...actually it may be the same model as Kirim... looking version of these guys and "is a spear," you can also see what I believe is him in the Blade Menu.
And now the question is, how far they go in the "pokemon" aspect I was talking about (which probably only comes from my own conversations with someone else : P.
The person I was talking to was imagining different rarities for Blades.
We talk a lot around that and thought we might get special Blades from side quests, unique enemies or in chests (if there is), as well as key ones during the story.

But there's also the question of who gets what. Can every main character get the same Blades with only the story ones (and some from hidden rarequests) that would be their own ?

Right now the only thing we know is that Rich got one from the very first lvl 5 weak enemy that doesn't even seem to be a mandatory battle, meaning, if this is a normal build of the game, that you can drop Blades from random creatures.
But after that it doesn't seem like he gets any other which is also weird. How could he be so lucky to get one during the very first fight and then nothing during 40 minutes of battles (ok less than that, but still...)

The 2 Blades share some design similarity also, so I was thinking there might be a pool of Blades you can get in each areas. There design could be related to the region you get them. But maybe this type of design is related to their rank which is most certainly low.

And so on and so forth... And that's just one little part of the whole thing.
What about te evolution of the Arts ? It's in the characters menu. But Arts are given by the Blades.
Not to mention the 3, 4 other menus in the character section.
Please Monolith... give us some details.
 

Vashzaron

Member
I honestly think they are probably just the starter Blades or the "worst" ones.
I dunno how people would feel about this but it really reminds me of some sort of Gacha system where they are probably just the common rewards.


Unsigned Core Crystals probably being the worst ones you can get and the game has an anti save-scum to "opening" them. There is definite RNG elements involved.
 

Waji

Member
I honestly think they are probably just the starter Blades or "worst" ones.
I dunno how people would feel about this but it really reminds me of some sort of Gacha system where they are probably just the common rewards.



Unsigned Core Crystals probably being the worst ones you can get and the game has an anti save-scum to "opening" them.
The thing is we can't see what it gives which is pretty weird if you want to customise your characters.
It's half fun (for the discovery) half annoying if you're trying to do something special.
Can we get them back into crystals ? But if so, we should be able to see the status before using the crystal, would make things faster.

But maybe each crystal only gives one type of Blade, meaning once we used it we know what it's going to be. And we could indeed mix personal Blades like story/rare ones with more common Blades characters share.
 

Harpoon

Member
Hey random question: Does anyone have pictures of all the shown party members so far? I only know about Rex. I heard others were used on treehouse but I don't want to watch all the footage.

Yep, on the first page:

So we already know 4 main party member (non Blade like Pyra)

The MC Rex, the girl with the Chakram Nia, the Nopon Tora, and this guy (didn't catch his name)

v87oxpi.jpg


Looking at this, there is at least one member left to know about (maybe more if the menu can scroll)

NFEnH9al.jpg

If people missed him in tha trailer :
bwUMtby.png

8F59IFv.png
 

Vashzaron

Member
The thing is we can't see what it gives which is pretty weird if you want to customise your characters.
It's half fun (for the discovery) half annoying if you're trying to do something special.
Can we get them back into crystals ? But if so, we should be able to see the status before using the crystal, would make things faster.

But maybe each crystal only gives one type of Blade, meaning once we used it we know what it's going to be. And we could indeed mix personal Blades like story/rare ones with more common Blades characters share.

I doubt that last part because this has all the signs of Gacha "ooo who am I going to get this time" sequence. You can see Kirim's outline here slowly appear before he's fully shown.
Plus you can carry 99 of that crystal that summoned Kirim.
 
I walked away impressed. But I also don't have high standards.
I think we reached good enough graphics a long time ago anyway.
I think the game looks good enough, it's mostly the technical issues in the demo build.

Also made a bit worse that XCX on weaker hardware had less pop in (that I remember) while also having massive mechs and being able to fly everywhere. XCX impressed from the first few seconds of the teaser, this doesn't as much. Tech wise it seems like the direct follow up to XC1 with XCX being the 3rd game but it's kind of the other way around.
I do think XC1 is the better game, but it would be a bummer if XC2 drops the tech advancements from XCX and some gameplay enhancements (seems like there's no run button and for now nothing as interesting as a mech?). Wanted to see them bring the tech and gameplay enhancements of the sequel to a story driven experience like the first.

Still super pumped, just hope that there's a lot more to show like different forms of traversal (Rex has a hook shot, for instance) flying mounts, etc.
 

Fireblend

Banned
The thing is we can't see what it gives which is pretty weird if you want to customise your characters.
It's half fun (for the discovery) half annoying if you're trying to do something special.
Can we get them back into crystals ? But if so, we should be able to see the status before using the crystal, would make things faster.

But maybe each crystal only gives one type of Blade, meaning once we used it we know what it's going to be. And we could indeed mix personal Blades like story/rare ones with more common Blades characters share.
The game saves before opening a crystal, so it seems pretty obvious to me that once you open one that's that and you can't regress them into that state. For that same reason you can't see the stats beforehand, it's meant to be a gamble - you're literally pulling a random character from a pool presumably determined by the crystal you're using. What I guess we'll see is some way to merge or enhance the crystals so that the pool of characters or their affinities/skills also improves.

This is also starting to sound very Persona like. I could see the player being able to extract skills from blades you are about to remove from your roster to teach them to other Blades, stuff like that.
I think the game looks good enough, it's mostly the technical issues in the demo build.

Also made a bit worse that XCX on weaker hardware had less pop in (that I remember) while also having massive mechs and being able to fly everywhere. Tech wise it seems like the direct follow up to XC1 with XCX being the 3rd game but it's kind of the other way around.
I agree with this. I'd be surprised if we don't see a noticeable visual upgrade between now and release. Looking at XCX footage on YouTube, the difference is pretty clear. That game does have a more "realistic" style to it than what we've seen of XC2, but the difference in fidelity definitely goes beyond that here.
 

Red Devil

Member
Exactly, I think they should follow on Xenoblade X (especially after that ending) and go more ambitious. That game was good but not up to Mass Effect, they still have room to grow, they could totally outclass Mass Effect, but now they are back to fantasy games, like we don't have enough of them. >.<

Maybe on Xenoblade Chronicles X2.

I really liked how they managed romance in the first Xenoblade, it was very subtle, and it wasn't the focus of the story.

Subtle? It was anything but subtle and it was a what made things move for a bunch of the game.
 

jdstorm

Banned
The "blade" system does look very gatcha/loot driven. I'm not sure how i feel about that. Will need more details before i really work that out. Personally my favourite loot systems are the ones that take place before the enemy spawns like Pokemon or Borderlands. I like this system because the rarity of the loot influences the difficulty of the battle to get it.

To me that is much more interesting then "Kill X enemy and recieve a random drop"

I think it also balances the loot table/difficulty a lot better as it means devs can't lock most of the most fun items behind impossible RNG odds because they need enemies to become more difficult to balance the game's progression.

Edit: As for the "Too Anime" crowd. I think visually the game does seem to skew towards a younger saturday morning cartoon audience. However that audience is the same group of people that buys Dragon Quest, Yo Kai Watch, Pokemon and Kirby. So i wouldn't be too concerned.
 

Fireblend

Banned
Yeah that's some good detective work. I'm half asleep so I surely didn't catch everything but I love the dedication that went into it.
 

Waji

Member
The game saves before opening a crystal, so it seems pretty obvious to me that once you open one that's that and you can't regress them into that state. For that same reason you can't see the stats beforehand, it's meant to be a gamble - you're literally pulling a random character from a pool presumably determined by the crystal you're using. What I guess we'll see is some way to merge or enhance the crystals so that the pool of characters or their affinities/skills also improves.

This is also starting to sound very Persona like. I could see the player being able to extract skills from blades you are about to remove from your roster to teach them to other Blades, stuff like that.
That's indeed what it looks like.
 
For the initial trailer, didn't they get someone else to help? I don't think they are too much in Xenoblade.

Yes, GameXplain recruited Chuggaaconroy for that first analysis. (Chuggaaconroy is a Let's Player that has done a 100% Xenoblade LP before.)
 
I can't wait for Derrick and Chugga to do a XC2 discussion. Chugga's Earthbound LP was one of the first LP's I ever watched it I played Earthbound because of him.
 

foxuzamaki

Doesn't read OPs, especially not his own
Yup, they probably havent got the vid out yet because derrick is busy trying to calm chugga down
 
Yup, they probably havent got the vid out yet because derrick is busy trying to calm chugga down
Lol

Derrick said he was going to analyze the easiest game first and that would be Kirby. I think he said then Fire Emblem Warriors and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for last so I wouldn't expect their analysis for awhile.
 

Rodin

Member
Lolworthy about the too anime comment too, from the nation that loves DQ and Persona, cant get more anime than those 2.
Yeah that too lol
Miiseek's channel also has some very good Xenoblade X breakdowns.

Definitely. Whoever thinks that the story in X was trash should watch their videos about the game, there's a lot of interesting stuff that is easy to miss. What they were building was much more interesting than the first Xenoblade, i really hope we get a sequel after XB2.


EDIT: just finished watching the analysis. Gameplay sounds insanely good and the story could be great too, the trailer didn't give too many info about it but what he said sounds promising. Now i'm even more hyped about the game.
 

Waji

Member
Yeah that too lol


Definitely. Whoever thinks that the story in X was trash should watch their videos about the game, there's a lot of interesting stuff that is easy to miss. What they were building was much more interesting than the first Xenoblade, i really hope we get a sequel after XB2.


EDIT: just finished watching the analysis. Gameplay sounds insanely good and the story could be great too, the trailer didn't give too many info about it but what he said sounds promising. Now i'm even more hyped about the game.
100% agreeing with you. And that's why we need X2, especially because now they won't have the problems they had with the WiiU/HD/1st open world and so on...

Now for the analysis. It's interesting indeed. I actually analysed it myself so I didn't learn much, especially for gameplay though, since I'm trying to stay away from story a little more. There's something I'd like to correct though.

He sayd the new launch effect is part of the topple combo. As much as that's what Rich is repeating through is battles, you can see at least once, an enemy being launched in the air without any topple involved. And I also think he might be wrong about the chain attack. The leftmost icon might be the trigger considering how it looks. I'm actually sure it is.

Edit : Oh we can "like" news on the Switch now. You know what to do ! : P

Edit 2 : New tweets. Sweet.
I was beginning to think we wouldn't get any the week after E3 but if begins already, it should come regularly (except during Monolith holidays of course)
 
Is there supposed to be a crossover between Expelled from Paradise or something, because Hikari is the near-spitting image of Angela Balzac.

bccafpowhxhradmzlk7m.jpg
 

Waji

Member
I didn't expect Nomura to design a whole organisation (though it might just be the 2 "leaders" only).

Well. Ok keep contact with SE and get Xenogears and Chrono back :p.
 
I didn't expect Nomura to design a whole organisation (though it might just be the 2 "leaders" only).

Well. Ok keep contact with SE and get Xenogears and Chrono back :p.

I'm wondering if he also designed the character with the eyepatch since his outfit looks like it could belong to the same group. His weapon also looks a bit similar to the one the other blue haired character is using.
 

Waji

Member
So I guess it's useless for me to translate the tweets more if they're put in separate topics by other people.
Is it how it works on Neogaf ? Duckroll should have told me because I asked for the title change.
Well... better know early that late.
 
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