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Tetsuya Takahashi's message on Xenoblade Chronicles 2

MomoQca

Member
"A young adult story with a taste of boy-meets-girl. Lately it feels like all I’ve been doing are games full of devastation, like where your hometown burns down at the start, or the spaceship you’re riding crashes(oh wait, that is all I ever do). Sometimes I just wanna try something different!

I want to make something that people can look back on fondly one day as something that really shaped their lives. Something like what I loved as a boy, like Oliver!(by Carol Reed) and Galaxy Express 999(by Rintaro).
-- That’s why I started working on this game.
I’ll leave the stories about the solemn old men and hot stylish guys to someone else(even though there’s way more demand for that stuff), and go ahead with this.

That’s what was on my mind around the end of 2014 through early 2015.
Yeah, we started while Xenoblade X was still in development.
We’re building a whole new ‘Xenoblade’ title using the foundation laid by X. That’s the core of the project.

Some people think exploration is what games should be all about, while some are like “no no, story is what’s best.” Well we’ve got something perfect for both of those kinds of people: Xenoblade 2.
And that’s what I wanted to tell you with my first announcement. Sound cool?

There are still a ton of surprises left, of course.
I’ll be revealing little bits of information and riling everyone up all the way until release.
And that was my June of 2017.
(Wait, will we even meet the release deadline?!)

Tetsuya Takahashi"

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/switch/adena/index.html

Translated by CAAAAAAAAAAAW
 
I was curious about what the full message said since the only parts I knew about the conceptualization timeframe and the goal of XC2 having both heavy story and exploration focus.

Thanks for the translation CAAAAAAAAAAAW.
 
I'm pretty sure he'll write a better story if it's something he's actually passionate about. I'm tired of the same old same old, so something, at least a little different, sounds great to me.
 

Chauzu

Member
I read the part about "will we meet the deadline" and while translation is correct, I just wanted to point out it was obviously written a bit more comical in japanese! No need to worry about that.
 

Ooccoo

Member
"A young adult story with a taste of boy-meets-girl. Lately it feels like all I’ve been doing are games full of devastation, like where your hometown burns down at the start, or the spaceship you’re riding crashes(oh wait, that is all I ever do). Sometimes I just wanna try something different!

I want to make something that people can look back on fondly one day as something that really shaped their lives. Something like what I loved as a boy, like Oliver!(by Carol Reed) and Galaxy Express 999(by Rintaro).
-- That’s why I started working on this game.
I’ll leave the stories about the solemn old men and hot stylish guys to someone else(even though there’s way more demand for that stuff), and go ahead with this.

That’s what was on my mind around the end of 2014 through early 2015.
Yeah, we started while Xenoblade X was still in development.
We’re building a whole new ‘Xenoblade’ title using the foundation laid by X. That’s the core of the project.

Some people think exploration is what games should be all about, while some are like “no no, story is what’s best.” Well we’ve got something perfect for both of those kinds of people: Xenoblade 2.
And that’s what I wanted to tell you with my first announcement. Sound cool?

There are still a ton of surprises left, of course.
I’ll be revealing little bits of information and riling everyone up all the way until release.
And that was my June of 2017.
(Wait, will we even meet the release deadline?!)

Tetsuya Takahashi"

O7XdV5j.png
 

Rmagnus

Banned
Xenoblade X will be remembered as the necessary weirdo like SMB2, Zelda 2, Final Fantasy 2

No... Don't do this to me... I will have to wait for xenoblade 3 if that's the case and what a game it's gonna be if it's will be remembered as final fantasy III, SMB3 and Zelda.. will be a link to the past! Omg xenoblade 3 will be the best game ever
 
Xenoblade X will be remembered as the necessary weirdo like SMB2, Zelda 2, Final Fantasy 2

Either that or possibly the start of a second Xenoblade series (source):

”The way I see it," says Takahashi, ”I feel as though Xenoblade 1 and 2 are connected and linked in the sense that they're linear and story-driven games, whereas Xenoblade Chronicles X was more focused on open world and exploration, and maybe an online aspect. I feel like I'd like to continue to create games separating those two aspects out."
 

random25

Member
Takahashi-sama please don't scare us lol.

Certainly confirms that the game was already in quite a progress when it was revealed. It already has some story bits at its 1st trailer after all.
 

NeonZ

Member
Huh. So far they haven't even really showcased big landscapes in the game. I wonder how exploration will compare to X. There's also the armor system. So far they seem to focus only on a signature design for each character, rather than lots of visually different armor.

I hope they keep X's sidequest system, where the simple "collect X" or "kill X" quests with no story scenes are separate from the more elaborate sidequests.
 

Skulldead

Member
I have 2 feeling:

First It will be a rush job if the game really release in 4-5 months, sorry the demo they show was not a disaster, but from what i saw the lack of polish is really there. This is my perception, i'm sure not a lot of people is agree with me on this one.

Or second, this game will totally not release in 2017. I having a hard time to believe we will get a quality game like X and Chronicle with what we saw so far. I find the combat to feel really sluggish so far (my opinion don't have to be agree !).

Anyway we will see !
 
Sounds great!


I have 2 feeling:

First It will be a rush job if the game really release in 4-5 months, sorry the demo they show was not a disaster, but from what i saw the lack of polish is really there. This is my perception, i'm sure not a lot of people is agree with me on this one.

Or second, this game will totally not release in 2017. I having a hard time to believe we will get a quality game like X and Chronicle with what we saw so far. I find the combat to feel really sluggish so far (my opinion don't have to be agree !).

Anyway we will see !
Glass half-full kind of guy
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
I don't know how to feel about a story of a boy meets girl while killing monsters and wielding a well endowed blade. This game might not be for me despite liking 1 and X.
 

RPGCrazied

Member
The fact he had to bring up the release date has me thinking this is getting delayed. In other words he is like "the release date might change!"
 
I have 2 feeling:

First It will be a rush job if the game really release in 4-5 months, sorry the demo they show was not a disaster, but from what i saw the lack of polish is really there. This is my perception, i'm sure not a lot of people is agree with me on this one.

Or second, this game will totally not release in 2017. I having a hard time to believe we will get a quality game like X and Chronicle with what we saw so far. I find the combat to feel really sluggish so far (my opinion don't have to be agree !).

Anyway we will see !

I didn't really notice a lack of polish in the Treehouse footage compared to the previous entries, but the presenters did stress they're still in the phase of polishing the game.

As for the development timeframe, a release at the end of 2017 would give the game a 3 year development cycle. Shorter than XCX's for sure, but a substantial amount of XCX's development time came from building the team's new engine for their first HD game, making the game open world, and implementing the online elements. XC2 is reusing XCX's engine, doesn't seem fully open world, and is confirmed to be a singleplayer game.

For comparison to the first game's dev cycle, XC1 started development in 2007 (early prototyping began in April 2007) and released in June 2010, so it probably had a 3-3.5 year development period.

All that said, I'd be fine with the game getting delayed a few months if the team ends up needing more time to finish polishing the game.
 
The fact he had to bring up the release date has me thinking this is getting delayed. In other words he is like "the release date might change!"

I get the impression it's the opposite. So many people have been doubting the 2017 release that he's joking about making the release date.
 

Adam Prime

hates soccer, is Mexican
I hope they do a series of mini directs like they did with X , closer to release.

I'm skeptically optimistic about this game.
 

MomoQca

Member
I don't buy that there isn't a town that will burn down

Takahashi said "at the start", so there won't be such an event that sparks the protagonist's motivation. But yeah, I imagine a town, or perhaps an entire titan, will burn down at some point in the story.
 

manueldelalas

Time Traveler
Huh. So far they haven't even really showcased big landscapes in the game. I wonder how exploration will compare to X. There's also the armor system. So far they seem to focus only on a signature design for each character, rather than lots of visually different armor.

I hope they keep X's sidequest system, where the simple "collect X" or "kill X" quests with no story scenes are separate from the more elaborate sidequests.
From the demo, the world seems to be made of various giants; giant XC like giants, but somewhat smaller.

The demo was on the back of a giraffe like titan/robot/giant thing, it was a huge grass map, like Gaur Plains, although it seemed smaller and monster where much closer apart from each other. The draw distance seemed WAAAY better than the Wii game, so a lot more monsters are shown on screen at once; and there's 6 characters shown on screen; the three party members and their respective swords/sexbots.

I'm definitely excited for this.
 

Skulldead

Member
I didn't really notice a lack of polish in the Treehouse footage compared to the previous entries, but the presenters did stress they're still in the phase of polishing the game.

As for the development timeframe, a release at the end of 2017 would give the game a 3 year development cycle. Shorter than XCX's for sure, but a substantial amount of XCX's development time came from building the team's new engine for their first HD game, making the game open world, and implementing the online elements. XC2 is reusing XCX's engine, doesn't seem fully open world, and is confirmed to be a singleplayer game.

For comparison to the first game's dev cycle, XC1 started development in 2007 (early prototyping began in April 2007) and released in June 2010, so it probably had a 3-3.5 year development period.

You're right, I remember the guy said this for the polishing, BUT we all know that in a couple of month you can't really make miracle. But at same time we don't know how big the team is. It's probably just a feeling, i don't know, having a hard time to specify what don't seem to work with what we saw, just feel overall pretty average (other then the music that sound really good). The wow feeling of X is really not there at all thought.
 

SuomiDude

Member
Sounds just my type of game, explorations but still with emphasis on story. Doesn't really matter when they release it as long as it's finished and the quality is there.
 

Dyle

Member
Man I really want to look forward to this game, but it seems like such a departure from most of the things I liked about Xenoblade X. Battle system seems far too simple and slow and has lost the positioning strategies, targeting specific appendages, arts being able to be double-charged, and an overdrive equivalent. The combat in X was, at times, too slow despite all of those extra mechanics. The character design is gross and it seems Takahashi is implying the game is moving away from the deeper world-building narrative style that made Xenoblade X's transhumanism so satisfying to me. Hopefully I'm wrong and the game turns out great, but it looks like it's moving away from most of the things that made Xenoblade X memorable
 
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