I was talking about him saying this for X, not Xenoblade. Ofcourse the story telling was "stale" for Saga, it sold terribly and he'd have to be insane to say he wanted to keep going with it's design because of how it sold. It was clear as day that he had a story he wanted to tell with both Saga and Gears though, a story he couldn't finish. Now what happens when a better gameplay design comes around that a lot of people like? You really don't think that he would want to try his hand at the story he never finished, with the better gameplay elements?
He's made it clear to me that he's going back to basics when it comes to his story, even just based off what little they have shown. You can think all you want that this will have nothing to do with Saga or Gears, but the reality is, he's still not done telling his story. Also hey, some people actually like Xenosaga, stop pretending like it was the worst thing in the world for everyone.
Oh no no no.
The Xeno philosophy style story was not the problem, Xenoblade had a fantastic take on it, with Gottfried Leibniz's Monadology. A story is just framework, there is so much more that goes into it than just story, plot, structure, narrative, dialog. The problems with Xenosaga was how they decided to use the story in a game, and the way they made whiny unlikable characters, and focused so much of the games time on their melodrama.
X is absolutely Takahashis 3rd, and most likely final franchise attempt at telling the Xeno story. But hes going to do it the Xenoblade way. You dont go back to something youve declared a dead end.
To be honest I'd be more excited if I knew Takahashi understood why Xenoblade was so loved, and I'm afraid he didn't, considering what he said about it, and what he wanted to do with X.
Frankly, that's ok, at least he kept the same gameplay. But I wouldn't be surprised if storywise it's more a clusterfuck like Blade's second half rather than the first, but yeah we'll see.
Ha! And many lines from the second half of the story were exactly what I was thinking about when I was responding to you, yet you already disliked those!
Yeah, thats going to be in X. Just like it was in Xenoblade. Its going to be heavily based off of the works of philosophers from hundreds of years ago, just like Xenoblade, gears, and saga. Characters are not going to be written like they were in Xenosaga, they already have all the traits of the 'positive and likable characters' in gameplay and what dialogue we have seen and character profiles.
'Takahashi's personal belief was that the more negative, jaded JRPG character-type leads the player to resent them due to the emotional investment required to complete such long games.'
Takahashi found out Whiny negative, melodramatic characters grate on you the more time you have to spend with them. Who knew? WOuldnt worry about characters like that coming back in X, there isnt a Shion in sight.
But really, the big difference here, the thing Takahashi went back to his origins to remember, and the thing that made Xenoblade, and half of gears so great, is that you will actually be playing this story, you will be going on this adventure. Rather than walking to the next cutscene, and putting the controller down for 45 cringeworthy minutes at a time.
I honestly believe Takahashi understands what was such a great success in Xenoblade. I hope you are pleasently surprised.
