It's sad that X's music likely won't get even close to that quality. And what happened to Mitsuda? He has three of the best OSTs under his belt, a couple more solid ones (Xenosaga ep. 1, Moonlit Shadow), and seems to have just disappeared, doing the odd song here and there. Is he doing Japan-only stuff?
Game Informer was able to conduct an interview with Monolith Soft’s Tetsuya Takahashi, Nintendo, and Monster Games about Xenoblade Chronicles. Takahashi was able to speak about the original game while discussing cut ideas like wanting to have the ability to fly. He also revealed Smash Bros. director Masahiro Sakurai wanted Shulk in the Wii U/3DS games, and had the idea for the bathing suit skin. Other than that, there’s some Xenoblade Chronicles 3D-specific comments from Monster Games.
We’ve rounded up all of the various quotes below. For those that are interested, you can find Game Informer’s original article here.
On the decision to bring Xenoblade to the New 3DS rather than making a Wii U HD version…
Nintendo: With this project, we considered what kind of new value we could provide with the port. The result of this debate was that we chose the New Nintendo 3DS XL platform. Going with New Nintendo 3DS XL allowed us to add two new and valuable features to Xenoblade Chronicles. You can play the game anywhere, giving the ease of accessibility you only get with a portable system, and you can enjoy the game’s large open areas in full 3D.
On what conventional aspects of RPG design were Takahashi most interested in improving with Xenoblade…
Mr. Takahashi: Japanese RPGs are faced with a reality in which, with just a very few exceptions, they’re mainly built with small-scale budgets targeted for the internal Japan market. The non-inclusiveness of this market has slowed the advancement of the RPG genre, bringing it into stagnation. With this game, the first priority as we considered the design was how to channel our limited budget and resources to create something gamers not just in Japan – but around the world – would seek out. Along those lines, we scrutinized all the game aspects we needed, assigned priority levels to each one, and carefully built it up from there. With this game, we devoted everything we could to satisfy gamers.
On the idea of seeing into the future and having that be used in battle…
Mr. Takahashi: From a story perspective, the theme of the heroes trying to overcome a predestined future was always there, so that idea came out from the ensuing feedback among the designers. It’d be weird if you could do certain things in the story but not in battle, as well. So when you’re faced with the danger of death in battle, you’re able to unleash that ability, making it important to use your assorted Battle Arts to change the future and avoid that fate.
On the discussions of getting Shulk into Smash Bros. and the bathing suit skin idea…
Mr. Takahashi: New characters for Super Smash Bros. are determined by Mr. [Masahiro] Sakurai. Nintendo had released several new RPG games around 2010, but it sounds like Xenoblade Chronicles stuck out to him in particular due to its high quality and popularity. He also had the idea that Monado Arts can be used to change Shulk’s nature in battles, allowing him to add new and completely different elements to the character that other fighters don’t have. The Shulk bathing-suit skin was also an idea from Mr. Sakurai.
On the biggest piece of feedback on Xenoblade being incorporated into Xenoblade Chronicles X…
Mr. Takahashi: In terms of technical aspects, the feedback we received was all pretty obvious things, so none of them are worth particular note here. The biggest feedback we received came in terms of the stances and frames of mind each member of the team brought to the project. I think the fact that we were able to devote time and attention to things like not giving up on what you want to make, and figuring out what gamers want and how to make, that happen instead of pushing your own likes forward had a pretty big effect.
On the features Monolith found the most difficult to implement and what features Takahashi is most proud of…
Mr. Takahashi: In terms of a functionality or engineering perspective, there wasn’t anything particularly difficult. Xenoblade Chronicles is certainly a game running on huge, massive specs, but the tech used to create each individual feature and aspect was all pretty universal in nature, the kind of thing that any publisher or developer the size of Monolith Soft would have.
What isn’t so easy, however, is taking all these aspects and gathering them together into a single, well-balanced game. Many developers have faced setbacks and failures concerning this particular point. With this game, too, the hardest part was just trying to mold all these massive elements into a single whole. Following from that, the thing I’m the most proud of is that we managed to pull it off. As far as ideas we couldn’t implement, the two that come to mind first was the ability to fly and to string all of Bionis’ body together into a single open world. These ideas were both brought into and implemented in Xenoblade Chronicles X.
On whether most Wii games are technically capable of being ported to the New 3DS…
Monster Games: We can’t speak about most Wii games, since the source code and game data for all games are different. What we can say is that we think that more ports are possible with the additional RAM and CPU speed of New Nintendo 3DS XL. Our initial plan was to port the game to the original Nintendo 3DS, but the results were not positive. Fortunately, we learned about the specifications of New Nintendo 3DS XL hardware, and suddenly the project became possible. We still had to rewrite the graphics engine, rebuild all the game assets and convert all the source code and game data.
On lessons learned from Xenoblade Chronicles 3D…
Monster Games: We learn lessons from every project that we do. After our experience with the Donkey Kong Country Returns 3D project, we knew that we wanted to convert the game-play logic as early as possible with minimal changes. This is especially true with Xenoblade Chronicles since it is a huge game. We had the game running before the graphics were completely converted and the UI redesigned. The game looked very rough, but it was playable. With most of the team testing the game early in development, bugs were found sooner and the game became very stable. This allowed our team to focus on optimizations and new features at the end of the project. If we do another conversion, we will try to use the same technique.
On getting the huge worlds to run smoothly on New 3DS…
Monster Games: The huge open worlds presented our biggest technical and artistic challenge. The views were so long that even the New Nintendo 3DS XL hardware could not render them correctly and the performance was very slow at first. We had to design a new graphics engine with a custom visibility culling system and a complex level of detail system. As for the art assets, all of the worlds were rebuilt and optimized while keeping the same look and feel.
Surprisingly, an indoor location, Agniratha, was our toughest environment. The level had many places where the screen contained the highest polygon count in the entire game. Our artists and designers had to rebuild that level several times to get it to finally perform well.
Alright, I picked this back up. About 20 hours in now. Just finished with a mine area.
The mine under Colony 6. Finally got to kill Xord.
It seems my initial prediction was pretty much right. He said he 'became' this way, or something like that. Then a cutscene a little later, after Metal Face shows up, shows Shulk cutting open MF and seeing a human arm and hand inside the main body.
I hope there's more of a twist to it than the robots turning people into robots. Xord also mentioned something about 'understanding' what was going on after his change. And he made sure to move away from the party before he blew up to avoid hurting them (after he realized they were worthy or something?) or maybe just avoid damaging the Monado.
So I'm not sure if it's something like the Bionis was actually the 'bad guy' in the original fight, and the Mechon are freeing or saving the humans by turning them into robots or something, and we find out we've been the bad guy all along, going around killing people-robots. Just like in (spoilers for another game here)
Nier.
I do want to know why the Wingly from Legend of Dragoon are suddenly showing up, though.
I'm having trouble keeping the ton of equipment I keep getting all updated and organized. I just wind up selling everything and only upgrading if it's a ludicrous improvement. Because I'm like 10 levels too high already, it seems.
On the biggest piece of feedback on Xenoblade being incorporated into Xenoblade Chronicles X…
Mr. Takahashi: In terms of technical aspects, the feedback we received was all pretty obvious things, so none of them are worth particular note here. The biggest feedback we received came in terms of the stances and frames of mind each member of the team brought to the project. I think the fact that we were able to devote time and attention to things like not giving up on what you want to make, and figuring out what gamers want and how to make, that happen instead of pushing your own likes forward had a pretty big effect.
While the Geth have mastered many advanced technologies, the mysterious "wheel" still eludes them. This explains the total absence of any wheels on their own heavily armored anti-vehical unit, the Geth Armchair.
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Xenoblade had the same issue with armor. Leveling up, I had to settle sometimes for a garish menagerie. By the time the endgame rolled around though, the difference in stats meant little, so I finally could kit people in visually pleasing armor.
Super mega Blade spoilers, so don't clicky if you're playing fresh.
I think I settled on the Speed frame for Fiora. Whichever one was the sleek blue look that made her look sorta like KOS-MOS.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
I just started playing though again on the 3ds, and I forgot how ridiculous some of the early sets are. I ended up going through the first set of emotional cutscenes with shulk wearing swimming trunks and some red helmet thing that covers half his face.
Someone remind me why I'm carrying around all these materials. I'm not seeing anything to craft with them or anything. Do I just sell them all?
You keep them in your inventory and wait until you find a quest giver who needs them. Because, trust me, you will.
Items you will need for quests will be automatically marked with a blue '!', even if you don't have the quest yet. You can safely sell everything else. It doesn't start happening until you get past the beginning of the game.
The future-vision exclamation point marker is useless. It warns you about some items you'll need for future quest, but not most. Just keeping everything will help you avoid a lot of unnecessary farming.
Btw, the damage-minimum is what to look at when comparing weapons with variability of 99 or more. Maximum kind of stops working at higher values. The dice-rolls don't cover it.
Btw, the damage-minimum is what to look at when comparing weapons with variability of 99 or more. Maximum kind of stops working at higher values. The dice-rolls don't cover it.
That's a bug that was specific to the Wii version. It was fixed in the 3DS port.
The future-vision exclamation point marker is useless. It warns you about some items you'll need for future quest, but not most. Just keeping everything will help you avoid a lot of unnecessary farming.
Yep. Part of the problem seemed to be that if more than one quest required the same items, the game seemed to not think it needed to mark it as needed for a future quest too. And, as mentioned, none of the construction stuff marks items. When an item is used only for a single quest, the game tends to be pretty good about giving it an '!', but again, if multiple quests need an item, it has a hard time. For construction stuff I'd recommend just finding a list and checking to know what to hold onto. There's nothing in-game to tell you what you'll need for higher construction levels until you unlock them, and construction stuff tends to require more of whatever item than any normal quest otherwise would.
Really though, even if you're grabbing everything, space shouldn't be an issue until pretty late in the game; for collectables/enemy drops anyway. There's honestly not an in-game easy way to determine what you want to hold onto and not. There's resources out of game you can use to check what items you'll need in the future and what you can dump, but whether or not you want to put that much effort into it is up to you.
For the most part, though, with the exception of each zones 'rare' collectable and a small handful of rarer monster drops, most items for collection quests can be re-gathered extremely fast if you find you need more. For the former, you probably won't find said rare without intentionally looking for it, so chances are you'll know which of those to not get rid of because you'll have to specifically hunt them. For the latter, well, again, the rarer monster drops for quests tend to be pretty obvious when you find them, as you get used to the name and types of junk that normally drops. And, as with the collection items, you will generally have to go out of your way for these, so you will tend to know which are important.
What makes all this even more of a headache, though, is that on top of this, there are many NPC's that will trade with you. I don't recall if there are any trade only items, but there are certainly a mess of items that are far easier to get via trades; which means hanging onto some otherwise useless items. And even then, the better trades tend to only be with higher stars and affinity levels among NPC's so....yeah.
The depth of stuff and the intricate systems are great; but they kind of dropped the ball in providing in-game support for those systems. Like with other things, however, very little of this is required for fully completing and enjoying the main story portion of the game. It only comes into play when you want to dive in and 100% it.
A general rule of thumb I used when I needed to make emergency space or funds was to sell off any material I had ~15 or more of. The safe bet was that those were extremely common items that were either useless, or easily gathered again.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
Gems were a neat mechanic, but it got too stupid when it came to end game stuff. In order to get the best gems, you would ideally want ones that were as close to 99% as possible, without hitting 100% and cementing it. Then you take all those ~99% gems and combine them to make a bitchin' 300% gem. Unfortunately, it's a classic case of the game helping you when you don't want it, and not helping when you do. It'll gleefully bump up your trash past 100%, and leave you to rot during the real synthesis. And the silly "solution" was to essentially keep two party members at a low affinity throughout the entire game so they wouldn't do such a good job making the first stage gems.
Nice system, but flawed in the end.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
Oh man, I wonder if X will have gems or something similar
It's already been confirmed that X will have small machines that serve the same function as gems, being plugged into your equipment to further customize your stats.
It hasn't been confirmed wether these small machines will be craftable by the player like gems were, but I don't see any reason why that wouldn't be the case.
Dunban is such a better tank than Reyn. I wonder why the game waits so long to give you all the interesting characters, gameplay wise. Sharla and Reyn have to be the two most boring characters in the entire game.
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YggiDeeThe World Ends With You ShillRegistered Userregular
Dunban is such a better tank than Reyn. I wonder why the game waits so long to give you all the interesting characters, gameplay wise. Sharla and Reyn have to be the two most boring characters in the entire game.
I figure it's like they wanted to ease you into things by giving you the most generic JRPG dudes to start with. Like everyone understands the Rogue/Healer/BEEF SLAB dynamic so you don't need to figure out the characters while you fiddle with affinities and gems and chain attacks and break-topple-daze. Now that you have that nonsense sorted out, you start getting all the cool characters and can exile all the losers out of the battle party at your leisure. And to be fair, while Sharla generally doesn't get a lot of use in the main story, I hear she's indispensable for tackling high-level unique monsters. More specifically, for surviving guys who are rather higher level than you. Also Headshot can be super nasty.
Reyn has real good cooldowns on Topple and Daze. Tank by not letting enemies do anything.
I find Dunban to be a better break/topple/daze person because unlike Reyn, he can do all 3 himself.
If you're playing Reyn, you have to wait for someone else to break the enemy you want broken first, and if you're letting the AI control him, you have to pray that he uses wild down after you've broken them. I can't tell you how often I break enemies only for Reyn to do everything other than topple, and then I have to wait for my break skills to recharge before I can try again.
Dunban's AI pretty much always goes for his break -> topple combo all on it's own, so he's pretty reliable even when you're not controlling him.
I didn't even realize you could take control of other characters =p.
I sort of like Reyn. Not even really for his personality, but I like his quote he says after battle sometimes, "good thing I was here!...no? Anyone?!"
I actually just filled up my inventory for the first time. This is after selling off items quite often. I'm level 34 and I just got to Frontier Village. I didn't realize the inventory tabs kept going after the materials tab...and THEN I accidentally clicked over and saw there were several more tabs. I have 13 screens worth of gems, yeesh.
The game continually amazes me at how vast it is. I was impressed in the very first colony when you'd get up to Tephra Cave then look over the edge and see how high up you were. And THEN I realized you could jump off. Crazy. Then each new area gets increasingly impressive just about. The huuuuuge waterfall right before Frontier, then all the rope walkways all over that area...and THEN you get inside and the main village is HUGE vertically.
Speaking of where I am in the game, I just got ....
the awesome new playable character from that village. And I realllly want to use him, but I like having Dunban in the party and I feel like not having Sharla would be really tough because her heals save my ass time and again. I had to log out right after I got him so I don't really even know what type of character he is. All I know is that he is adorable and I wish I could have a 4 person party.
Did they make the AI any more capable of controlling Melia for the 3d version?
'Cause having her in the party outside my control just ended up being a waste of space.
I didn't even realize you could take control of other characters =p.
I sort of like Reyn. Not even really for his personality, but I like his quote he says after battle sometimes, "good thing I was here!...no? Anyone?!"
I actually just filled up my inventory for the first time. This is after selling off items quite often. I'm level 34 and I just got to Frontier Village. I didn't realize the inventory tabs kept going after the materials tab...and THEN I accidentally clicked over and saw there were several more tabs. I have 13 screens worth of gems, yeesh.
The game continually amazes me at how vast it is. I was impressed in the very first colony when you'd get up to Tephra Cave then look over the edge and see how high up you were. And THEN I realized you could jump off. Crazy. Then each new area gets increasingly impressive just about. The huuuuuge waterfall right before Frontier, then all the rope walkways all over that area...and THEN you get inside and the main village is HUGE vertically.
Speaking of where I am in the game, I just got ....
the awesome new playable character from that village. And I realllly want to use him, but I like having Dunban in the party and I feel like not having Sharla would be really tough because her heals save my ass time and again. I had to log out right after I got him so I don't really even know what type of character he is. All I know is that he is adorable and I wish I could have a 4 person party.
Are you talking about the heropon? Because he has a heal, too... Plus, Shulk can learn one.
But, yeah, Riki is awesome because he has great buffs and debuffs, and some direct damage, too.
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An "indoor" area the size of a large baseball stadium. :P
It seems my initial prediction was pretty much right. He said he 'became' this way, or something like that. Then a cutscene a little later, after Metal Face shows up, shows Shulk cutting open MF and seeing a human arm and hand inside the main body.
I hope there's more of a twist to it than the robots turning people into robots. Xord also mentioned something about 'understanding' what was going on after his change. And he made sure to move away from the party before he blew up to avoid hurting them (after he realized they were worthy or something?) or maybe just avoid damaging the Monado.
So I'm not sure if it's something like the Bionis was actually the 'bad guy' in the original fight, and the Mechon are freeing or saving the humans by turning them into robots or something, and we find out we've been the bad guy all along, going around killing people-robots. Just like in (spoilers for another game here)
I do want to know why the Wingly from Legend of Dragoon are suddenly showing up, though.
I'm having trouble keeping the ton of equipment I keep getting all updated and organized. I just wind up selling everything and only upgrading if it's a ludicrous improvement. Because I'm like 10 levels too high already, it seems.
Seems like he kinda dodged this question.
I'll probably choose my doll based on stats, rather than aesthetics. I'm sure it'll look ugly as sin by the time I'm done customizing it.
That's a platform I can get behind.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
And I will be your counterbalance.
I shall play pretty princess dress-up with my mech and it will be fabulous. Stats be damned!
Super mega Blade spoilers, so don't clicky if you're playing fresh.
I wouldn't have it any other way. People walking around with mechsuit chestplates and no pants is the essence of Xenoblade.
Yeah, the various bits and bobs are all for selling or quests.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
You keep them in your inventory and wait until you find a quest giver who needs them. Because, trust me, you will.
Items you will need for quests will be automatically marked with a blue '!', even if you don't have the quest yet. You can safely sell everything else. It doesn't start happening until you get past the beginning of the game.
Edit: I don't think the big, dumb construction-quest marks items.
That's a bug that was specific to the Wii version. It was fixed in the 3DS port.
Yep. Part of the problem seemed to be that if more than one quest required the same items, the game seemed to not think it needed to mark it as needed for a future quest too. And, as mentioned, none of the construction stuff marks items. When an item is used only for a single quest, the game tends to be pretty good about giving it an '!', but again, if multiple quests need an item, it has a hard time. For construction stuff I'd recommend just finding a list and checking to know what to hold onto. There's nothing in-game to tell you what you'll need for higher construction levels until you unlock them, and construction stuff tends to require more of whatever item than any normal quest otherwise would.
Really though, even if you're grabbing everything, space shouldn't be an issue until pretty late in the game; for collectables/enemy drops anyway. There's honestly not an in-game easy way to determine what you want to hold onto and not. There's resources out of game you can use to check what items you'll need in the future and what you can dump, but whether or not you want to put that much effort into it is up to you.
For the most part, though, with the exception of each zones 'rare' collectable and a small handful of rarer monster drops, most items for collection quests can be re-gathered extremely fast if you find you need more. For the former, you probably won't find said rare without intentionally looking for it, so chances are you'll know which of those to not get rid of because you'll have to specifically hunt them. For the latter, well, again, the rarer monster drops for quests tend to be pretty obvious when you find them, as you get used to the name and types of junk that normally drops. And, as with the collection items, you will generally have to go out of your way for these, so you will tend to know which are important.
What makes all this even more of a headache, though, is that on top of this, there are many NPC's that will trade with you. I don't recall if there are any trade only items, but there are certainly a mess of items that are far easier to get via trades; which means hanging onto some otherwise useless items. And even then, the better trades tend to only be with higher stars and affinity levels among NPC's so....yeah.
The depth of stuff and the intricate systems are great; but they kind of dropped the ball in providing in-game support for those systems. Like with other things, however, very little of this is required for fully completing and enjoying the main story portion of the game. It only comes into play when you want to dive in and 100% it.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
I spent so much time making gems.
Oh man, I wonder if X will have gems or something similar
Nice system, but flawed in the end.
It's already been confirmed that X will have small machines that serve the same function as gems, being plugged into your equipment to further customize your stats.
It hasn't been confirmed wether these small machines will be craftable by the player like gems were, but I don't see any reason why that wouldn't be the case.
I find Dunban to be a better break/topple/daze person because unlike Reyn, he can do all 3 himself.
If you're playing Reyn, you have to wait for someone else to break the enemy you want broken first, and if you're letting the AI control him, you have to pray that he uses wild down after you've broken them. I can't tell you how often I break enemies only for Reyn to do everything other than topple, and then I have to wait for my break skills to recharge before I can try again.
Dunban's AI pretty much always goes for his break -> topple combo all on it's own, so he's pretty reliable even when you're not controlling him.
I sort of like Reyn. Not even really for his personality, but I like his quote he says after battle sometimes, "good thing I was here!...no? Anyone?!"
I actually just filled up my inventory for the first time. This is after selling off items quite often. I'm level 34 and I just got to Frontier Village. I didn't realize the inventory tabs kept going after the materials tab...and THEN I accidentally clicked over and saw there were several more tabs. I have 13 screens worth of gems, yeesh.
The game continually amazes me at how vast it is. I was impressed in the very first colony when you'd get up to Tephra Cave then look over the edge and see how high up you were. And THEN I realized you could jump off. Crazy. Then each new area gets increasingly impressive just about. The huuuuuge waterfall right before Frontier, then all the rope walkways all over that area...and THEN you get inside and the main village is HUGE vertically.
Speaking of where I am in the game, I just got ....
'Cause having her in the party outside my control just ended up being a waste of space.
But, yeah, Riki is awesome because he has great buffs and debuffs, and some direct damage, too.