More Xenoblade details, erm, detailed

[Guild McCommunist]

Let's get some misconceptions out of the way first. Xenoblade may have "Xeno" in the title. It may be coming from Monolith Software. But It's not a new entry in the Xenosaga series.

The game's director, Tetsuya Takahashi clears any sort of confusion over the "Xeno" name in a lengthy interview in this week's Famitsu. The Xeno name, he said, should be taken as just a symbol, placed there as some sort of common point with Monolith's past works. Xenoblade is a completely new game, with a new world setting.

He provided first details on that setting.

Xenoblade takes on the corpses of two giant gods who once fought a great battle. If you visit the site, you'll see those two gods engaged in battle. In their final resting position, they still look like they're fighting, although both have nearly fallen to their knees.

The Xenoblade world is just those two gods. There's no planet beneath them, or no stars above them. Residents of the world reside on the gods. One god is home to humans. The other is home to mechanical creatures.

The two sides of the world don't get along particularly well. Xenoblade's story, Takahashi told Famitsu, is simply the fight by humans against an incoming mechanical menace.

You start off your adventure in a cave that's located on the right foot of the human side god. You'll first have to make your way to the head of this god. Eventually, you'll end up crossing over to the other god and will even venture inside it.

With a background story and setting like that, Wii owners can probably expect an RPG of epic proportions. The game's world appears to be one of its big draws. Takahashi described the world's scale as "overwhelming, like an MMORPG." Players are rewarded experience points for simply discovering special uncharted areas of the world.

As you adventure about this massive world (Takahashi says it's the size of Japan, although we're not sure if that actually means anything until someone does a similar comparison with the worlds of other RPGs), you'll find the experience seamless. Don't worry about massive backtracking, though. The game will have a warp feature, allowing you to instantly transport back to previously visited locations.

The seamless concept extends out of your travels through the world and into the battle system. In most Japanese RPGs, entering battle means a transition to a special battle screen. Although Takahashi didn't mention Final Fantasy XII, Xenoblade's battle system looks more like that game. You see your enemies in advance, and fight them directly on the field of play. You control one character, with two other party members driven by AI. Your character will attack automatically, allowing you to focus on strategically casting special "arts," which you learn as you progress through the story.

Takahashi's description of Xenoblade in this week's Famitsu was light on specifics. He didn't even share the main character's name.

But he did make one thing clear. Xenoblade has a different design philosophy from Xenosaga. That series of titles was notorious for lengthy cut scenes. Takahashi feels that this type of development has reached "a dead end." With Xenoblade, he wanted to develop a game where it was simply fun to adventure about, and where the feeling of freedom was high. He promised a 50 to 60 hour play experience, one that won't be taken up by level grinding nor by endless cut scenes.

Sounds like an RPG to watch for Wii owners. It's also an RPG that we're sure is coming out internationally, as it was first shown at last year's E3.

In Japan, Xenoblade hits this Spring, so the wait for actual screens and gameplay specifics hopefully won't be too far off.

Source

 

[Hop2089]

Square-Enix wants their concept back

This is very similar to Blood of Bahamut except that you don't fight the gods.

 

[Cyan]

here is the E3 trailer, if someone wants to see it again :
http://www.jeuxvideo.com/videos_editeurs/0...oblade_f1q0.htm


and the official site : (for people lazy to go to IGN)
http://www.nintendo.co.jp/wii/sx4j/index.html
I will like the musics if they are all like the one from the site!

 

[Master Mo]

Square-Enix wants their concept back

This is very similar to Blood of Bahamut except that you don't fight the gods.

I don`t think it is similar in any way, because there is no emphasis on fighting the giants... And I also thing that there are way more similarities between Blood Of Bahamut and Shadow Of Colossus rather then this and Blood Of Bahamut!

But the concept is very unique and it blows my mind, that the whole world takes place on two giant gods, that froze while fighting on a giant ocean. The things you can do with such a concept are immense and Monolith did some pretty good games and hopefully we`ll get to play it!

The last time we saw footage of the game it already looked rather far in development but one year is much time so it could have changed quite a bit, so I`m very curious of the next in-game-footage of this game

 

[Overlord Nadrian]

arts

LoL, anyone? (Legend of Legaia, for the PSX and PS2) (Great game btw, if you haven't played it yet)

Looks very promising, I can't wait for more gameplay footage