No. I mean, it doesnt have a chance, you opened the floodgates to some seriously stiff competition.

Was surprised to see a Steins;Gate animation a while back. Got some enjoyment out of the 'game', so figured why not.<br /><br />It was pretty good. Really, REALLY slow, but, somehow still pretty good.

A Nopon story translated from Xenoblade X site.

https://docs.google....kQXyFBaLm6g/pub

Looks like the Monado truly was the beginning of the world.

Pretty much confirms a tangential relation to the original Xenoblade for me.

"A sound argument. It embodied the sacred teachings passed down from the ‘hom hom’ of Nopon legends--"If man will not work, he shall not eat."

"Sooner or later, Tatsu had planned to leave the caravan behind. He dreamed of slaying a wicked god accompanied by sidekicks."

So is everyone assuming this is a 30FPS experience?

I am. Trilers have been uploaded in the 60 format, but the only thing that looked 60 to me usually is the splash screen.

Not really a big of a deal in games like this, whos combat revolve more around strategy than timely action. The resources would be better spent making a more immersive world than increasing the frame rate.

In case it wasn't obvious I was being sarcastic about the eyeballs. Square feels that's the kinda crap they need to show to make people think it's going to be such a great game and sadly people are buying into it. People are brainwashed. FFXV shows off boring flat and grounded empty worlds. Terrible nomura design with more black and more belts and zippers and emo hair. Combat looks awful. Plus sausage fest and breaking a fundamental rule in party based RPG's,diversity. You get 4 Noctis instead. Gets praised and wanked over.

XCX shows off massive worlds with amazing varied areas and designs. Hardly anyone covers it and trolls come out everywhere DER I HATE FACES because it's the only thing they can latch onto to hate.

Xenoblade is a hell of a drug. Frak your Noctis Tabata!

 
Thats the audience AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA publishers spent so long conditioning and brainwashing. Former Activision blatantly admit it, and laugh at them, hell the industry at large even admitted it again at this last dice.
 
'Our industry has conditioned, trained, cultivated and capitalized on 'gamers’ “sense of entitlement.”

“As we’ve seen this year, we may need to defend ourselves against our own, carefully cultivated, hardcore audience,” -Tracy Fullerton (Thats what you get, for marginalizing the original audience, for the slobbering obnoxious crappers we stayed inside and played videogames to get away from, because they can be manipulated and exploited for easy reliable money.... At the expense of great games. Entire industry should be ashamed.)

the 'Gamers' spoken of here, are the AAAAAAAAAAA audience. As stated by the very people who spent years creating the behavior, they are a bunch of tools, who have been brainwashed to respond to superficial bullcrap.
 
Like veins in eyeballs.

Reminds me of Guyver.

Eh?



I dont know... I just dont-

Oh wait, THIS Guyver

Yeah, thats the ticket.

Honestly, I think ive noticed several Japanese pop culture references with the armours so far, and those are just the ones someone like me can recognize.

Hopper cam is awesome. I am going to lose soooo much time to this doo dad.

Tonights update prepping for tomorrows doll video.

People keep saying the music's out of place but I just can't see it. Out of place because he's "spitting lyrics" in a future dystopia? 
 
 
 
I think the song's dope and don't think it's out of place, at all.

I dont care for it, but its not like Im screaming about it, its the same level of I dont really care for it as any of the songs in Xenoblade that Didnt blow my mind.

Does sound like it would fit right in on a Neo LA radio station though. It would be a cool Easter Egg if they made the singers of the game NPC's that were musicians in NEO LA.

Here guys, this will make up for the music in the battle video.

Chrono trigger was re-released on ds, so it will work on 3ds, it was also released on the wii's virtual console, so it can be played on wii u through wii mode.... Oh man, just thinking about this explanation seems like its going to be huge..

Its the the basic battle system Makoto Shimamoto went back to to base the xeno battle system off of.

Enemies are on the field, so its not random battles like FF or other JRPG's, some enemies just wander around, some actively try to hit you, when the player character comes into contact with an enemy, a battle starts, so you have control over whether you battle or not.

The battle system runs off a system called the 'Active Time Battle' system, or more specifically a custom version of Hiroyuki Ito's ATB made exclusively for chrono trigger, outlined by director Akihiko Matsui, and designed mostly by lead battle planner Makoto Shimamoto, who had... Issues with the design philosophy of the ATB and squares battle systems. He thought it was nonsensical to use football and formula 1 racing for design inspirations to an rpg. He thought the players lining up in a straight line on one side, and the opponents lining up on the other side (Like a football play beginning) was silly, and lacked potential for increased strategems, peices should be all around the board, and have different attack shaped, like chess, not stay in fixed lines with only attack 1 or all. And so we had the ATB version 2.0, which was used in chrono trigger, and ONLY chrono trigger. As soon as Shimamoto left, square devolved back to 'football' design of lining up characters facing off with each other, for the battle system.

So, when in battle, enemies still move around in real time, (but the player cant, however the characters go to their battle positions somewhere on the field (Which is generally different for each fight, making the strategy for each fight different). The players have a 'time bar' that fills up according to a speed statistic (Which increases with level) when the bar fills up, that character can act. The enemies also run off of this system, however the player can not see their speed bar.

When one of the party members bars is full they have three choices, a normal attack, which attacks one enemy, with a chance to do a double damage critical hit based on a percentage determined by the player characters critical stat, or a 'tec' where the player could use special skills, that could affect more than one enemy, or had certain element attributes that some enemies were weak to. These Tecs had various hit boxes to them. Some went out in a straight line from the player to the selected character, hitting all other enemies in the path. Some were an area of effect around the selected enemy, that would hit nearby enemies, some were an area of effect around the character, hitting enemies near the character... You get the idea. Since the players characters were in different places for each battle, and the enemies moved, this made using certain skills, with basic timing a strategic act, you would wait for enemies to line up, or get close together, before using a certain tec. Tec's costed MP points to use, if you ran low on mp points, you couldnt use a tec until you restored them using an item like an ether. To use a tec, you select the 'tec' option that was below attack on the menu. Another, larger menu would appear, with all that characters available tecs, and you selected the one that you wanted. Hands would appear pointing at the enemy the player selected, and the player can cycle between enemies with the d-pad. Multiple hands would appear over other enemies if they were in, or moved into the tecs area of attack.

When you use certain groups of characters, they will learn that they can combine their moves, to form larger more devastating attacks, or big ccures and buffs, combining two characters moves for a double tec, or three characters moves for a huge triple tec. You simply had to wait until both or all 3 characters had their speed bars filled, so they could act at the same time.

The third option the player had was to use an item, which would open up another menu with every item the player had, and the player has to cycle through to find the item they want, to cure, or restore mp, or provide a buff. I generally didnt use the items unless I absolutely had too, typically only using them to restore mp after battles... Partly because Cycling through all that garbage is clumsy, and partly because Im a pack rat hoarder who collects billions of items but doesnt want to 'waste' any by using them.

Winning battles awards experience points, get enough points and the character levels up, increasing their stats, so they have more health, do more damage, have more mp, and sometimes learn new moves.

By exploring and finding chests, or buying from stores in towns the player finds, you can buy new swords and armor that bolster the players stats, resulting in more damage, and better defense. A third item called an accessory can also be equipped, further enhancing stats like doing more damage, or giving new skills like being able to see enemy health, or the ability to counter attack. Chrono Trigger is REALLY good at this, big on rewarding players with cool stuff for finding secrets, and upgrading already cool stuff further by considering how time travel 'works'.

Thats the basic gist of chrono triggers battle system, the precursor to Xenoblades. Now I will detail how Xenoblade wii improves on this foundation.

In Xenoblade Enemies are also on the field, except now they have better AI, and respond to certain stimulus, its no longer touching enemies that starts a battle, some will attack when they see the player cross their line of sight. So you can sneak around behind them. Some will attack if they HEAR the player, so running behind them wont work, but you can sneak past them by not running. some respond to the use of ether. Some enemy types will come to the aid of their buddies if you attack them, so you may start out fighting one enemy you can take, but quickly attracting a hoard you cant handle, (There is an option to try and get the attention of only one enemy and draw it away from its friends) If the player wants to get the jump on an enemy, or fight an enemy that wouldnt normally fight them, either because they arent aggressive, or they are scared of the player because the player is a much stronger level than them, the player can select enemies with the trigger buttons, pressing L or R until the desired enemy is highlighted, and selecting the fight command from the selection bar at the bottom of the screen by highlighting it and pressing a. What level the enemy is, and what their ai routine is (Sight, sound) is displayed above enemies heads. Even the starting area has wild life that is far beyond the starting parties capabilities. Makes for fun risk reward experiences. You can try sneaking past them to try and get later game level goodies early, (Sometimes you can) or you can back when you are more powerful and explore areas you couldnt get to before because the enemies were too strong.

Unlike Chrono trigger normal attacks are now done automatically as long as you are close enough to the enemy to hit them, because having to push a button to do a normal attack for this kind of battle system is redundent and silly. Its a waste of time, why WOULDNT you attack when you are close enough, and are able? Having to push a button just for that would be redundant and a waste of time. The speed of how fast your player makes normal attacks is dependant upon that characters stats (The player has ways to adjust these stats, to build characters who can attack very rapidly)

In xenoblade, the player can now move during battles in addition to the enemy, allowing for more strategy. So now you can position yourself to line up enemies for moves that attack all enemies in a straight line, like the monado buster. On top of this, whether the player is in front of, to the side, or behind the enemy also matters. Some moves inflict status ailments if done from the side, or do more damage from behind etc. However, while it may look like the battle takes place in real time in videos, the way it plays is still the active time system. What matters is where you and the enemies are, the moment you PUSH the button to activate the attack, not where you and the enemies are when the attack animation happens. For example, when you use the monado buster, shulk goes through a cool sword powering up animation, and then a huge sweeping strike, where the enemies are when the strike hits doesnt matter, its where the enemies were the instant you pushed the button to start the attack. So, if three enemies are all lined up when you push the button, then wander off, those three will all get hit wherever they are. But if three enemies are outside of the line in front of shulk, and then wander into the attack animation, they wont get hit. Its not real time. Its not an action rpg.

Special moves in Xenoblade are called arts. They function a LOT like techs in Chrono trigger, having certain areas they effect, like a straight line, a cone, a circle around the player etc. Unlike chrono trigger, the time bar is not applied to the character itself and when they can act, but to each individual art. When you use an art, you have to wait for it to fill up, or 'cool down' before you can use it again. This puts a lot of the battle tempo under the players control, making battles much faster and less drawn out. On weaker enemies, you can blow all your arts one after the other until the enemy dies. On older rpg systems, that same enemy would take five minutes or more as you have to wait to use your moves one at a time. On stronger enemies, blowing all your arts at once may take off a decent chunk of health, but would leave you without any options besides auto attack until your moves cooled down (And draw lots of aggro). To use an art you simply use the d-pad to select the desired art from the hot bar at the bottom of the screen and push a. Special moves can be leveled up, and switched in and out of the hot bar via the menu when not in battle.

Each character has a 'super move' that has to be charged to use. Most moves charge by hitting enemies with normal attacks, although some characters are unique. This move is the big circle in the center of the hot bar. For shulk, when it is full, this activates the monados over drive, and the blade glows brighter, a little longer, and smokes more, and activates the monado menu, which changes shulks normal moves in the hot bar for his special monado moves, where shulk can either buff his allies by allowing them to damage Mechon that other party members normally cant hurt, or by giving them ether armor, or attack with things like making the monado blade super huge and doing a big smash attack.

CHaracters can gain the attention of the enemy, or 'aggro' by doing lots of damage, or attacking a lot, or doing fancy moves. This is denoted by red rings around the character, the more red rings, the more the enemy is really mad at that player. Enemies will concentrate on characters that tick them off. THis can be used to draw attacks toward characters with high defense and a lot of HP (Reyn) Or characters with high agility who are hard for the enemy to hit. THis can also be used to keep the enemies from attacking the player, or more fragile members of the party.

Shulk can see the future and has visions. This will activate (Even when shulks not in the party) when an enemy does a move that will kill, or do a lot of crippling damage to the attacked character, it shows in black and white with distorty special effects, the move that happens and what it does to the atttacked character. A bar above the enemy will then display how much time is left until the event occurs. The player can attempt to change the future in any way they see fit. They can try to heal the targeted character so that the move doesnt kill them, they can try and get the attention of the monster away from the character, so it attacks someone else who wont be killed, they can try to knock the creature over, seal its special moves, use a monado shield, kill it, etc. etc. etc.

Each character in the party has 'tension' or their morale, represented by their battle portrait, getting owned will reduce their morale, depressed characters get hit easier, have a harder time getting clean hits on enemies, or even hitting them, and deal less damage, going up to these players and pressing B will give them a pat on the back and some motivation to get out of their funk and get their head back in the game. WHen characters are doing well, and kicking butt, their tension raises, until they are 'really feeling it', and flames erupt behind their portraits. When like this characters hit for more damage, have higher accuracy, and are harder to hit.

Occasionally, when the player does something cool that other party members like, they will comment on it, or when they see an attack coming to your character, they will warn you when this happens the 'b' button icon appears in the middle of the screen with a shrinking ring around it. Time it so that the shrinking ring is the same size as the ring around the 'b' button icon and press the b button, when successful the player will deal more damage, or dodge the enemy attack, and get several boosts, temporary stat boosts, a tension boost, and a boost to the unite guage.

The unite guage is the blue bar above the player portraits and hp, and consists of 3 parts. It is generally filled by beating on enemies, or taking hits, using certain arts, and succeeding at the parties shout outs with the 'b' button. When you, or someone in your party loses all their health, they collapse and cant fight anymore. You can spend a section of the unite guage to revive the fllen character (or your party can revive you) If the player character falls and their is not a single full section of the bar, the player fails and starts over... from the last landmark they were nearby, with everything they had the moment they died, typically no more than 30 seconds away from where they died, vastly reducing frusteration, lost time, and encouraging exploration and expirimentization, and getting into tough battles.

When all 3 sections of the unite guage is filled, the player can perform Xenoblades version of the triple tec, teh chain attack. THe player gets to choose a move from each player. Choosing moves of the same color icon, does bonus damage, increasing the multiplier each time the combo is kept going. Super attacks are 'wild' in that they can continue the combo from any color, and any color can be played off of them. This can result in AMAZING amounts of damege. If your characters have a high affinity (They know each other well) they can continue the chain attack if the player succeeds in the 'b' button timed press. The higher the affinity between party members, the more likely the chain attack can go on, and on, and on, and on.... Meaning you can loop across all characters multiple times. However each art can only be used once during a chain attack, after you use it, it goes dark and you cant use it again during that chain attack (Making it more difficult to keep those combos going.) With a clever selection of arts for each character, and smart use of the super moves 'wild card' ability, you can keep combos going for extremely brutal damage.

Unlike Chrono trigger, there are no battle items like potions or elixers in Xenoblade. Item management was not fun, and not strategic, it was boring, time consuming, and tedious. So they did away with it. The party heals rapidly when not in battle, with all characters being at full health after a couple of seconds, and all status ailments being cured. This means you dont have to spend time doing invintory on all your garbage, and stopping what you are doing to go get butt balm to continue your journey. It also means they can put more challenging battles in the game, since winning a battle means the party will be at their peak and ready to go again. A great move that streamlined a lot of irritating unnecessary nonsense that typically weighs down rpg's.

Status effects play a large role in Xenoblade, but ill only really get into two. the first one is the combo of break and topple, because its super important and one of the first things you need to make sure you dont miss. Certain moves cause a status effect called break (They generally have pink icons) when an enemy is afflicted with break, they can then be knocked over by using a move that has topple (Generally the green icons) toppled enemies take 50% more damage, and lose thier defense. This means enemies that you normally cant damage, can be damaged if you topple them (Frusteration avoiding hint for the beginning of the game)

The other one, is much later in the game, but can be a subtle surprise if you ignore the tutorial, it is called spike damage. Spike damage is either damage, or a status effect done by the enemy (or the player) when certain conditions are met. Usually its just being nearby the enemy, but their are other variations, such as spike damage being dealt when the enemy is hit with an auto attack, or spike damage being dealt when the enemy is toppled. This needs to be overcome by either using armor that alters spike stats, negating spike damage, or using special moves to seal spike damage. Spike damage can quickly consume your party without you noticing. if you suddenly find your party wiped out, or down a lot of health, and you are sure you were kicking butt, its probably spike damge.

This seems like a lot, and its just the fundamentals (I havent even gotten into character skills, or skill linking between characters as they get to know each other, or gems) but its rationed out over a considerable amount of time, and introduced with tutorials you can then look up at any time with excellent detail.

Xenoblade X is heavily based off of Xenoblade, which was based off of chrono trigger, bu I cant even really go into detail about the enhancements made to the new system, because really im still processing it... And likely will be until a couple dozen hours into the new game (And likely more), which is something I love.

But if you get the hang of chrono trigger, you will have a basic working framework of how to get a handle on the more complex Xenoblade X.

Chrono Trigger is also a pretty good barometer for whether or not you might enjoy xenoblade X. It doesnt have the amazing scenery porn, but its environments are a lot more intimate than the grid based and squarish design looking jrpg's like FF and its imitators, and exploring was a huge factor.

If you find yourself interested, intruiged, wanting to know what happens next, or interested in finding whats in this place you discovered, or getting caught up in the adventure at all while playing chrono trigger, despite it being an old snes game, you will LOVE the Xenoblades.... Cant really say how much youll like other jrpg's though... Chrono trigger never was much like other jrpg's of its time, or after its time... Until Xenoblade.

It's sad. FFXV shows off eyeball veins and everyone cums themselves. XCX shows off anything and you have to seriously hunt for any info not a Nintendo focused website.

.

The industry, and coverage, is controlled by AAAAAAAAAA pubs. Incumbents who would REALLY like the narrative of 'lol nintendo' 'Backwards Nintendo' 'Nintendo is teh kiddies' to stick, instead of, 'Hey, Nintendo makes high quality games with lots of content, that gives all tha content for the price of buying the game instead of making you pay 60 bucks and 20 bucks a pop for 5 dlc packs to get an actual complete game, and the games actually work the first day you buy them, the first time you stick the disc in the system.'

The texture work in this game is amazing, Im still not sure exactly how they did it, because I simply cant find individual texture tiles.

 

I know they are using ridiculous layering techniques.

 

My guess is they are using micro texturing, with quite a few different tiles that have all been tesselated into each other with incredible skill, meaning they can all line up with each other smoothly, no matter which one you put where, and which way you rotate it, and then are randomly placing and rotating them to make them very hard to pick up an obvious pattern on.... as they use these microtextures as building blocks to make other larger textures.

 

Layered on top of that seems to be multiple layers of larger textures, but these are more like stickers put over the base texture, or god tier microtexturing. These do things like showing that great caked mud look.

 

I cant even speculate how many layers they are actually using. The texture work is ridiculously well done.

Gosh. I know he doesn't want the online elements to be too invasive, but I think the ONLY way I will have the motivation to spend 300 hours on this game is if I can co-op with my friends. 

 

That was a play test. Play tests are where you go through the game, making sure every single sequence and scripted thing in the game works the way its supposed too,

 

so unless you spend your time in the game riding up and down elevators, then riding up and down elevators while jumping, then trying to jump off the elevator, then ride the elevator while equipping and unequipping items.....

I was thinking that too. I'm sure a lot of money is railroaded from production/development and bumped into marketing.

 

Marketing for AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA games now often cost several times the development of the games. The A denominator, after all, has always been a bracket designator for how big of an advertising budget a game was going to get. I am sure marketing departments the world over are laughing their arses off at the fact they've managed to hoodwink an entire generation into thinking it has to do with a games quality as if it were a meat ranking in the window of a restauraunt.

 

An entire generation so brainwashed, they will consistantly and parrot over and over again, instantly, without any thought, how much better graphically this looks:

 

than this:

(Why is it so hard to find a picture of Xenoblades latest build thats above like a 640 res?)

 

And then when confronted with the irrefutable truth like good quality pictures, do they stop to think that maybe the narrative they were fed could be wrong? the BS starts coming out of their backsides to twist what they see in impossible ways to fit the narrative.

 

It doesnt REALLY look better,

its not REALLY doing what ps3360 could do

Its just Nintendos ART STYLE, its really not doing what skyrim does

It wont REALLY be open world, the wii u is too weak to do open world games like skyrim!

There wont be any wildlife!

Its just a pretty skybox, you cant actually GO there!!!

The wii u's ram bandwidth is too LOW to do what skyrim does!!

But look at this crappy port!!! Thats what wii u is REALLY capable of! This is just 'tricks'

 

And now that we find out Xenoblade is 400 square kilometers to Skyrims 16? Nothing. They simply move on to the next narrative. Nothing, will EVER stop to make them think, gee, maybe this Nintendo non AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA studio DID make something bigger, and more graphically impressive than AAAAAAAAA western devs did on last gen consoles. No, I am pretty sure that would kill them.

Yes, i think you 're right, allthough i think to much money goes to things that nobody needs in games, like hollywood storywriters, artists and more of that :/

 

Yes, that is a HUGE waste of money that could be spent making a better game.

 

To add on just how different Monolith studios with Nintendo is than AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA Western studios

 

http://www.siliconer...-place-to-work/

 

Work starts at 9 AM and Ends at 6. THATS IT.

 

There IS NO CRUNCH TIME at Monolith soft studios

 

“One of the big opportunities that put the appointed weekly hours into action came from the 2006 occupational safety and  health act revision, which demanded a more thorough employee time management,” says director Yasuyuki Honne. He further shares his beliefs that development styles which anticipate overtime work have already reached their limit. With that in mind, Monolift Soft’s company motto, “Zero overtime and creative work allowed” is what they now go by.

 

“Playing and having fun is the most important part. It’s the key to bringing out the fun in graphics,” says Genbe, as he explains that those are the deep feelings they share at Nintendo, which he has learned since joining. According to the designer, he has also learned to put his time to better use, thanks to the results of the appointed weekly hours.
 

“When the work starts to overflow, the leader immediately reviews the schedule accordingly. I spend my weekends on hobbies and polishing my skills using ZBrush at home,” Genbe explains, addressing how the lenient schedule has been a great benefit, by providing him with free time to relax and brush up on his abilities as a designer.
 

 

“Not only have my skills grown as an artist, but I feel as if I’ve matured more as a person, as well. The appointed weekly hours allow me to work with a mental sense of stability,”
 

COmpare that too the current cancerous state of the Western AAAAAAAAAA game cycle:

 

http://www.gamasutra...e_vicious_cycle

 

 

 

"This is an age-old software development issue: reasonable scope on a reasonable schedule," says Keith Fuller, an experienced developer and production consultant who spent over a decade working on Activision projects like Jedi Academy, Quake 4 and Call of Duty: Black Ops before going independent. "Our ongoing inability to properly address it is rooted in leadership issues."

 

"Developers rarely get to tell Marketing 'We can ship it now, we fixed all the bugs,'" notes Fuller. "Rather, the marketing department will tell you when you're launching regardless of fixing bugs. If you want that arrangement to change, figure out how to sell millions of units without telling anyone your game exists."

 

"The last game I worked on as a studio dev was Call of Duty: Black Ops, and Activision's legal team would go into cardiac arrest if I shared with you how few months before launch that game was almost entirely unplayable," says Fuller. "That's due to the pressure of annual franchise installments and the competitive landscape."

 

"Addressing this cycle is beyond the realm of development and it's sad that we think this is a development issue," says Keith. "Developers get the short end of both sticks: death marches and the blame for low quality. The solution is to address this culture."

 

 

Maybe its not Nintendo and Monolith soft who are backwards.

Just to clarify, is the reason this system is better than the thieves/assassin's/fighter/mage guild because the actual story progression happens through them? Because honestly, I would prefer 1 "guild" that covers the events of the main story arc. I can't spend 300 hours on this game and all the different guilds.
 
also, while I have you here, thoughts on the "loosely connected online"?? I definitely don't want to feel aware of everyone else's presence all the time, but that also doesn't confirm or deny if I can co-op stuff with my friends.

The reason its better is because those other ones are old, cliched, and played out and have the same damn crap every single time.

I have no idea whats really going to happen, this is some seriously meager info that could really end up being interperetted a hundred different ways.

But heres my take on it.

It looks like the game will have a main story, but each union will have its own events and peices of the story depending on how far you go. Its looking like super steroided colony 6, with more sensical and specific tasks for building the city, and rewards for doing such.

The 'unions' appear to be taking the place of the different places on bionis in the Xenoblade affinity chart.

In Xenoblade doing quests from a certain area, gained you affinity points, which would unlock higher level quests in those places, ultimatwly ending up with the having enough affinity points to do the quests to get the best non drop equips/gems and of course, unlock your characters, well, characterization and power up. In order to keep players from getting 'Affinity screwed' monolith soft made hundreds of throwaway quests, so nop matter how bad users screw up, how much they skip, they can (almost) always drop some time on effortless throw away quests to gain enough affinity to get to the next level. These quests were differentiated from the meaningful sidequests by being given by 'nobody' npc's. Kill x of y, collect x of y, find x etc. Meaningful quests in related questlines were given by named npc's, with the quests themselves having names, and the higher up the quest chain you want to go the more trust they have to have in you, thus building your rep in the area with 'affinity'.

This method was generous, but a little (Purposefully) hidden, and so less....astute players wound up complaining about having to do bazzilions of 'pointless sidequests' because they couldnt distinguish affinity point giveaways (Kill 5 buttsniffers) with meaningful sidequests (Break up the Nopon black market drug smuggling operation).

This method is more straight forward, and appears to be a lot more rewarding. Not just with story/lore/world building rewards, but tangible use in the game rewards that are related to the subject.


Pathfinder - In charge of data probe installation.

Installing data probes could fill in map data, and give intelligence on what creatures and resources are in the area (Man, I need 5 ratfrog terds... WHere do I find those? OH! The data probe says there are ratfrogs in area X) Could also point out things like caves they player might have otherwise missed. Perhaps going far enough in this will result in discovering other crashed colonies?


•Interceptor - In charge of exterminating protists.

I dont know what a protist is, but I guess we want them dead.

•Avalanche - In charge of hunting down dangerous life forms.
Thinning out numbers in areas could result in making outposts possible?

Unique monster hunting! Heck yeah!

•Testament - In charge of the search and recovery of debris scattered by the ship, as well as the recovery of items lost on the battlefield.

Recovering lost ship technology has got to unlock some good stuff.

•Corepedian - In charge of visiting areas and investigation/collecting materials.

HHHNNNNGGGGGGG...

•Land Bank - In charge of securing resources and collecting minerals.

More resources could improve the economy, and make better items available for purchase?

•Arms - Assists the Arms Company in charge of the development of Dolls and their inner weaponry.

This ones pretty obvious, going down this path is going to result in more customizable doll parts, and weapons, of increasing power.

•Companion - A Jack of all trades, from the mediation of petty fights to the search of stray cats.

Youre god damn right Im going to use my super jumping powers to get those kitties out of trees! Then Ill have an army of cats at my disposal!!! Look out giant alien brontosaurs, your days are numbered now!

You may be able to complete the game by focusing on just a couple of these unions. However the ending you recieve may differ depending on what path, or balance of paths you choose... These are some of the same people who worked on chrono trigger... Focus exclusively on dolls and weapons, and crush your alien oppressors... but maybe the human race will be viewed as too war like? Perhaps having another balance will result in a different outcome with the aliens in question?

The online stuff sounds like miiverse stuff. Leave messages in bottles wind waker style, or messages dark souls style. Not sure if co op is on or off the table. No idea.

I see the 400 Meters typo from Raven on Neogaf is still in effect, Now I dont feel as silly about my own snafu.

 

 

Anyways.

 

HOLY CRAP MUFFINS I MUST BE IN EVERY SINGLE UNION!!!!!

 

All of them!!1 I want to do them ALL!!!!!

 

It appears the story progression is tied to the unions and the progress you make in them branches it out.

 

Seriously, this is 10000000X better than the same old thieves guild assassins guild, fighter guild mage guild junk.

Oi. beat me like bunnitv!

 

I am horribly torn about wether I should watch this or not... I mean

i mean, know im GOING to watch it...

What Im telling myself is that the game is so massive the direct will be like a drop in the ocean.

 

I hope the video is of a good quality.

 

Really hoping to get a glimpse at monolith softs vertical layering design they used so well with the original xenoblade.

 

One of the coolest thing about Xenoblade, is that your already large areas were often almost doubled (or sometimes more!) in explorable real estate via the way monolith soft layered the maps, Im talking about things like on the bionis leg, where there is an entire section above the windy cave, that you could explore, or drop down into the windy caves, which were a huge expanse the same size as the completely different area atop of it (at the risk of dealing with high level mobs).

 

The addition of flying mechs could allow them to turn the dial on this up to 11, and Im hoping to catch a glimpse of it.

Translated (Turn cc on)

Okay, now things are coming together.

 

The city was empty. Always was, it was just a 'seed' that they were going to plant on a habitable planet. Each seed was modeled after famous cities and their cultures. We got LA.

 

The only people who were awake were soldiers, engineers, and maintenence, who navigated, defended the ship, kept it running, and mantained the LIFE structures. WHich were giant structures in the hull of the ship containing the citizens in cryo-stasis. Upon crashing, the white whale (name of the arc ship) ejected its life pods, which were durable and stabilized enough to protect their cargo from the crash landing.

 

The city seed began its automated process of building its underlying foundations after anchoring itself to the terrain and leveling itself. Then the survivors began gathering people to work on the construction of the city, wich is suspended over the actual land beneath it. This reconstruction goes on for two months, before us, the pc are awoken from our LIFE pod.

 

Wow. This translation lliterally takes every complaint the new waves of trolls and 'concern' trolls' have tried to levy at the game, and completely pimp slaps them with it.

Now THAT'S one hell of a Japanese cover!

Hopefully NOA doesnt butcher it..

Could be, who knows.
 
This will be the third time Takahashi has tried to tell a chpater of his Xeno story.
 
The first time was Xenogears, which square pulled the plug on half way through, forcing Takahashi's team to abandon the project to help out with finishing ffvII.
 
This resulted in Xenogears being an amazing first half of a game through disc 1... And literally watching characters sitting on chairs narrating for a lot of disc 2.

Xenogears was episode 5 of a six part story
 


Xenosaga was produced by Namco Bandai, who apparently decided THEY wanted to direct the game instead of Monolithsoft.

Monolithsoft staff resisted, and so Namco began firing them, notably the writing staff, notably one SorayaSaga, one of Monolith softs (And square softs) best writers, which also happened to coincide with a very vulnerable time, as her brother died. Upon finding out about this, Xenosagas wonderul fanbase began hounding Soraya saga, and ridiculing her constantly:

“How could you desert the series? You Traitor!”
– Xenosaga Fan

“Why could you make such a stupid decision to leave?”
– Xenosaga Fan

“Do you have a marital problem?”
– Xenosaga Fan

“Did Takahashi send you home?”
– Xenosaga Fan

“Your leaving doesn’t really matter. Episode II will go well in America.”
– Xenosaga Fan

“You may be an expensive artist. So they kicked you out. Isn’t it?”
– Xenosaga Fan

Soraya saga attempted suicide, which nearly destroyed monolithsoft (I cant imagine Takahashi going on very long after losing his significant other and closest partner in game making). Fortunately she recovered.

So, Takahashis second attempt at telling some chapters of his Xeno story, was ruined by publisher interference.... And a horrible, horrible, 'fan' base. Takahashi tried to fix the butchering Namco did to their story, with Xenosaga 1&2 on ds. It never left japan.

Its not really clear exactly what chapters Xenosaga was supposed to be, aside from they took place before Xenogears, which was chapter 4. This made especially Murky by Takahashis inability to directly link the series of his own stories because of Copyright issues and legal red tape... We know that saga was shortened from a proposed 6 part series, to 4 parts, and only 3 came out, and they didnt cover nearly as much of the arc as was planned, even for just 3.

Xenoblade was never really a 'Xeno' game, its original title was 'Monado: Beginning of the world', and while it shared in many aspects the other Xeno games had, like religious symbolism, and philosophical literature allusions, it didnt really take place in any of the 6 chapters of the Xeno story, it was its own original work, and an 'experiment' in game design philosophy to Takahashi. The experiment, was apparently a roaring sucees, as Takahashi has gone on record saying the old way was a dead end (referring to jrpg's popularized during the psx era, which typically had no gameplay, and no worlds to explore, as they consisted of static images players werre super imposed over, with only the most minimal amount of interaction, that was completely micromanaged, where the entire point of the game was to grind along to get the 'reward' which was a cutscene). Interestingly, Xenogears did not follow this method. Probably because it had not been established as 'THis is how you make money with jrpg's' by the success of ff7, As it had began production BEFORE ff7 (Xenogears was originally supposed to be ff7, but it was deemed to dark and complicated).

Takahashi was very happy with Xenoblade, the integration of Gameplay and story, and the fact he was never compromised, but in fact ENCOURAGED to go all the way to finish the game. This result is probably what led Takahashi to once again, try his hand at his Magnum Opus, The Xeno story.

This perspective makes me wonder if there is more areas, Without really knowing exactly how large the shown areas are, Many parts of the map look like things have been excluded to be revealed later, or when you play, such as in the lava section 
 
The large section in between the 2 major landmass's could just as easily be buffer zones to make them inaccessible by dolls until later points in the game.

Looks like the exact opposite to me.

Looks like that area is inaccessible until you build up your dolls to have enough fuel and flight capability to be able to make it across the island chain.

The chokepoints ARE however, very obvious swap points, where the game swaps out assets for new areas. These allow the player to move seamlessly without having to resort to a loading screen.

I think the most important information about the new xenoblade is the beastiary. Once you encounter a beastie, you can look it up in the beastiary, you can find out where it is, what times it appears, what conditions it appears, and what it drops. Xenoblade 3ds is geting this addition as well.

 

Massive improvement.

 

If they do something similar to the npc's, like stating where and waht time they will be at certain places, and what they trade... My days of playing Xenoblade with my phone sitting next to me with the wiki on it are a relic of the past!

Damn thats a huge freaking update.

Hopefully that youtube translation fairy decides to grace us with some translations again.