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.

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.

Monolith threw in a Gears reference.

Oh, there are peices to make pretty much every character. I saw ones that make for a Jin/citan, and a slight alteration of which to make a dunban, an elsmeralda, an ellie.... Pretty sure I saw parts you could use to make a bart complete with eye patch.

From what Ive seen they pretty much have everyone covered Well... Unless.... You are... a Man... of the Sea!

I only hope they let you really make pronounced features, like van damn style pronounced, becuase the first thing Im making if you can is Big Joe.

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.'

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."

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.

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.

Damn thats a huge freaking update.

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

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.

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.

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!

I've actually recently got my hands on the original xenoblade, and I've already logged nearly 50 hours in and i do not see an end in sight.  I cannot wait for this game.  If it is anything like its predecessor I will be a very happy man! I do not care as much about world size as world life, and looking at the trailers i think this world has plenty of that!  Hopefully Aonuma  is taking notes and asking questions.  I'm also quite excited for the online implementation, and to take on some of those late game beasts shown off!

The reason so many people are excited about the world size is because of the original Xenoblade.

Unlike the rest of the open world games, and pretty much all modern sandbox games, Xenoblades terrain was not procedurally generated, it was actually hand designed, every inch of it. Thats the 'secret' to having big worlds that dont suck, the 'secret' being that there is no easy way out, no magic pill, no shortcuts, if you use terrain generation, you are going to have that generic sandbox game world feel, no exceptions. If you want better than that, you have to be prepared to take the time, and actually hand design your game world.... And on top of that, you STILL actually have to be GOOD at world design, Something no AAAAAAAAAAAAAA publisher would ever do today.

Thats the thing that people are so excited about with Xenoblade X's world size that the trolls just cant figure out in their endless ignorant and identical efforts to crap all over the title. Its not that there are no games bigger, there are a lot of games that are bigger.

And its not because its open world. There are a lot of games that are open world.

It's because its the biggest HAND DESIGNED open world game ever made, which null and voids the constant barrage of 'Hurr sure its big but its just going to be another empty open world game like **Names procedurally generated sandbox game every single time**, hurrr hurrr dont you know bigger doesnt mean better?? HUUURRR'

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.