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
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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.
-hopes ESRB ain't like XB-
