Xenoblade Chronicles X

With July & August being quite month's I might try giving the first ago with this coming in mind.

Amidst all the other stuff shown off in the Direct, I hope that we haven't all completely overlooked neo-Shulk's ability to jump into people's front gardens.

The minute I saw the city I was amazed and then when I saw that I found myself unable to contain my amazement. This game can't come quick enough.

It's depth like that that is making me worry that the one city is essentially going to be the only real town location in the game, with any others being at best small outposts.  In xenoblade we had a major city for each race, all having a completely different atmosphere in the process.  Seeing this much detail in just one location makes me wonder if the sacrifice was alternate cities and towns.

Also those realistic looking cars are bugging me.

athrun wrote:

Also those realistic looking cars are bugging me.

I like how present day earth like New Los Angeles looks, it creates an nice dynamic of when you venture outside into an unknown planet & see how alien everything is.

Also considering how big this game world is I'd be very surprised if that's the only town in the game.

The current day earth feel to it is precisely my problem with it.  The trailers have shown that the civilization is at least a thousand years more advanced than current day times, so the use of present day stylings is just ridiculous.  I cannot for one second believe that a civilization that advanced would have any business making those cars or that style of house.  Why this time period which is frankly going to be entirely unremarkable in another twenty years* much less another thousand out of all the time periods?  


*I say twenty years because of how much things such as cars and general building design has changed in the last twenty years alone.  With the current pace of technology increasing modern day earth as it is right now will be as mystical as the roman cities of old, only far more boring.  Given the technology they are packing it's a disconnect that is incredibly annoying.  It's a incredibly vast step back from xenoblade, where you could essentially feel like you were in a different culture.  


And I wouldn't be so sure about there being other towns.  Not on the scale of the ones in xenoblade at any rate.  Maybe a few small outposts, but probably nothing on the scale and detail as, say, the Frontier Village.

Maybe it's a future retro thing.

That's what I was thinking. A callback to the halcyon days of Earth gone by - before it was, y'know, exploded.

But why would they be having a call back to this era out of all eras?  By their point in time there have no doubt been dozens of eras of mankind, and many of them are highly likely to be vastly more interesting and nostalgic than this one, not that that would be hard or anything.  

It's just a disconnect that's seriously getting under my skin.

Ah, but perhaps in a self-centred, Inception-lets-go-too-deep twist, the 20teen's is the era of Xenoblade Chronicle X's release on the Wii U: an event so stupendous it became mankind's greatest hour and we stopped designing new things! Except for flying bubble cities and mechs, obvs.

They've certainly got my hopes up with this. Key features for me: a deep, tactical combat system, a clumsy character who, instead of leaping, barrels into gardens like Nick Frost in Hot Fuzz; and of course a build-in library of Virtual Console-esque games that were saved on a room in this New LA "Space Ark" after Earth's demise!

So we've got a Japanese release date of 29th April, meaning the game proper is probably in its latter stages of development. All that's left after three months will be the massive amount of localisation... sigh.

I am very excited, let me just say. The world looks phenomenal, even if it's not as conceptually exciting as the Bionis and Mechonis.

Woo, localisation continues apace. 2015 looking pretty good!

I'm going this will be the big October game then Zelda I November and Star Fox is September.

You're probably right, sadly. Would it kill (sales or otherwise) to release a game in the summer?

Character Info

More information. I'm sure that some of you will be delighted to learn about the game's non-linearity: me, I find it a shame. I want a strong story that I can enjoy all of in one playthrough, without having to slog through the game again to see the rest of it.

I'm not a fan of multiple endings either but perhaps that was unavoidable since you play as an avatar you created.

I'm not fond of the avatar thing either. Okay, Shulk had as much personality as a cardboard frog, but they could have improved on that. Instead, they've guaranteed that the main character will have no character whatsoever.

Neither do I like the lack of a dedicated healer: I mained Sharla in XC. Ho hum.

Balladeer wrote:

I'm not fond of the avatar thing either.  Okay, Shulk had as much personality as a cardboard frog, but they could have improved on that.  Instead, they've guaranteed that the main character will have no character whatsoever.

That wasn't true in Fire Emblem Awakening though, and you play as a player-created character there.

Okay, not guaranteed, but it seems more likely. I could be wrong, though.

Yeah, avatars don't have to be blank slates, even ones where you can make major decisions don't NEED to be blank, Hawke from DA2 (despite all the criticisms of that game, I haven't heard many of Hawke him/herself) had a decent amount of that.

Mass Effect is a prime example - you absolutely craft your own Commander Shepard, but he/she have a lot of character to them. I wouldn't write off the avatar in Xenoblade so quickly.

Popping in to say that

a) I really should play Xenoblade (and might do so before the weekend),

b) multiple endings are a turn-off (but it depends how they're earned and how many there are), and

c) the avatar thing is fine for me. My favourite DS game, Dragon Quest IX, had you design all the members of your party.