Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was announced today during Nintendo’s Spotlight at E3, but during the Nintendo Treehouse stream the game’s producer Tetsuya Takahashi revealed a few tidbits of information about the core gameplay. While the game will be fully voiced in English upon release for the Nintendo Switch this winter, the open world title will bring the exploration of its predecessor Xenoblade Chronicles X, as well as see the return of a story-driven narrative for fans of the original game.
Players can also expect to see a simpler version of the arts palette, with new battle techniques including the ability to topple enemies and relaunch them into the air, along with a blade combo attack which can be unleashed for maximum damage. Other gameplay details include:
- Enemies will not alert the player as to when they spot you – players are supposed to study enemy patterns and behaviours, learning how to fight them through experience.
- The world has a lot of diversity – between titans, species and the lifestyles the people who inhabit the towns lead.
- Day / Night and Weather Cycles return
- Rising and falling of the tides will allow you to gain access to certain places you may not have been able to access before.
- You don’t have direct control over your party members, but you can swap between them.
- When you die you are set back to your latest checkpoint.
Interestingly enough, Takahashi revealed that the game is built upon the same engine as Xenoblade Chronicles X, allowing the development time to be much quicker than initially planned. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 will launch on the Nintendo Switch during Winter 2017.
Source: Nintendo Treehouse
what console or hand held gaming system will it be for?
Switch
Oh, man…! It just looks so frickin’ good! It’s taking what I DID like about X and putting back into a more superior version (the original). I am so hyped for this!
The only thing I’m having reservations on is the amount of team mates you can have, from pausing the trailer multiple times, it looks like it’ll be comprised of mostly female characters, and I don’t like harem situations so I strongly hope that they don’t go that way and instead do relationship affinity branches between ALL characters like in the first game, leading to different relationship development outside of the main character himself.
While a bit more gender diversity is nice, I won’t exactly complain about a harem situation. lol Of course, I doubt they’ll all be pining for the hero so it won’t technically be a harem situation. Now if this was a Zelda game, you’d have a point about a possible harem situation since Link does tend to attract all the ladies. xD
I just like it when the female characters don’t obsess over the main character, it’s refreshing. What I liked about Xenoblade Chronicles was the multi character interaction and development outside of Shulk. Reyn and Fiora were his ‘core characters’ but then Reyn had Sharia, and Fiora had Dunban. It gave them depth.
I’m a bit disappointed they didn’t do more with the love triangle between Shulk, Fiora, & Melia. *shrug* Oh well.
Speaking of, Melia had Riki.
^my exact point.
None of the characters felt like they were stuck on or with Shulk, and it was refreshing.
Now that I think about it, I actually wish they kept Shulk “dead” a little bit longer. Half of the second half of the game could have been about reviving him. Sadly, as soon as Zanza was freed from Shulk, he practically decimated everyone in quick fashion with Shulk reviving after only about 10 minutes of straight cutscenes with very little gameplay. Honestly, they should have had Zanza come out not as strong which forced him to flee from the group & left Dickson to keep them occupied for a small part of the game til he fully regained his strength THEN they could have had him defeat Meyneth for her Monado & kick off the process of destroying the world & recreating it. Maybe even gave Egil more screen time to make up for his wrongdoings before finally being killed off. Oh well. The story, I felt, was great as is even if the last stretch of the game went by rather quickly.
It was really neckbreak speed at the end, but at the same time, there was SO much time (in my case anyway) spent doing side quests and maxing out relationship events, that I had spent around 125 hours on it by the time I was done. More story might’ve killed me. 😫
It would have killed me, too. But considering the lack of games at the end of Wii’s life, and the fact I was foolishly Nintendo only during that generation, I would have welcomed that “death” more story would have brought. lol
To tell you the truth… I’m really feeling it!
I refuse to watch this. *Spartan kicks temptation off of a cliff* The trailer is good enough for me.