Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Planning Began in July 2014, More Story-Focused Than X

With the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 out in just a few days, this week’s Famitsu (via Siliconera) interviewed Monolith Soft executive director Tetsuya Takahashi and composer Yasunori Matsuda about it. They revealed quite a bit about the open world RPG and its development.

First it’s worth noting that plans for the game began as far back as July 2014. While Monolith Soft was busy with Xenoblade Chronicles X on the Wii U, it simultaneously began work on Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Interestingly, fans were somewhat annoyed with the direction that Xenoblade Chronicles X took, which only made the developer more impatient. Unlike X which was all about open world exploration, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is more story-focused like the first game in the series.

When work began on Xenoblade Chronicles 2, the developer didn’t know the Nintendo Switch’s specs. In light of this, it made plans by imagining the hardware. After confirmation came from Nintendo producer Hitoshi Yamgami, they said “This, this is it!”

As for some of the gameplay elements, it was noted that selecting Arts, moving and managing the camera in past games was somewhat unwieldy. It’s something the developer has taken care of this time by making the controls more intuitive.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is out on December 1st for Nintendo Switch. Are you looking forward to it? Let us know below.