Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Map Is Five Times Larger Than Its Predecessor

To celebrate and promote the upcoming release of Xenoblade Chronicles 3, a trio of directors sat down with interviewers at Nintendo to discuss various aspects of the game and the series as a whole. The interview was divided into three parts, the last of which was revealed today, a day before the game’s anticipated release. At the end of the interview, Genki Yokota, producer and director at Nintendo, confirmed that the Xenoblade Chronicles series will go on after this title, stating that he wants to “keep it going as long as possible!”

This was only one of many intriguing bits of info relayed about the game and its creation. The interviews were conducted with the previously mentioned Yokota, as well as two lead members of Monolith Soft, the development studio behind the Xenoblade series. These individuals were chief creative officer and game director Tetsuya Takahashi, as well as producer Koh Kojima.

Takahashi had spoken before about how this sequel is the culmination of the prior two titles, and how its story links those prior two worlds together, but he made a point to confirm that newcomers can enjoy the title just as well, as it is a self-contained story. The ‘culmination’ aspect resulted in conversations about ‘abundance of content’. All three leaders agreed that they like a certain abundance, and Takahashi mentioned how he feels it fits with the RPG genre, however, the purpose of the content is what’s most important.

He states that the series is based more on “idea content”, where players can be introduced to a wide variety of ideas, as opposed to things like extremely minute map details or context-specific animations. Yokota goes on to say that, given this is the series’ third iteration, the content exceeds that of the first two titles, partly due to having a larger gameplay variety. Kojima then states that upon doing the math, he realized that the total walkable area in this game “is over five times larger than in the second title. It was like… Yikes!”

One of the fun things you can get from detours is heroes. As explained in prior press releases, heroes are extra characters outside of your main cast of six, which you can add as the seventh member of your party. By going through the main story you’ll actually only find about a third of the heroes, the rest must be recruited via detours and side quests.

Going back to the idea of making the game work for newcomers, they talked about adding markers that clearly pointed to the next destination in the main questline. Takahashi said that though they find trial and error necessary to some extent, they want to avoid frustration for those who simply want to experience the story, but the more adventurous of the bunch can choose at any point to turn the navigation off. Another feature considered for new players are the so-called training drills. Given all the different aspects of combat, at any point, players can enter a drill from the pause menu, and master combat by completing step-by-step tasks.

Finally, Takahashi gives an interesting insight into the series’ future stating the following; “We have taken on a variety of new challenges in this work, and I believe that we were able to implicitly share a glimpse of what MONOLITHSOFT wants to achieve in the future. I think imagining what MONOLITHSOFT’s future games will look like while playing this title would be another way to enjoy it.”