Xenoblade Chronicles X Mechs, World Map Detailed

One of the coolest upcoming games across any platform is Monolith Soft's Xenoblade Chronicles X for the Wii U. It's an open-world role-playing, action, vehicular-based video game. It's kind of insane just what kind of scope the game has and gamers actually get to learn even more about the world and the mechs courtesy of the game's producer.

Nintendo Insider spotted some new comments from Monolith Soft producer Tetsuya Takahashi in an interview with Edge, who talked up some of the game's more unique features.

Tetsuya-san first explains how the team has been dealing with the transition into the HD era and how the team is putting a lot of effort into establishing a design foundation so that the team doesn't bite off more than they can chew...

“Xenoblade Chronicles X is the first HD project for Monolith Soft, so instead of setting a number of hard-to-achieve targets, we are working on steadily building up key skills. Our goal with this game is first to lay the groundwork for [our] HD game development, so as to not overreach ourselves and cause problems,”

One of the things that really stood out to me was the way traveling worked in Xenoblade Chronicles X, allowing players to either just run around on foot or purchase various forms of transportation to get around the game world and how that same kind of transportation can be used in combat. It feels like the proper evolution of the standard JRPG genre.

We learn more about the transforming mechs, known in the game as “Dolls”, as well as just how big the game world is. Takahashi explains the customizable and operable mechanized vehicles that players will have at their disposal, saying...

“Dolls, which are what we call these vehicles, are roughly five times the size of a person, so to get the same feel as Xenoblade Chronicles while using a Doll, the map would probably need to be five times as large. It’s actually even bigger than that, but we’ve made sure to design Xenoblade Chronicles X so that players can still feel comfortable navigating the world, despite its vast size.”

It's interesting because they've had to make the world big enough for all the massive monsters as well as big enough for the world to feel expansive for players who like traveling around and exploring new and interesting areas.

From what I've seen in the previous videos, it's neat how the areas aren't restricted to players and low-levels can go and fight high level monsters, or stick with the low-level mobs to farm, or venture off and fight a boss monster. The freedom in the game really is one of the highlights.

Takahashi also mentions briefly about how the team plans to utilize the Wii U's Gamepad, mentioning...

“We decided that it would be perfect to use as a navigation device, in the same way that a lot of tablet computers are,” .... ”We’ve put some important features relating to the game system and your objectives in the game onto the GamePad, so I feel that this should create a very user-friendly experience for players.”

It'll be interesting to see what comes out of Xenoblade Chronicles X when it finally launches for the Wii U. The game is one of the few highly anticipated titles due for launch next year.