Topic: Xenoblade Chronicles X: Life on Mira.

[ejamer]

...
With the effusive praise of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and the building excitement of Fallout 4, I have developed a sort of melancholy that Xenoblade Chronicles X will compare very poorly at the end of 2015. Richard's takeaway from playing the game for so long has somewhat confirmed many fears I had for Xenoblade Chronicles X: Poor writing, poor pacing/structure, unsatisfying quests, and generally a game that is behind the curve of current PC MMORPGS and big console RPGs.
...

Hmm... maybe. 


Richards take-away after 70 hours of Xenoblade Chronicles X is meaningless for me because his opinion about the first game (available on YouTube - I'm not linking because I don't believe it's worth the time or effort to watch and don't want to give him the traffic) was so radically different than my experience. In fact, very few of his opinions about games resonate with me, so I'm totally ok with his poor assessment. Other reviewers might feel the same way Richard does - but comparing his review of the original to others from Metacritic makes me doubtful.


As for how the game will stand up to other RPGs from 2015, well, it's hard to say.


Fallout 4 will almost certainly be a bug-ridden mess. That might seem unfair to say... but how many Bethesda games aren't a hot mess until getting a handful of patches, and sometimes even beyond that point in time? Reviewers will look past that and love the game, but I suspect anyone with a backlog would be better served to wait out the hype and but the inevitable "Game of the Year" double-dip release (complete with patches and on-disc DLC) next year.


The Witcher does sound pretty great, and hits a lot of points that interest me in an RPG. But it sounds more like a "different" experience than outright "better" from what I've read, at least for someone who enjoys traditional JRPGs and isn't explicitly looking for a Western RPG instead.


Neither seems like a game that will invalidate what Xenoblade Chronicles X brings to the table this year. (Of course, I'm so strongly biased towards the game due to my high opinion of the original that my comments should probably be taken with a grain of salt also.)

[Mop it up]

Poor writing, poor pacing/structure, unsatisfying quests, and generally a game that is behind the curve of current PC MMORPGS and big console RPGs.

If the game had a strong multiplayer component then I could look past stuff like this, but it sounds like it may be too limited to be worthwhile. I've certainly gotten less enthusiastic for this game, but it's still early, so we'll see how it looks when more opinions get out there.

[TOPHATANT123]

Just finished on the treehouse, as suspected there is no voice acting yet but text is quite far along. Not alot to still show but the world is beautiful, oh and Lin is spelt like Lin, and not FE7 Lyn.

[Enner]

I was excited to hear it would be on Treehouse Live. After a while, I looked away. I just want this game to be out already!

[Khushrenada]

I found it interesting how the Xenoblade Trailer tried to play up the action this year compared to how previous trailers have been about the exploration and giant world. I'm not sure the action is as heavy as the trailer tries to sell it. Probably a lot of stuff for at the end of the story.

[ejamer]

I was excited to hear it would be on Treehouse Live. After a while, I looked away. I just want this game to be out already!

I'm not watching any more publicity shots or video for the game either. They've already sold me, I'm already thrilled. Video at this point doesn't do anything to make it more attractive. All I want is the chance to start playing. 


Hope the Treehouse Live showcase went well though - I'd really like this game to do well when it gets released (although selling a somewhat niche RPG on a console with the Wii U's install base doesn't exactly sound like a recipe for commercial success).

[Khushrenada]

I was excited to hear it would be on Treehouse Live. After a while, I looked away. I just want this game to be out already!

I'm not watching any more publicity shots or video for the game either. They've already sold me, I'm already thrilled. Video at this point doesn't do anything to make it more attractive. All I want is the chance to start playing. 

Same. I've yet to play XC (the time commitment scares me) and I know it is heavily recommended. However, something about XCX just appeals to me more and I'm way more interested in playing it first. I like the whole idea of the last of humanity being stranded on a foreign hostile world in which you must uncover the secrets of it, colonize it and fight to survive. The exploration trailers back around March/April have completely sold me on that game and I don't want to see anymore. I want to start experiencing it all for myself.

[TOPHATANT123]

There may or may not be an English trailer showing up soon.

[Mop it up]

It's gonna be tough waiting until December, but on the other hand, maybe I can find the game in a holiday deal.

[Nile Boogie Returns]

https://youtu.be/81Ib7PLKHTo


English VA Video


I want the little mechanic girl to only speak Japanese and be subtitled. It would be glorious.

[Enner]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKlBUFVfHM0
The Treehouse Live Day 2 archive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwIvAH8BQ9Q
And the Treehouse Live Day 3 archive for those that want to see more.

The snippet of the English dub sounds okay. Elma's voice sounds a bit colder compared to her Japanese counterpart for me. I miss the UK dub of Xenoblade Chronicles, but this very brief bit of the English dub for Xenoblade Chronicles X sounds fine.

[Hyawatta]

Re-applying for Skell Insurance.

What happens if your Skell is destroyed a fifth time, sixth time, or even an eighth time? Skell Insurance allows your destroyed Skell to be fixed for free up to three times. However, the insurance won’t be valid after the fourth time, and you will have to pay an expensive fee to get it fixed.

After you have paid the expensive fee to get your Skell fixed from being destroyed a fourth time, do you then have new Skell insurance on it, or do you have the option to choose to purchase new Skell Insurance on it that would cover you for another three repairs? If either of these is the case, then you would not have to pay an expensive fee to get it repaired again until the eighth time that it is destroyed. Then, the cycle would start over again with new Skell Insurance for another three free fixes after the twelfth, sixteenth, twentieth, etc… times.

Otherwise, after the third time that your Skell gets destroyed, will there be no more Skell Insurance at all? If this is the case, then from then on, every time your Skell is destroyed (fourth, fifth, sixth, etc…), then you would have to pay another expensive fee right away in order to get it fixed again.

[Enner]

I haven't heard of anyway to reissue Skell insurance so I assume that after your third wreck, that's it for your insurance. The game lets you eject out of your Skell before it is destroyed so there are multiple ways to preserve your Skell.

[Mop it up]

Sounds weird. How abundant is money in this game? Usually, money gets maxed out pretty easy in the second half of RPGs, is that the case here? Or will money always be scarce and this sort of expense will be a real pain?

[Evan_B]

I found money aggravating to find in Xenoblade Chronicles. So many quests had items that maneuvering my inventory to figure out what I could and could not sell was always a hassle.

[Enner]

With the Skells, I think the high price around the mech and ancillary things is to give Skells a high weight of importance. As a side effect, it gives weight to saving money.

It seems monsters don't drop currency but parts and materials. I'd imagine most of our money will come from quest rewards, building the Frontier Network, and selling extra materials.

[Evan_B]

I believe you can accumulate money from certain probes on the frontier net, as well.

[Enner]

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/40799/xenoblade-chronicles-x-review

Nintendo World Report's own Danny Bivens gives his formal word on the game.

[TOPHATANT123]

The game will be receiving it's European playable premier at Gamescom, it's been about one and a half months since E3 so it's possible we see some new voice acting.
https://twitter.com/NintendoDE

[Enner]

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/40877/xenoblade-chronicles-x-gets-limited-editions-wii-download-of-original-in-europeaustralia

https://twitter.com/NintendoAmerica/status/629003322540851200

EU, AU, and US will be getting a special edition of Xenoblade Chronicles X. EU will also be getting a Wii U bundle and the first Xenoblade Chronicle as an eShop download.

[Enner]

This tangentially related to the Xenoblade Chronicles series:
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/08/chris_pranger_from_nintendo_treehouse_discusses_harsh_realities_of_localisation

To reiterate his point, Mr Pranger used Xenoblade Chronicles as an example, explaining it wasn’t popular enough in the West to justify a local release, and pointing fingers at Nintendo of Europe:

You look at something like even Xenoblade Chronicles. People love that game, you know, within a certain group. That game is not the type of game that just pulls in enough to justify the costs on that. So that’s like, we got it in the States by luck, that NoE decided “Oh, we’ll take the fall. We’ll localize that.” Okay, cause someone is going to have to eat the costs somewhere, because that game is guaranteed to not sell enough to justify how big that game is. You know, hundreds of hours, all voiced. That’s a lot of money that goes into that.
And people are like “Why do you guys hate money?” We don’t. That’s why you literally can’t make everything. And people don’t like finding out that their fanbase is actually too small to justify the costs of the thing they want.

Pranger was interviewed on the Part Time Gamers Podcast: http://www.chaingangmedia.com/ptg76/
I'll give it a listen later.

Basically, Nintendo has not money for those niche Japanese games we want (yet somehow companies such as Atlus and XSeed do). To be fair to Nintendo of America, they are recorded to have lost money last year on the investor reports. Also, Nintendo as a whole has just come out of several years of losses.

[TOPHATANT123]

This tangentially related to the Xenoblade Chronicles series:
http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/08/chris_pranger_from_nintendo_treehouse_discusses_harsh_realities_of_localisation

To reiterate his point, Mr Pranger used Xenoblade Chronicles as an example, explaining it wasn’t popular enough in the West to justify a local release, and pointing fingers at Nintendo of Europe:

You look at something like even Xenoblade Chronicles. People love that game, you know, within a certain group. That game is not the type of game that just pulls in enough to justify the costs on that. So that’s like, we got it in the States by luck, that NoE decided “Oh, we’ll take the fall. We’ll localize that.” Okay, cause someone is going to have to eat the costs somewhere, because that game is guaranteed to not sell enough to justify how big that game is. You know, hundreds of hours, all voiced. That’s a lot of money that goes into that.
And people are like “Why do you guys hate money?” We don’t. That’s why you literally can’t make everything. And people don’t like finding out that their fanbase is actually too small to justify the costs of the thing they want.

Pranger was interviewed on the Part Time Gamers Podcast: http://www.chaingangmedia.com/ptg76/
I'll give it a listen later.

Basically, Nintendo has not money for those niche Japanese games we want (yet somehow companies such as Atlus and XSeed do). To be fair to Nintendo of America, they are recorded to have lost money last year on the investor reports. Also, Nintendo as a whole has just come out of several years of losses.

Going by NOA logic they should stop selling games all together since their branch isn't turning a profit.

[Soren]

Why does Pranger talk about "hundreds of hours, all voiced" when I'm assuming it was the European localization team that handled all the voice acting. Even Xenoblade executive director Takahashi said the differences between versions were minor. (link)

"We made some minor bug adjustments and revised some of the written content for localization. There were also some places where we made minor adjustments to the game balance, but none of the changes resulted in significant differences from the original (Japanese) version,

[NWR_insanolord]

He's saying that because NoE was willing to put up the money to do that, which NoA wasn't, that's why it did end up coming to America.

[ejamer]

Well, I'm glad NoE is willing to put up money and take risks to get cool games translated.


NoA on the other hand, isn't even keen to release games after they've been fully translated. (Reference points: Xenoblade, Pandora's Tower, Another Code R, Fatal Frame, Day of Disaster.)  There is a mentality that a game must be more than just profitable, but an bona fide hit that sells millions of copies before it's worth the effort to release.


I know it's a business.  I know NoA needs to do their best to maximize profits. I still wish they viewed supporting a broad and varied audience as something worth doing.