I'm sure the comment thread in this YouTube video will produce some healthy discussion.

I really couldn't get into Skyrim's battle system the way I did Xenoblade, maybe it was the way I had spec'd up but nothing felt satisfying and the moment to moment strategy was non-existant, the only remeeming factors in my eyes are the emergent side stories you stuble across at random giving it a very organic feel, and the modding community.

The massive world of Xenoblade is amazing and it has plenty of quality of life improvements over older RPGs that stop the traversal from getting tiresome, like the way you can teleport from anywhere, change the time easily, look up NPC locations and routines, the optional arrow that would lead you to the story objective and the quests that you don't have to return. I would have liked a bigger mini map though, when you go to the big map it doesn't have the detail of the smaller one and sometimes you just have to wander round until the mini map picks up the quest icon. The layout of Frontier Village is really confusing since it's so dense making searching for a specific Nopon really difficult, on the other hand Alcamoth is just too spread out with not enough warp points.

oh it already has  ;)

I just hope it isn't all empty space.

Describing the game like this makes it sound REALLY intimidating.  Like my first thoughts are "how am I going to have time for this?".  But then that also sounds pretty damn cool.  Like you could buy this game and play it for years.

This only makes the game sound less appealing for me. Huge open, empty worlds don't interest me. Give me a smaller, well-designed world with interesting secrets to find and places to discover. I just don't have the time or patience for huge open worlds with icon-barfing maps anymore.

This just has me worried that it's going to be empty.

Well in Fallout the world has to be empty to match the theme, it's a nuclear wasteland what do you thinks going to be in it.
But games like shadow of the colossus really suffered from a big world with absolutely nothing in it.
But this game is going to be bigger then Fallout 4? hell no, the Wii U can barely handle smash let alone a game that claims to be bigger then a game that requires all of the PS4 and the Xbone's power to play?
Yeah no.

Nice to see it is ambitious. Let's see if gameplay and story can match up to it. Hopefully can end up as my GOTY. Nothing else will if it doesn't.

Smash runs great on Wii U, 1080p 60 frames per second 8 players, the only problem is the terrible netcode. As for Xenoblade the game's already out in Japan and seems to run fine bar pop in.

As for the world there will be unique monsters, resources to gather, the collectable orbs, secret areas, presumably heart to hearts, settlements and the "discovery of superb views". Short of a fishing or golf minigame I'm not sure what else you would add.

The mini games in Wind Waker were a nice distraction, I loved the sense of exploration and charted out every island, but at the end of the day the sea fell flat for me as the only thing gained from it were rupees that you couldn't buy anything with or heart pieces that you didn't need. With an RPG though there is always a monster stronger than you that you have to push yourself to defeat.

Still not as big as what's in my pants!  8) ;D

Because it's a tumor!  :-[  :(

Isn't that what some people have done with Skyrim?  At least, I knew a guy who only played Skyrim for a whole year. 


The idea of being able to play something for that long simply because the world is huge doesn't really appeal to me.  It's one thing for a game to have longevity because it's a masterpiece that you want to replay occasionally, quite another to have to slog through the world map just to find the next mission.  Most of my favorite games have ended just a bit sooner than I'd like making me want to return to it to later and find all the secrets, easter eggs, etc. 

I also enjoy a world with tight geography that enhances gameplay. It's one of the reasons I liked Skyward Sword.

To be honest, though, it's also a reason I loved the original Xenoblade, which had plenty of terrain and challenges that were facilitated by the level design. Exploring that game was a wonderful thing because so much care was put into the locations, and I doubt that Monolith would just throw that out the window with a sequel. Not only to the continents all look quite beautiful, but I'm sure each will have its fair share of hidden paths, nooks, and crannies to discover. The combination of enemy difficulty forcing you away from those areas (and thereby pushing you to become stronger) as well as the newfound resource mining, enemy slaying, objectives, and continuous guild quests the game will have for each hex of the entire map mean this is going to have quite a bit of content. I think the director was quoted saying the final product had a 200-hour completion if you went for every sidequest and the like?

I have a dream of making an open world game that is a big as a small suburban house plus yard and garage.

You cheeky bastards! And on a big review day too.

While I understand the sentiment, video of Xenoblade X show it is extremely similar, if not the same, in how it populates and uses its world. At the very least, there is always something to shoot at in any given several square yards of Xenoblade X. The worst of it is that it is mostly either killing, looting, gathering, or looking. As for icon overload, it appears the premise of Xenoblade X's Frontier Net is that every hex of each continent has some busy work for you to do. Potential bummer there.

I saw this video go up and my reaction could basically be summed up as follows:
http://i50.tinypic.com/ajv5a9.gif

If the original xenoblade is any indication, most of that world will be filled with crappy world of warcraft style quests and a bunch of mobs scattered around the place. I'll take a well designed world with interesting and fun quests any day over a gigantic boring world.

It's hard to know what to make of this game.  Impressions so far have come from people dedicated enough to the franchise/genre to import the game from Japan (frequently without knowing any of the language), which is so far removed from how most of us will experience the game to be almost worthless.  These are people who spend 200 hours trying to get 100% on the game and then complaining about the grind.  These are people who feel compelled to explore every inch of the world and then turn around and complain about its emptiness.

To me the appeal of the huge world is that I'll realistically never explore all of it.  I just don't dedicate that kind of time to a single game anymore.  That kind of size makes the game world seem a little more real.  If I plan on skipping most of the simple quests and focusing on story or affinity missions, will the game still feel like a grind?  Will I constantly be under-leveled?  If I don't plan to explore every inch of the continents and go mainly where quests take me, will the world still feel empty?

The only thing I've heard is that your ability to progress in the story line is sometimes tied to your completion rate (literally the percentage of the map you have explored).  That type of thing really concerns me because it forces a grind, potentially to a greater extent than even being under-leveled or needing resources (although resource scarcity is also a big concern; constantly needing fuel and money to use your skell could be annoying).  At this point though I just don't know.

Even Skies of Arcadia, which in my opinion never had you grind, had moments where you needed to explore the map in order to progress. But instead of feeling forced, it felt like a natural part of the story. You are a space pirate who wants to be a captain of a ship and explore the world. So none of it felt like a deviation of the story. In Xenoblade, it seems like exploring the world is also a fundamental part of the story. Same with gathering resources. It feels a bit like Pikmin in its otherworldly awkwardness for the protagonist.

So I guess I don't understand your reservations, Knowsnothing.

I'm confident that the minimum exploration requirements are reasonably paced and something you would want to do. It's the side quests and building the Frontier Net (that's putting a probe on each hex of a continent) that might be iffy.

I actually feel like the original Xenoblade was designed with this sort of mindset. I don't think they really intended for people to 100% the game, but rather, they just wanted to give people a lot of different options on things to do, so that if someone isn't interested in some such sidequest or section of the world, they can go do different stuff they find more interesting. Or if someone doesn't want to bother with side stuff at a certain point and wants to continue the story, they can still find plenty of side stuff later on to accomplish.

As for leveling, Xenoblade tried to balance that by giving you a lot more EXP for defeating enemies who are above your level, and it would also give you a lot less EXP if you defeat enemies who are below your level. So if you aren't doing too much side stuff and you find the next area tough, you will be able to catch up quickly. Conversely, completing every possible side quest in an area shouldn't buff you up too much.

I would imagine that Xenoblade X is designed in a similar fashion and intention.

Yeah I tried to 100% the first Xenoblade and it nearly drove me insane.  Considering the number of timed quest and the fact this game has those as well, Monolith Soft is pretty much telling people they don't need to do everything.  That's why for X I'm just going to go for the big ones and some of the smaller ones but no more hours spend on trying to run around every town trying to talk to everyone I can at every corner in order to activate every single quest possible when many are just pointless collectothans anyway.

It'll be much less stressful this way and I won't feel completely burnt out like I was by the time I finally finished the original Xenoblade.