Soon...

Xenoblade Chronicles X is only a couple weeks away from release in the West now, and most JRPG fans couldn't be happier. The follow up to 2011's excellent Xenoblade Chronicles promises to feature a world significantly bigger and more complex than the already staggering world of its predecessor, with seemingly hundreds of hours of content to dive into.

Tetsuya Takahashi and Norihiro Takami – the Executive Director and Art Director, respectively – recently sat down with GameSpot to engage in a discussion about the much anticipated release. One of the topics covered was the complexity of the game's various subsystems. Essentially, the studio aimed to make a game as complex as possible, as it aimed to produce a game that would stand as an evolution of JRPGs.

Takahashi: There's quite a lot to do on such a large map. With elements and lots of different categories like this, we need to figure out how to present all of that information to the player in a way that they can understand. Given that there are so many different elements to track in the game, and we're trying to do it all with someone who's using one controller as an input device, and presenting all of this information in a UI that they can follow, I feel like we did quite well. I feel like we came away with something that isn't too hard to understand.

Since we're aiming for the next evolution in JRPGs, I have to admit that our original goal was not to aim for simplicity. We were looking for new directions and so that means adding new elements to an existing structure that people might have an innate understanding of. As such, I have to be honest, there is going to be some complexity that comes in, but I feel that we've created a really compelling experience from that.

Moving on, it was revealed that the "Xeno" in the title is merely a calling card of sorts that signals to potential players the kind of game they'll be getting into.

Takahashi: I guess for me, the idea of Xeno doesn't necessarily carry one deep meaning that is consistent throughout all of these titles, but rather, they are a helpful way of communicating to people that these are all games that we here at Monolith have worked on. I will say that the Xeno that you would find on each of these titles might refer to something different in each of these games each time. That's something that I really want players to discover.

For more details on the game, check out the full interview here.

What do you think? Have you played any previous Xeno games? Are you glad that they didn't create an "accessible" game in order to cater to fans? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

[source gamespot.com]