Xenoblade Studio Monolith Soft Is Helping Make Zelda: Breath Of The Wild

I wonder if we get to ride on something other than horses... like an ancient suit of mech armour.

I had a feeling that Monolith Soft helped to make that open world.

Since Monolithsoft is working on it, im expecting an extremely huge scale in monsters and the world.

This must be Nintendo's biggest game to date in terms of development resources.

Brilliant Monolith Soft is helping out can't wait too explore this open world full of wildlife.

Love it!

9 flaming months!

As long as it's not as confusing as Xenoblade X, sounds good.

Since Xenoblade Chronicles X is not only one of my favorite Wii U games but also one of my favorite RPG's of all time, my anticipate for Breath of the Wild (which was already through the roof) just shot through the stratosphere with this news. I've often referred to XCX as "Exploration Porn" to my friends (one of my favorite aspects of the game) and I had a sneaking suspicion that the new Zelda was getting some help from the XCX team when I saw the scale and scope of the game at E3. Honestly could not be happier at this news.

Yep. Now I'm really excited.

That's why this game is so big!

Now it is explained why this game looks so good, the best developers are working on it, Xenoblade Chronicles is my favorite game of all time(together with MGS 3 and Majora's Mask), I can't wait for this game, glad I just I bought a wii u, now I just need money to buy XCX...

It's good to know Nintendo teamed up with a very competent studio for a project of this scope. The footage I saw did have a bit of the Xenoblade vibe.

At least it will be more accesable then Xenoblade X. Though not for casuals, obviously.

Eh, this was last year's news at E3, why double report it when we all know this. He said this last year.

Makes sense since Monolith is the only Nintendo studio that's worked on this type of game. I wonder if XBX delays also played a factor in pushing BotW back.

@TreonsRealm Thanks for making my response easier.

Yeah, what he said!

"Link is Heropon! Very brave! PAW! PAW!"

@DarthNocturnal There was a story a while back when XCX was released in the West that Monolith Soft was sharing what they learned in the development of their game and that they were open to helping with Zelda, but they had not heard anything from the Zelda team yet at that point.

The Master Sword has been swapped for an Ultra Diamond Slair with three augment slots.

I got an ear-to-ear smile and I don't know why.

@Shiryu Don't worry, someone will mod/hack in a Superman mode in a few years.

@Miles_Edgeworth I believe Monolith has two teams; one that makes their own games and one that helps out Nintendo. This probably isn't the result of the Xenoblade team working on Zelda; it also looks too good to be the product of the Xenoblade team

I'm not surprised, to be honest. They helped develop ALBW and Skyward Sword as well as New Leaf and Splatoon, so it's conceivable that they would assist in crafting the beautiful world that is BotW.

Still, the initial Xenoblade Chronicles is in my top ten favorite games of all time, and the second one's exploration incentive was enthralling. So, with the map size being twelve (!) times bigger than TP, I am thrilled that they have created another open-world adventure game.

P.S., is there a way that anyone can calculate the approximate map size of the game and compare it to Xenoblade Chronicles X (without the shrines/dungeons)? I'm guessing the only (albeit slightly inaccurate) way to do it would be to multiply the Plateau's size by 100 (it makes up one percent of the world's size). Anyone who can do that deserves a medal!

...great..guess I'll start making room for these....
Field/Basic Data Pack (Large effect): 2GB, just basic data
Enemy Data Pack (mid): 2.7GB, loading improved on the field
Player Data Pack (mid): 3.6GB, loading times improved while changing equipment
Data Pack (mid): 1.7GB
...lol..just kidding, I'm sure they'll use their experience to make this game Rock!...

@Shiryu Link riding on clouds? A chariot would be cool... Sky horses?. In the Nintendo minute vid of Zelda, it showed something dark flying/floating in the sky, he even addresses it. I wonder what it is? Any ideas?

Agreed, Mech armour would be sweet though ;P

I was gonna ask on one of the articles if anything came out of them offering to help and I thought the visuals were probably gonna be needing the data pack system from Xenoblade X.
Its really good to hear that they're working on it Xenoblade X and the original are amazing and X in particular is an amazing example of a perfect open world so I'm even more excited now.

XCX has been one of my favourite ganes from this gen alongside Bayo 2.... Knowing that Monolith is helping create another gigantic world, all ripe for exploration, makes me drool for the next Zelda. March can't get here fast enough!

It makes perfect sense now and I had an itchy feeling this was the case. The awesome just got awesomer.

Major bosses better be massive, then. lol
(also more ambushing camouflaging enemies/minibosses like Thardus Jr)

@5t3v3n I saw that a couple od days ago, it's definitely some sort of floating continent, I think its to irregular to be a ship of some sort. But hey, since this is the Zelda of Technology, perhaps my hopes for a dystopian future Zelda will come true with this game.

Great news, this game will be great!

@Octane This is both teams helping out. Monolith's second team has helped out with all three recent Smash games.

There better be a SKELL easter egg in there

YES Nintendo definitely looked at Xenoblade Chronicles and said to themselves: Hey, this could work as a Zelda game!

I'm all for it, Monolith Soft is starting to become one of the best developers in years.

This game is looking faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar better than Xenoblade X in the visual, audio, and gameplay departments, so that either means the Monolith group have finally learned a thing or two about game development from Aonuma's group or they're just doing programming work with no say in design.

I'll say this much about the new Zelda: Regardless of my personal issues with the presentation and graphics, the Wii U will certainly be going out with a bang rather than a whimper. It's clear Breath of the Wild going to be a stellar title, even by Zelda standards, and it will be a nice note for the Wii U to bow out on.

I'd been asking for this to happen so I'm happier than Pharrell

My last remaining concern is that the NX version might be identical to the Wii U version when in reality I want it to show a significant jump in performance

@Shiryu hmm if it's a floating continent, then will it have ties to skyward sword I wonder... Cuz it also had those tech robots in it as well, much like BotW

@5t3v3n ... is it 2017 yet?

@PlutoPerson http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/the-size-of-hyrule-area-comparison.188648711/
If that thread is anything to go by, it'd be 11,466 KM² (TP's mapsize times 12) and from what I read XCX is apparently 400 KM², so about 35 times bigger. No idea how accurate the numbers from that thread are though. For reference: Skyrim is 39 KM², The Witcher 3 is 136 KM² and Red Dead Redemption is 41 KM². So basically XCX's map is insanely huge.

I hope the numbers from that thread are wrong, since it'd mean Zelda: BotW isn't even 1/3 of Skyrim. Most likely he won't be far off though, but at least we can hope for a more meaningful and 'gameplay-filled' world.

Hopefully, the final game is what we are expecting. In the meantime, there's literally nothing on Wii U if Colour Splash is another Sticker Star.

Great, they'll hopefully get the supposed frame rate problems sorted. Xcx ran beautifully

The more the merrier! When you dare to make a Zelda game this size and this open, it is far better to have a ton of devs to fill this game with the content it needs (and deserves) to make it live up to its scope. Honestly, I don't see a downside to this at all. Well, one downside...that this game isn't coming out soon for Wii U but now has to wait until NX

@TreonsRealm "Exploration Porn" is right. I keep forgetting to do the missions because I'm just wandering around getting occasionally mauled by enemies. The use of enemy difficulty gating reminds me of the original Legend of Zelda. You may find an advanced location by accident, but if you don't have the right weaponry or enough items/health, you're not getting very far. Looks like that same concept will reappear in Breath of the Wild, which is just absolutely awesome.

@AVahne So you're THAT type of person...

Why am I not surprised? They even worked on Mario Kart 8!

Just keep them away from the UI, okay Nintendo? Great exploration knowledge, terrible UI design skills. Thx.

@Monkeido I found this link.

http://www.eggplante.com/2016/06/14/full-zelda-breath-of-the-wild-map-revealed-roughly-360-square-kilometres/

This is much more gratifying. Nintendo's 12x bigger than TP claim is clearly false if this source is correct, and it seems to be accurate. It should be roughly 360 square kilometers, just 4- square meters short of Xenoblade X's.

I immediately though the game looked like Xenoblade X Zelda, so I'm not surprised.

Heh heh, this is definitely not a surprise. Monolith has been helping the core Nintendo studios for quite some games, and considering the scale of this game and the brilliant world Monolith concocted in XBX, I thought it was pretty much expected that they will help out.

Looking more forward to this Zelda game now! Talking about XBX, I gotta go make my one-shot skelll soon.

@PlutoPerson
Wow, a world as big as Xenoblade X's. That's pretty exciting.

I'm glad their working together ,now if they only do the same with Pokemon on the home console --with the pokemon company blessings of course.

@AVahne "This game is looking faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar better than Xenoblade X in the visual, audio, and gameplay departments"

I'm guessing you haven't played the original, Xenoblade Chronicles right? That game nails the visuals (ignoring res) and audio. As for gameplay, if the over-complicated-ness of the game was what you didn't like, this game is a lot better about teaching gameplay elements.

@Monkeido You might wanna mention that the comma in "11,466 KM²" is a period for Americans. I was really confused until I went to that forum page...

No surprised with the inventory system and open world tbh!

It may be only tangentially related to this, but I just realized that Tokyo and Kyoto are anagrams of each other. Fancy that.

I think many people are mistaken about the influence that Monolith has. All the art direction is from Nintendo, puzzles and enemies as well. Now this is only assumptions, but I think where Monolith is helping is in developing the open world, the tricks they used to optimize performance and coding... Nintendo is wise to utilize Monolith, but most of the game's direction is from Nintendo... I love the world in XCX, but the art direction in TBotW is incredible.

@Sosaga

Why would you think that? Nintendo call the shots here, not the other way around. A world full of monsters in plain sight is not Hyrule.

@MitchVogel True haha, and Kyoto was the former capital of Japan before Edo became the capital which at the time was renamed Tokyo because of it, coincidence? Haha

@Shiryu wait! Let me check.. *calculates the Suns' revolving around Earth and it's apparent position in the milky way.....
Sadly nope .
(I even used trigonometry, and it's STILL doesn't help me.... Ugh,
I 'm really salty right now)

@PlutoPerson Wow, that would be insane. That seems to be more accurate, especially since it's actually based on BoTW. Thanks for sharing! Made me pretty happy to see that.

@FlameRunnerFast Ah sorry! It seems to be completely off anyway if you look at PlutoPerson's post, which I hope is more accurate to what we can expect.

@aneira yeah you're right but what I mean is the scale of the bosses and mini-bosses, it's even shown with how huge Calamity Ganon looks.

@Monkeido That's not even accounting for shrine and dungeon areas! It might as well be larger than X (I'm probably wrong on this.)

If the eponymous calculation is true, then that area itself is over 3 times larger than Twilight Princess.

@Shiryu Little did you know about Bears, Deer and the Master Cycle Zero at the time of this comment. Lol

@Prof_Yoshtonics I am a seer! Now bring on the mech armour!