Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Character Designer Celebrates 1st Anniversary With Special Artwork

The perfect way to end a perfect trilogy of perfect RPGs.

@JR150 Until Xenoblade 4 happens... since this is only the end of the current saga.

Such a wonderful game. Only one to dethrone Breath of the Wild for me as my favorite Switch game.

Best game of 2022 for sure

@VoidofLight We'd probably get Xenoblade Y by then. Whatever happened to that Mira saga?!?!

@Samalik I feel like Xenoblade X is just kind of shafted now. If we do see it again, I get a feeling they'll probably just redo the entirety of it, since X's story was incredibly rushed, and I'm pretty sure the developers weren't exactly happy with it.

I...I don't want it to end...

@GrailUK Do you wish that the now could last forever?

@VoidofLight Sure...or at least until they announce a new one lmao!

@GrailUK I'm wondering what they'll even do for the next one.. but I guess that was the same question I had after 2 was done with.

@VoidofLight To be fair, I'll be there for anything they do. If it's a new ip, so be it. If it's a remaster of X, fine. A new trilogy X, Y, Z? Splendid. Xenoblade 4, day one. So, let them create what they want. I'm not into demanding stuff (unless a dev continues to disappoint lol.)

What a game. As many have stated its hard to believe its been a year.
I still got the expansion to get too, Zelda delayed that bit time but that's no problem, if anything it'll likely help with the wait for Xeno 4!

Feels weird it's been a year, since I only put it down about 3 months ago. I did delay starting it about a week or two as well

Shocking that it's been a year already. If I wasn't consumed by TOTK, I'd totally start with a brand new play through of this game this weekend

I loved 3, much more than 2. But man, I really wish we can get a Xenoblade game where we get armor and weapon upgrades that are visible. I hate the 3 accessory slots with no visible character changes. And I wish Future Connected showed a visual weapon progression as you upgraded. I loved the armor and weapon variety from Xenoblade 1 and X. There's just something about picking up a cool piece of gear and then throwing it on your character and looking like a badass. I hope we get that back.

I can’t believe this has been out for an entire year, it only feels like yesterday when I first bought and played the game. This is my favorite game of all time and I love it so much

I have mixed opinions on Xenoblade 3 vs. 2. Think 3 does a much better job of explaining its gameplay mechanics and avoiding a lot of the little annoyances of 2, but feel like 2 just hits higher highs, and 3 spends waaaaay too long bogged down in an endless cycle of, "The party wins a boss fight then loses it in the cutscene," that's basically the entirety of the first five chapters. Love both in either case but both have their issues.

Now Future Redeemed vs. Torna I way prefer the former.

Working my way through the 3rd game(chapter 5) I can't quite say I've played anything like this trilogy. The third game is like a perfect combination of both.

What a great game. A true all time favourite of mine.

@VoidofLight

Xenoblades 3 is a game based around the theme that sequels are awful and the people who want them are literally evil, and it was made by a guy that once dissolved his own studio rather then work on a sequel.

On top of that Tetsuya Takahashi is already on an unnamed project not related to the series and "Monolith" isn't really a entity any more. They were broken up and assigned to TOTK, Splatoon, Animal Crossing, and at least 2 other projects.

If Nintendo forces a "Xenoblades 4" to be made, it will be made by Nintendo EDO with Genki Yokota at the helm. That's REALLY not their style. Not saying it can't happen, but it would be a huge departure, and likely a really bad turn for the IP. Trying to make a new trilogy with the core team spread to the winds with a new creative director isn't going to end well for a series were a 9.5/10 would be considered a failure.

We might get a new JRPG from Takahashi (and, in all likelihood, it's already in the works), but he will go out of his way to make it feel different and he's going to call it something different. I mean, not THAT different seeing he puts "Xeno" in all his titles ...

@HeadPirate Where are you getting your info? 🧐😳🤔🤪

Monolith is a huge studio and just keeps on hiring. They have specific teams that helps out Nintendo on Zelda, Splatoon etc, but they aren’t the same teams that oversees Xenoblade. Takahashi will never just “leave” Xenoblade. If anything, Future Redeemed just made it ever more important for him and the main creative team to be working on Xenoblade 4, or whatever it’s going to be called.

It’s very likely the series just got way bigger. This is like an OPUS for Takahishi and his wife. Xenogears, saga, blade. etc. it’s coming full circle.

I just hope Square Enix doesn’t do a Xenogears remake without Takahashi.

@JR150 “The perfect way to end a perfect trilogy of perfect RPGs”

Sounds like they are perfect works! 😉

@HeadPirate If you walked away with that message from 3, then you heavily misunderstood 3. Takahashi literally said that Xenoblade isn’t done. That 3 is only the end of the current saga, and the DLC will hint towards the future of the series as a whole.

The other studios the man helmed weren’t closed because he didn’t want to make sequels, but on the contrary. He had massive multi-part stories he wanted to tell, but the studios he worked for wouldn’t let him tell them. Xenogears was supposed to be the first game of many different games in the same series called “perfect works”. Xenosaga was him trying to do perfect works again under bandai, but when it undersold after saga II, he ended up leaving to found monolith soft and make Xenoblade.

Xenoblade wasn’t originally intended to have sequels, but Takahashi later had ideas to repurpose the game into the foundation for Perfect Works, and thus Xenoblade 2, Torna the Golden Country, Xenoblade 3, Future Redeemed, and Future Connected were created.

I have no clue where you’re getting the idea that Takahashi hates sequels, given again that he literally made Xenoblade into a series to tell a story through them. Monolith also wasn’t broken up? They’re still a studio and are still actively hiring outside of Nintendo. The company restructured after xenoblade 2 so that they could assist with other Nintendo Projects whilst making different games.

@graviton

I mean, I know people who work for both EDP and Monolith, and both list the exact project they are hiring for when the place ads (although using code names), so everything I said is 100% verifiable with minimal effort.

Monolith is not a "huge" studio, it's 3 studios. Two are small and one is tiny. First production team has about 125 people right now, helmed by Takahashi, and is hiring (slowly) for an title called "Project 3", which is not a Xenoblades game. That's just public record, it's in the job listings.

Production team 2 is the one that did a huge hiring push. It's grown from 40 to around 150 people in the last 4 years. That team is supporting Nintendo EDO and most of them works out of Nintendo's office in Tokyo and not the Meguro office.

Production team 3 used to support Xenoblades DLC, patches and other projects. They have no leadership, and have always worked in a support role for offsite projects. At this time, they are all assigned to Nintendo EDO teams and almost exclusively focused on assist creation. It's not even fair to say they are working on any given "game". They just take on work from other projects. Most people there are pretty sure the Kyoto office is going to be sold and they will be relocated to a Nintendo building sooner then later.

As for Takahashi ... read some of his interviews (they are all in Japanese but have translations). Maybe it's just me reading into things, but all the times he's said "I"m done with that series, it's over" make me think he's done with that series and it's over. He's said he has no problem with Nintendo keeping it going, and that he has other stories to tell.

That said ... admittedly, a developer saying they are "done" means next to nothing, and could just be a play to keep hype in their projects and/or get a raise. And it's not like anything he makes is going to be too far outside the themes of the series, given he's been making "Xeno" games for ... well his whole life.

He's not walking away from that. His next game with be "Xeno(something)". But it will likely be "Xeno(something) 1."

@VoidofLight

First, that's not how story works. If the message I got from it is that cows are living on mars and I can point to some textual evidence to support that ... then that's a valid theme. Game and stories have multiple themes and topics.

If you see the fact that the game's literal plot is that the "bad guys" stopped a new world being created because they just want to see the people from the old words live their lives over and over again as something other then a thesis against sequels, that's totally your purgative. Whatever meaning you ARE getting is valid. But I would, none-the-less, encourage you to go back and look at things again from the perspective I just suggested and see if that changes things for you.

The main disconnect I see here, not just with you, is not separating the overall XENO theme from the individual XENO series. He left Square because (among other things) he wanted to move on to XenoSAGA, and the best option he would get from Square was a possible XenoGEARS sequel, and only after he worked on a FF sequel. They would not let him develop a new stand-alone title.

He had said, many, many times, that he is done with the CURRENT Xenoblades saga, while also saying he's not done making games in his XENO series. His team at Monolith is also hiring, and the job posting say it's not a game in the Xenoblade saga. There were rumors it was a follow up to chronical X, but that's just rumors.

That said ... Nintendo could make Xenoblades 4. Nintendo could force him to make Xenoblade 4. Nintendo could force him to call his next game Xenoblades 4 even if it's a horse racing RPG staring Sonic the Hedgehog. Nintendo could reskin Doki-Doki Panic 2 and sell it as Xenoblades 4. Anything can happen.

But the most LIKELY outcome is we will not be getting another game in that saga, but we will see a new "Xeno(something)" series.

@HeadPirate Takahashi literally put out a letter after 3’s release stating that it wasn’t the end of Xenoblade, but just the end of the Klaus saga, and that the DLC will showcase a bit of the future for Xenoblade as a series. Not “Xeno”, but him specifically using the wording “Xenoblade”.

You're talking about a translation of a e-mail sent to Nintendo everything.

Japanize is a very contextual language, but if you look at both the translation and the original is pretty clear he's saying that Xenoblodes 3 was the end point in the story for him, and is referring to Future Redeemed and possible future DLC when he mentions that other stories in the blades series. He's done several interviews sense then in which he's said he's not interested in doing a follow up to Xenoblodes 3, and if he does a follow up to Xenoblade X (which he wants to), the new game will be a starting point and not a numbered sequel.

But hey, at the end of the day, you believe whatever you want to believe. I'm just trying to give you some perspective that comes from actually working in the Japanize gaming sector and knowing people at the studio. You can choose if you want to let that inform your option or not.

But bottoms line, you could easily verify with minimal effort that there have been several job listings to work at Monolith division 1 under Takahashi and the listings flat out say it's not a Xenoblades game. And while that's not a definitive sign it's not being worked on at all or that it will never happen, it's also really hard to ignore what that probably means for the immediate future.

the impression I am getting is there will be another Xenoblade 4 but I am not sure if its what Takahashi wants to do or not or if he will be involved.

this is based primarily on what I have read from part 3 of the ask the developer series for Xenoblade 3 which you can find the link for just below.

https://www.nintendo.com/whatsnew/ask-the-developer-vol-6-xenoblade-chronicles-3-part-3/

@Wolfleaf You shouldn't wait. Easily the best game and the DLC Wave 4 is better than a lot of standalone titles.

@HeadPirate I just have a hard time believing that Monolith is completely done with Xenoblade, given that Future Redeemed literally sets up something for a future game, with the shooting star. Even if Takahashi is taking a backseat, I feel like he can supervise a new Xenoblade game without actually having to be actively involved in it's development. Supervisor roles exist.

@VoidofLight

Yeah I don't disagree with that. If we don't see "Xenoblades" again, even if it's just a subtitle on the first game in a new series ("Xenohunters: A Xenoblades story"), I would be shocked. It's one of the most critically acclaimed IPs ever made!

And even if it's an Nintendo EDP game, Nintendo EDP and Monolith divisions 2 and 3 are basically the same thing at this point, so some of Monolith will be involved. In fact MORE of Monolith would be likely involved in an EDP game then if it was developed by division 1, the people still working at Monolith's head office under Takahashi.

What I don't see is an all-hands project with all 400ish monolith people working under Takahashi, unless that project is a step away from this story and he has complete creative control. He's talked about starting a new series based on Xenoblodes X, so this type of project isn't off the table. The job postings say it's not a Xenoblades game, but that's technically still true if he's making a "Xeno(something)" game that's a direct sequel to chronicles X, but with a different name. So who knows?

Honestly, I just want more Niyah

Awesome. One day I'll play it. Truth is, I already have it physical, but first I'm playing XC1DE, then the Torna Expansion (already finished 2).

Looking forward to the day I can finally play XC3. It'll be awesome.

Still waiting for that DLC physical release.

@SmileMan64 XC1 is still my favorite. The DE was a great addition to a great game. In some ways 2 and 3 were streamlined, but honestly in order to do that they had to remove things I loved from 1 like the affinity system between the playable characters.

I'm hoping for a sequel to X. Finish that story and then xeno4. Knowing Takahashi he will find a way to link the two stories and 4 would be the merging point. Heck chances are that was even planned all along.

@Cheez I see. Thanks for sharing your experiences.

I'm still desperately trying to finish this game, but I'm currently obsessed with "soul hacking" all the named monsters. There's just too much stuff to do!

Also, I got my limited edition soundtrack yesterday! Good thing I have SO MUCH free time to listen to 9 CD's worth of music, a lot of which is probably still spoilery to me!

@mlt Sadly, I'm guessing X won't connect to any of the other games until 4~9 have all be released. It's in the name, afterall!

@kurtasbestos I don't want this to be true because I want X back sooner than that. But at the same time the whole surprise roman number thing is pretty cool so yeah I'd be on board.