Xenoblade Chronicles X Information Blowout

Nintendo revealed new details on Monolith Soft’s hotly anticipated title on the Nintendo Treehouse Live event. The game now has a new official name,Xenoblade Chronicles X. The game will be coming to the Wii U next year.

The game’s scenario is epic and grim. Two warring alien species bring their galaxy spanning war to Earth, and basically humans are caught in the crossfire. Humanity eventually leaves in two arc ships, each carrying a city sized population, to escape Earth’s destruction.

One of the two ships crash lands in an alien planet, and you play one of that ship’s survivors. The game will have you finding other survivors as the story plays out.

Before you wake up, you get to customize your character prior to getting out of your escape pod. Customizable details include gender, hairstyle, skin color, size, etc. Characters also have inner stats, connected to the character and his/her items, and class stats, tied up  to your character class.

The interesting thing is, classes can be changed on the fly, even in the middle of fighting. Different classes have different arts, and as you unlock more classes, you can mix arts around as much as you want.

As you wake up, you are intercepted by Elma, one of the scouts out looking for survivors. Elma is among the military, who were the 1^st to wake up and organize. They are slowly doing search and rescue for the civilian population. The stream shows you and Elma take monsters down on the way to Neo LA, the current human settlement.

If you haven’t seen combat before, it is real time, with Technical Point to raise. The main weapons are autolock guns, which raise TP slowly, and you can collect more as you play. Melee weapons raise TP much faster. You will also be collecting artifacts from the ship, some of which are callbacks to earlier Xeno- games.

Of course, you fight in a team, starting out with you and Elsa, and you can send orders to teammates via the battle menu. For example, you can focus fire on one target.

The game has a true open world, although there are limits. Elsa will discourage you from jumping off cliffs, not because you will die, but because on foot, you will have a hard time getting back up. This open world has day and night cycles and variable weather patterns, all of which affect creature behavior.

Want to watch this play out? You can watch the stream below.