Have you been wondering why Xenoblade Chronicles X has been getting these comparisons to the likes of The Witcher 3 and Fallout? Some of you might even think it shouldn’t count, since it is a Japanese RPG. It turns out these comparisons were more fitting than you may have thought.
Tetsuya Takahashi, the veteran game developer who made his name in Square Enix, and established a new reputation in Monolith Soft, is himself an avid player of Western RPGs. While he personally prefers Japanese RPGs, he’s revealed in an interview that he has played some Fallout, Grand Theft Auto, and Bioware. He was particularly impressed with Grand Theft Auto V, and how it combined game and story.
Takahashi became more interested in Western tastes following the release of Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii. After its successful US release, Takahashi followed fan reactions, and started to consider balancing Western and Japanese needs.
If there’s anything Western RPG fans will relate to from Takahashi, it’s his keen interest in worldbuilding. To quote him verbatim:
World building is something that’s really important to me in creating games, and it’s something that on the player’s side and takes some time. In order for you to feel like you’re almost living in this world, you have to spend some 20 to 30 hours there. If immersion and a deep sense of detail in the world is my goal, then I need to use a design that will allow people to spend that much time in it, because it’s an essential element. When I say it takes perhaps somewhere about 30 hours to feel like you’re actually immersed in a role and living there, what keeps people coming back to these games is that they want to live in roles like this in these games.
Xenoblade Chronicles X will be releasing December 4, 2015, exclusively for the Wii U.
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