Tetsuya Takahashi on making Xenoblade Chronicles X fun on a budget and more
Eurogamer published a new feature today about Monolith Soft and studio head Tetsuya Takahashi. You can read the full thing at this link, but we’ll be sharing some of it here as well.
With Xenoblade Chronicles on Wii, the team encountered some issues and were in danger of missing the launch deadline. But Nintendo producer Hitoshi Yamagami swooped in and assisted Takahashi in getting things back on track.
The situation was different with Xenoblade Chronicles X, as Takahashi explained:
“We wanted to achieve something that was more about us as Monolith Soft being able to create an open world system, to implement online features, and to transition into the high definition era. With that game we’d learned how to create locations that are fun to explore on a budget. If we had no restrictions at all in terms of costs, then for example we could easily make a varied and interesting map simply by creating textures and models for four or five different to use in a single 20km squared area. But within restrictions we had the difficult task of creating varied and fun locations using just the textures and models for a single kind of environment.”
Takahashi also mentioned also said that lessons were learned when making Xenoblade Chronicles. Monolith Soft was able to achieve its goals despite certain restrictions it put on itself, such as not using middleware to increase the speed of production.
Head past the break for a few more comments from Takahashi.
On how Takahashi still has ambition…
“My goals still lie ahead of me. I feel like now that Xenoblade Chronicles X is done I’m finally standing on the start line.”
On competing at a global level in the games market…
“Japan is a peculiar country in the sense that – and this not only applies to games, but almost all cultural output like music, movies and books – we tend to look only within Japan for sales and recognition. There is a tendency to focus only on Japan, and not enter the competition on an international level. As an island country we have a rather closed cultural environment, but as creators we will only lag behind this way. On the other hand, many of our industrial products are still standing their ground on the global market. We at Monolith Soft don’t intend to back down from this challenge. We would like to keep our scope open in order to reach as far as we can.”
Takahashi’s enthusiasm about game-making…
“There are reasons to be excited all around us. Many of the games developed in Europe or in the States provide an exciting target. They inspire me. Back when I was figuring out what to do with my life the early computer games coming onto the market caught my attention. I saw both the immense potential for development of computers and the interactive possibilities they could provide. I felt a day could come when computer games would surpass other existing cultural outputs. That’s why I decided to join this industry. It’s why I’m still here.”
