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Tetsuya Takahashi

Last week, Torna – The Golden Country was announced as the big story expansion for Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Monolith Soft executive director Tetsuya Takahashi has since shared more on the new content and how it came to be.

Takahashi reveals that Torna – The Golden Country was included with the team’s original prototype for the main game – or “one of the potential story candidates”. However, it was determined that the Torna content “would divert a major portion of the budget and development time we had allotted for Xenoblade Chronicles 2.” The concept was abandoned, but Takahashi still had it on his PC, and it was brought back in the form of the expansion / DLC.

Following the original announcement from Japan last night, Nintendo has provided an official translation of the comments from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 director Tetsuya Takahashi about version 1.3.0. The news primarily goes over everything you’ll find in New Game Plus, but covers other aspects of the patch as well.

Here’s the full rundown:

Monolith Soft president and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 director Tetsuya Takahashi recently met with Persona producer and director Katsura Hashino for a lengthy discussion. The two met for the very first time to share some development stories in an interview, which was published on Den-fami Nico Gamer.

Siliconera translated one interesting excerpt about the development struggles on Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Takahashi spoke about a great desire to improve the character models for the game, and talked about the reason why outsourcing was so necessary. With under 100 developers working at Monolith Soft, about half working on Zelda, and a few more needed for R&D, the company had around 40 of its own staffers available.

Here’s a part of the discussion:

In Japan, Nintendo sent out a special Xenoblade Chronicles 2 message. Director Tetsuya Takahashi wrote up a few words for those who are playing the RPG. It may not have anything earth-shattering, but Takahashi goes over how there’s more to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 other than just pursuing the main story, and mentions how he hopes that players will continue to be engaged with content from the Expansion Pass.

Here’s our translation in full:

Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Around the launch of Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Japanese outlet 4Gamer caught up with director Tetsuya Takahashi for a lengthy conversation. The two sides discussed all sorts of different aspects regarding the game’s creation, including a return to numbered entries, the inspiration for the world as well as Drivers and Blades, and more. There was also talk about the Expansion Pass and future DLC.

We’ve prepared a lengthy summary of the new interview featuring Takahashi’s various comments. You can read it in full below.

Nintendo describes Switch as a console first and foremost, but it’s one that you can take anywhere. In an interview with IGN, Nintendo’s Entertainment Planning and Development Division general manager Shinya Takahashi spoke about the hardware’s portable nature.

When asked if they’ve seen many people playing Switch out in the world and its success thus far, Takahashi replied with the following:

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 director Tetsuya Takahashi has shared a bunch of information about the game’s development and various elements. In a piece published on the Nintendo UK website, Takahashi goes in-depth on the story, world navigation, and Rare Blades.

Here’s the post in full:

Game Informer recently went hands-on with Xenoblade Chronicles 2. As part of that, the site spoke with a couple of developers. Executive director Tetsuya Takahashi and producer Koh Kojima both had some rather interesting things to say about the big RPG and more. The two discussed Xenoblade Chronicles 2’s change in art style, teases pertaining to relations to past Xeno games, the size of the world, how long it’ll be, and Monolith Soft’s future.

You can read Takahashi and Kojima’s comments about these topics below. Game Informer has more with the developers and an in-depth preview of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 here.

Nintendo added several posts to its Japanese blog this week to highlight games featured in the new Nintendo Direct. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was among them.

Towards the end of the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 post, director Tetsuya Takahashi left a message. In it, he talks about how the team is working on bug fixes and final adjustments. Takahashi also mentioned that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has an “enormous amount of quests and in-game content”. There’s also much more to come than what’s been shown, and different areas / situations will have unique battle themes.

Here’s the full message, courtesy of CAAAAAAAAAAAW:

Xenoblade Chronicles X

If the big interview we translated with Monolith Soft’s Tetsuya Takahashi wasn’t enough, TIME also has a discussion with the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 director. The latest discussion covers Switch vs. Wii U development, how the collaboration with Tetsuya Nomura came to be for certain character designs, and a possible Switch version of Xenoblade Chronicles X.

These excerpts and a few other notable ones have been posted below. You can read the full interview here.


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