Too vague to say. But I’m glad that it’s been confirmed that they’re moving away from the XC1-3 style games.
Before I get into my rant, I think the game might be a lot closer than everyone thinks. Monolithsoft runs a dev strategy of exploring their concept long before their current project is complete. By the time XCX launched, XC2 and Breath of the Wild (co-developed by Monolithsoft) were already deep in development. So, if the next XC game came out within the first year of Switch 2, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit. Especially given XCX Remastered is a Switch 1 game, I expect their first Switch 2 game to be very early.
Now for the rant!
There are a few things I’d like in the next game, but I don’t know if that’s the direction:
1. A less convoluted battle system input, but output can be as complex as they like - Chrono Trigger, for example, offers a very simple battle system input, it’s move and select an attack - while the output could be as simple as a single enemy getting hit, air something a little more complex like a line or area attack of enemies getting hit, or it might be a combo that impacts all allies or all enemies - with a variety of possible elements or effects. But no matter how complex the outcome/output, the input is always simple. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 had the players doing a mini game for 2-3 minutes before the best attack could occur - why can’t that just be a meter and selection like the Limit breaks in FF7? Anyway, I think this is unlikely, because all the way back to Xenogears these guys have been putting in (at least what I feel are) unnecessary input mechanics - in Xenogears it was the combos, which look cool, but I think dynamic battle animations, without player determining what they’ll be, would be just as cool, and without the annoyance.
2. Open world - Xenogears was the standard linear RPG model with the illusion of open world. Xenosaga followed the trends of the time and moved to the blatantly linear. But Xenoblade Chronicles stabbed a new direction that hadn’t been done before, rather than doing the traditional RPG in 3D style world maps that Dragon Quest 8 and FF12 did, Monolithsoft moved toward a linear progression of smaller open world maps - definitely unexpected after Xenosaga and the current trends. Xenoblade Chronicles is of a map style seen in Witcher 3, and in fact, that’s the only other game I can think of (offhand) that does that (IMO, Witcher was much more polished, but Xenoblade came out about 4-5 years earlier). The open world of Xenoblade Chronicles X and Breath of the Wild are more or less an evolution of this - instead of splitting the maps, they have one big map, but the subsections of the open world are balanced similarly to the sub-maps of Xenoblade Chronicles… except ~8-10 times bigger (for XCX) because they added the gears/skells; the world map itself is 5 continents, each one as large or larger as the entirety of Xenoblade Chronicles combined — so the game is over 5X the size of XC in landmass, and then has vast oceans as well. XCX started the “if you can see it, you can go there” trend, which was adopted by Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. I expect this will be in the next game, and it probably will be.
3. Tell an ambitious story! One that isn’t dumbed down for the lowest common denominator - Yes, some players complained about the complexity of Xenogears - but these people shouldn’t be listened to when most fans loved Xenogears because of its story - and it’s also the reason why Xenogears shines through video game history to this day as one of the best RPGs ever made. I don’t think the story was all that complex. Relative to other video games, yes, but not compared to science fiction or even fantasy books. And RPGs the length of Xenogears have dialogue text alone that’s longer than the entire text of novels - add in the visuals and actions, and Xenogears is far bigger and longer than most books - and an XC sequel will be about the same. So why dumb it down to the simplicity of a kids story? I want to see another proper Xenogears-calibre story.
A vast story doesn’t need to be linear either. Witcher 3 used a sort of traditional RPG progression through arcs on top of an open world game, it worked beautifully. XCX had a good idea with the story expanding with the evolution of the city of New LA, each new chapter was kind of the gate between those. Either way, I’d enjoy it. But I think what story Takahashi tells should be as ambitious as Xenogears… minimum.
4. Stop with the hand-holdy tutorials - this is simple. Breath of the Wild did it. Even XCX was light on tutorials (if players needed to figure stuff out, they could look it up). I love tutorial areas that don’t feel like tutorials (The Plateau, White Orchard), and that’s more or less how RPGs did it in the past. The tutorial BS crept in late in the SNES era, but it was very light “do this love this way to pass this spot” in FF6, and got heavier in FF7 and FF8 - in fact, FF8 is an example of how tutorials fuck less imaginative players up, because they assume “OK, this tells me what to do, and I’ll ignore everything else” and then later “the balance on this game is bullshit! But I didn’t quit because I found the game too hard… it was because I HATE YOU!” - these players, in my experience, totally missed the crafting system because the game didn’t tell them about it. They just draw-grinded all their magic, and ignored this vast stash of crafting items they accumulated. Now, if FF8 didn’t have those tutorials, and instead promotes creativity and exploration of the systems in the way a game like Minecraft or Dwarf Fortress did, I think more people would have found that system. Most gamers are not curious if they’re prompted to follow along a path. Just assholes like me who are constantly tinkering and trying to exploit the mechanics. Anyway, I found the tutorials in XC3 utterly obnoxious, and I don’t want to see that again.
Will these four things happen? Not holding my breath. Monolithsoft went down the opposite of these paths in quite extreme ways (story aside, their stories are still better than most, just less than what older fans might expect). I still love the games, though.
And, of course. Xenogears remake or reimagining on Mira. That would be ideal!
