The total walkable area of Xenoblade Chronicles 3’s map is five times the size of the previous game, Koh Kojima, the game’s producer and director, recently revealed in the third part of a series of developer interviews Nintendo has been releasing.
“Well… I’d like this third entry to be the last one with such a large volume of content!” Kojima said, clearly with a sense of humour. This comes alongside the series creator Tetsuya Takahashi saying, “ultimately I like having an abundance of content”, which is likely what pushed Xenoblade Chronicles 3’s map to such a large scale in the first place.
You can read the full interview here, but there are some great tidbits which you can read about below. We have a roundup of the first Xenoblade Chronicles 3 developer interview and details of Xenoblade Chronicles 3’s flutes from the second if you need to catch up, too. Oh, and we have a Xenoblade Chronicles 3 review, too, which is pretty cool.
This discussion of scale led the team into one about the world itself. Not only is it bigger than before, but it also works a little differently, with both Takahashi and Kojima explaining why they implemented clearer guidance in this title.
Takahashi said, “I was personally concerned that the guide system would make players only follow the guide, and that they would miss out on some interesting gameplay discovered when making detours…” though he was more focused on removing any frustration from players not being able to find their way.
Meanwhile, Kojima’s focus was on making the games easier to understand than before. “Hearing people say that they felt lost in past titles, I was determined not to let players feel that way this time around. As Takahashi-san said, if you add a guide, people will inevitably go the way it is pointing, so I often had discussions with Yokota-san about whether we should really put it in or not.”
This whole conversation on scale concluded with some chat about the Xenoblade Chronicles 3 expansion pass, too, with Nintendo’s Genki Yokota saying, “we will be adding a new story at the end of the expansion pass, and we are thinking of making its volume of content as large as Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna – The Golden Country.
“We hope that those who enjoyed that content, as well as newcomers, will pick it up. It will be quite a high volume of content that will not let you down… I’m talking about the volume again.” It’s nice to see these devs just having a laugh, isn’t it?
Anyway, we’ve got loads more Xenoblade nonsense knocking about if you want some more stuff to read. We have a Xenoblade Chronicles timeline explanation for all you newcomers or an exploration of Xenoblade Chronicles’ Operation Rainfall fan movement for anyone in need of a history lesson.