Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Direct summery and thoughts

[Armagon]

Now, i know we already have a Xenoblade Chronicles thread. However, i'm making this thread to share my thoughts about the direct and hopefully you can too. So, let's begin.

• We got some backstory on the world of Alrest. Everyone lived on Elysium but then they got banished and sent to live on the Titans. However, even the Titans don't live forever and it looks like the main objective of the game is find a way back to Elysium.
  • Living in paradise and then banished, where i have i heard this story before...
• Japanese voice pack confirmed. So, for those of you who complained about the English dub, you're saved. Personally, i lik the English dub but now there's an option for everyone.
• Story trailer. It looks very cool and there may have been a spoiler there but putting spoilers in their trailers is a Xenoblade thing appearntly. They did it with XC1, they did it with X, and now they're doing it with XC2.
  • Spoiler

    The spoiler is that Pyra has a form called Mithra. On a gameplay standpoint, Pyra can switch between Mithra at any time, effectively giving Rex four Blades at a time (Pyra/Mithra+the other 3 Blades). Pretty cool.

• Zeke and his Blade, Pandoria are the newly revealed playable characters. Zeke definitely has my favorite design of the party. He's the black-clothed,  eyepatch guy seen in the trailers and wallpapers.
• They also showed off some of the villains.
• Whenever a unique monster is defeated, a tombstone will appear when they fell. By visiting these tombstones, you can challenge them again. I think that's a really neat touch and it's better than having to wait for the unique monster to respawn like in previous games.
• Map in your way? Art names in your way? You can customize the UI to remove these to take in more of the scenery. 
• As Poppi is an artifical Blade, she can be customized with special parts. You ca acquire these parts by playing a special retro Nopon mingame. My only worry is that Poppi will be to customization to the point where Tora never has to switch out.
• Three different types of combos: Driver Combos, Blade Combos, and Fusion Combos. I'm loving this combat system more and more.
• DLC confirmed. I can already hear the salt but i will say, it's basically following Breath of the Wild's DLC. The game will be supported with DLC all the way up to Fall of next year. It contains:
  • Some new items
  • New quests
  • New Rare Blade (i actually don't like this part)
  • New Challenge Mode
  • Brand new story.
• The brand new story has me really hyped. 
• Biggest surprise though is that on Nov.9th, Breath of the Wild will receive a free update. It contains a quest and, upon completing it, you'll recive Rex's clothes for Link to wear. This cross-promotion is really cool.

So for those of you who watched, what are your thoughts? Are you more interested in the game now? I'm personally buying this at launch and having it be supported via DLC all the way up to Fall of next year is amazing.

[VincentASM]

Thanks for the recap!

Honestly I think it was a solid Direct, but it could've been better. Even as a fan and somebody who knew a lot of the XC2 gameplay, I felt like they crammed a lot in a relatively short amount. They also should've shown off more of the areas (Titans) IMO. I don't know why they keep lingering on areas for mere seconds, except for reducing spoilers.

Considering a lot of the gameplay stuff was explained in previous trailers and the new gameplay stuff was mostly fluff (except the Rare Blades, which are on the Japanese Twitter), I would've had the Direct focused on the story, areas and finally the rare blades.

But of course, the Direct seems to be aimed at everyone, including those who haven't seen a thing. So there wasn't much they could've done.

Anyway, Japanese VA is nice. Really happy they're continuing the trend set with FE Warriors.

Expansion pass I'm really conflicted about. On one hand, I would've loved an expansion pass for the original Xenoblade. Like maybe make the unused Bionis's shoulder accessible. Or even add more to the story. So when they revealed one for 2, I was happy. But at the same time, I'm starting to get a bit tired of DLC, since they keep pushing it (in BoTW, FE Warriors etc.).

[Armagon]

11 minutes ago, VincentASM said:

Expansion pass I'm really conflicted about. On one hand, I would've loved an expansion pass for the original Xenoblade. Like maybe make the unused Bionis's shoulder accessible. Or even add more to the story. So when they revealed one for 2, I was happy. But at the same time, I'm starting to get a bit tired of DLC, since they keep pushing it (in BoTW, FE Warriors etc.).

I'm also somewhat conflicted on the Expansion Pass. I'm all for the new story but i don't like that there's a Rare Blade locked to DLC. Unless it's the Monado.

One thing i missed was how affinity works in this game. Heart-to-Hearts still exist but the more time a Driver spends with a Blade, the more abilities the Blade gets.

It looks to be this game's version of the Skill Tree from XC1.

14 minutes ago, VincentASM said:

(except the Rare Blades, which are on the Japanese Twitter),

Japanese Xenoblade 2 Twitter is actually currently in the process of showing off the artwork and animations for the new Blades shown in the trailers. I'll put them here if you or anyone else wants to see them

Spoiler

 

 

Oh, and the download size for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is only 13 GB. I was legit expecting it to be much bigger but i guess the Switch being cartridge based made it easier to compress the size of the game.

[Kazuya]

Everything is great...except the season pass. It's completely pointless and it needs to go. It ruins the flow of the game for me, especially if they are just gonna give you free rare blades. Locking story behind it is a huge turn off as well, I know that this is something done by **EVERY AAA COMPANY AND PUBLISHER** but it needs to stop, here and now. 

[Armagon]

1 hour ago, Kazuya said:

Locking story behind it is a huge turn off as well

The DLC story is brand new though. It's like what they're doing with BotW.

[Corrobin]

I wonder what the colors of the Affinity Chart's skills mean. Red: Offense, obviously, but what about blue? Green? Yellow?

[The DanMan]

1 hour ago, Kazuya said:

Everything is great...except the season pass. It's completely pointless and it needs to go. It ruins the flow of the game for me, especially if they are just gonna give you free rare blades. Locking story behind it is a huge turn off as well, I know that this is something done by **EVERY AAA COMPANY AND PUBLISHER** but it needs to stop, here and now. 

That's never going to happen.

And the sole story DLC isn't until the nearly a year from now; it's not locking away something that would've otherwise been in the game.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

Whoa, that looks like a dark opening. Before this Direct if you asked me how I envision this story starting out, it would be kid finds magic fairy weapon, magic fairy weapon asks to be taken to far away place, kid says "That sounds GREAT. I LOVE Adventure!"

Hopefully, that scene isn't just meant for shock value. I always say an RPG has to introduce its villains and stakes relatively early, but if it's all there in the first hour, then I worry it's just a front. A front in front of an entirely whimsical laidback experience. And the game has to keep reminding you about the bad guys with ominous cutscenes of them scheming in their (usually flying) base. Story writers love to kill their main character at the start of a story, not always thinking of the tonal disconnect. Or in the case of video games, how many hours it will be before the player can see this conflict resolve itself. Enter: Open world RPGs.

Anyway, that's all that really jumped out at me from this Direct. Part of the gameplay demonstration was some elemental affinity system that I didn't make an effort to understand but gave off Chrono Cross vibes. I think this game is a get.

[Kazuya]

4 hours ago, Armagon said:

The DLC story is brand new though. It's like what they're doing with BotW.

I meant that hypothetically, we don't know if that is true or not. I just don't like locking DLC behind a season pass. 

[LuxSpes]

Overall, the Direct really raised my hype for the game. The Story trailer makes me look forward to the rest of the story and the gameplay customization all the blades grant looks really promising. Also glad to see that affinity charts are back. 

However, something that I noticed in the direct and in gameplay footage afterwards is that it seems that there is an announcer during fights. Maybe it was first shown before, but it's the first time I've heard it and I'm really hoping that I can turn it off. It takes me out of the game and I just find it grating. I watched a clip where the party performed a Chain Attack and he was screaming "AMAZING!" every single time a character completed an attack. If I can't turn it off, I'm afraid it'll be irritating enough for me to mute the game during battle, which is not something I want to be doing in a Xenoblade game.

[GreenDragon17]

I personally feel like the story might be a  bit generic, gameplay looks pretty cool though with the whole blade system. I'm more excited to get into the meat and potatoes of the game and listen to the amazing music.

[Armagon]

10 hours ago, LuxSpes said:

However, something that I noticed in the direct and in gameplay footage afterwards is that it seems that there is an announcer during fights. Maybe it was first shown before, but it's the first time I've heard it and I'm really hoping that I can turn it off. It takes me out of the game and I just find it grating. I watched a clip where the party performed a Chain Attack and he was screaming "AMAZING!" every single time a character completed an attack. If I can't turn it off, I'm afraid it'll be irritating enough for me to mute the game during battle, which is not something I want to be doing in a Xenoblade game.

Yeah, the announcer does worry me a bit. Though, and i fully admit it could be because the Direct was talking over it, but it does seem like the announcer is kinda quiet? At the very least, the announcer only seems to talk after you do a Fusion Combo.

I like to believe that the announcer is Azurda (even if the two voices sound different).

Edited November 8, 2017 by Armagon

[LuxSpes]

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

Yeah, the announcer does worry me a bit. Though, and i fully admit it could be because the Direct was talking over it, but it does seem like the announcer is kinda quiet? At the very least, the announcer only seems to talk after you do a Fusion Combo.

I like to believe that the announcer is Azurda (even if the two voices sound different).

Based on the battle footage from the Japanese website, the announcer is far from quiet and seems to chime in every time you need to do button press.

I had the same thought.Though imagining the announcer as Azurda might fix how immersion-breaking I find it, but I don't think it'll do anything to make it sound less annoying to me. 

[Armagon]

3 hours ago, LuxSpes said:

Based on the battle footage from the Japanese website, the announcer is far from quiet and seems to chime in every time you need to do button press.

I had the same thought.Though imagining the announcer as Azurda might fix how immersion-breaking I find it, but I don't think it'll do anything to make it sound less annoying to me. 

Ah. In the battle footage from the UK website, the announcer is quiet and only talks at the end of every special. He's quiet enough to where he kinda gets drowned out by the party members yelling their cheesy lines.

As someone who'll be playing the English dub, i suppose the announcer won't bother me as much compared to someone playing with the Japanese voice pack. 

[LuxSpes]

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

Ah. In the battle footage from the UK website, the announcer is quiet and only talks at the end of every special. He's quiet enough to where he kinda gets drowned out by the party members yelling their cheesy lines.

As someone who'll be playing the English dub, i suppose the announcer won't bother me as much compared to someone playing with the Japanese voice pack. 

Just listened to it and it's much better in English. As you said, it's much quieter.

And I was already planning to play the game with the English dub, but this just solidifies my decision.