IIRC, when they were still developing the game and promoting it in vague ways, Takahashi talked up how he felt that Xenoblade was light on story and world details, and he wanted to push that further with Xenoblade X with a richer world and deeper story. After the game came out and everyone said there was even less story and more MMO-ish content, he's apparently now saying that they spent too much time making an open world on new technology, but now that they have the tech down, they want to go back to making a more story-rich experience for the next title or whatever. Same old shit.