Back in November, Tetsuya Takahashi began giving regular updates about Xenoblade Chronicles X on the official Twitter account. So far,, it's been mostly 'behind-the-scene' talk, about the various people involved in development, the launch of the "official" website and so on. Starting January 2015, other Monolith Software developers also posts messages on Twitter, with more info about the game. They generally post messages 2-3 times a week.
This thread is a place where all those tweets and the various website updates will be compiled and translated (generally by duckroll or StreetsAhead), so as to give them as much visibility as possible (since the info given usually do not warrant a new thread). Of course, this thread is only for those tweets and the website updates: other info will get their own dedicated thread (major announcements, new trailers or screenshots). In the unlikley even that major news is delivered via Twitter, it'll get its own thread (as per the "New news, new thread" rule).
Twitter account : https://twitter.com/XenobladeJP
Official website : official website
Most recent updates (Twitter + website)
[Kawabata] Last weekend there was a lot of goings-on related to the New 3DS version of Xenoblade Chronicles. It will be released this week on the 2nd. Please check it out.
Following on from that, the release date for Xenoblade Chronicles X is now less than one month away. I get quite excited each time the release date for one of the games I've developed approaches.
***
Latest website update (April 2nd): here!
***
Tweets archive
duckroll - November 17 said:"Takahashi says that from now on he'll try to tweet 2-3 times a week to provide information and stuff about the game. Today he's talking about how Xenoblade X started out in development. After Xenoblade wrapped up, he asked Yamagami if the team could try expanding the base concept of Xenoblade into something more scifi, and he approved of them taking up the challenge. Since it was going to be for the WiiU, they experimented with evolving the concept with more seamless maps and online features. That experimentation formed the basis of what would become Xenoblade X."
duckroll - November 20 said:There really isn't much here. He just says that after various ups and downs throughout development, they've finally reached a point where it's almost done. He feels that the things they wanted to do with the game from the beginning have been realized - Scifi world setting, seamless open world concept, online play, etc. He hopes players will enjoy exploring the huge world in the game.
The only thing of remote interest is that this time he says "online play" rather than a more general mention of "online features".
StreetsAhead - November 25 said:[Takahashi]Today I'll talk a little about the development staff. Yuichiro Takeda is the main writer for this games' script, following on from his work on Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii. He's written a more heavy sci-fi story for us this time, compared to the previous games' classical fantasy. For sound, we asked Hiroyuki Sawano. He is a very busy composer and we are very grateful that he has written his first game soundtrack for us. The character design was handled by Kunihiko Tanaka, whom you all will know. We have known each other for a long time and he assisted in drawing out a 'Xeno-ness' for the game.
duckroll - November 28 said:Today's update is at least more interesting than the previous ones where he just repeated the same stuff everyone already knew. Firstly he mentions that aside from Kunihiko Tanaka's designs, they have many other artists working on different types of designs. There are various alien races in the game, and he wants to really bring out the various unique characteristics in their cultures and so on. For the graphics in the game to be able to reflect the different cultures, they have different artists fleshing out the details in the design phase. He teases that we have already seen one of these unannounced races on the early teaser site for the game that Monolithsoft put up. (lol)
He goes on to talk about the writing in the game. He says the script isn't written by Yuichiro Takeda alone, because compared to Xenoblade, this time there's a lot more text to handle. They brought in Kazuho Hyodo (an anime script writer) to help with the workload, and since he has a lot of experience working on scifi works, Takahashi is not worried. Next week he's going to introduce some of the design staff. That should be interesting too.
StreetsAhead - December 1 said:[Takahashi] I teased you all last week, but from today I'd like to introduce the games' designers a few at a time. Firstly, there's Takayuki Yanase. He is able to accurately realize my requests each time I approach him, so I trust him greatly. For this game, he drew the really cool Dolls (Robots) for us. http://members3.jcom.home.ne.jp/yanase02/
Next there's Koichi Mugitani. He should be well know amongst Xeno-series fans. Of course, for this game as well, he has been one of the most important people to assist with development. http://chocolateshop-float.com/
Takahashi is just giving more details on Yanase and Mugitani's contributions on the project. He mentions that Yanase is famous for his work on Gundam 00, and that he recalls that he joined the project around the time Kotobukiya's Frame Arms model kits were announced. His request for Yanase was to design the Dolls in the game to mechs which can transform into multiple different vehicle types from single convertible base frames.
He then talks about Mugitani. Apparently he'll be handling the entire design line for "a certain faction" in the game. He's being sort of vague, but he says that he requested him to join the project because in all of Japan he feels that this is something only Mugitani can design. He remembers first meeting him for this project at a coffee shop in Tachikawa, and he's very pleased that each time he gets designs back from him, they are really detailed. Apparently we can also look forward to his designs of "sexy battle suits" for some troops.
[Takahashi] My apologies, but today I will depart from introducing the game's designers to talk a little bit about the 'Dolls'. Dolls are about 5 times larger than a tall human, at about 9~10 meters (Translator's note: roughly 29"6' ~ 32"9') tall. We calculated this to be the optimal height for the robots when coexisting with humans while searching the map and battling. If we made the robots larger, the map would also have to be even larger, which is not just a problem of the game's overall budget, but also searching the map would take an overly long time as a human. It's been 15 years since Monolith Soft was founded and I finally feel like I have successfully created an RPG with humans and robots co-exist, a long held vision of mine.
Okay this is a follow up so I'll add it to the original:
Takahashi is introducing two new designers on the project today. Yasushi Suzuki is a very talented artist who he has wanted to work with for a long time now, this time he finally got him on board. Suzuki will be designing the mechs on the main enemy faction in the game. The giant mech seen in the final scene of one of the previous trailers was designed by Suzuki. http://www016.upp.so-net.ne.jp/elegant/
Raita Kazama is also involved in this project. He was the main image illustrator for Xenoblade, so fans should be familiar with his work. Kazama is mainly responsible for designing alien NPCs and the primordial life forms (monsters) living on the planet. Takahashi adds that while as an artist Kazama has a delicate touch, as a person is is a pretty muscular macho dude. Lol. http://apocrypha.cside.com
Takahashi is introducing another two designers today. One of them is Yoko Tsukamoto (http://yokotyo.sub.jp/), and he says that my mentioning her name, he thinks that people will understand that Xenoblade X's world isn't just made up of scifi elements. (What he means is that Tsukamoto is a famous fantasy illustrator.)
Another designer on the game is Takashi Kojo (http://www.kojo-takashi.jp), who will be doing enemy design for the game. Takahashi says that the highlight of Kojo's designs will be huge enemies, and that he is responsible for designing the strongest unique enemy in the game. He is also responsible for designing the Growth Soldiers which players will see a lot of in the game (while getting crushed under their feet lol).
Well since it doesn't look like there's another set of tweets for now, I'll just translate those.
Takahashi seems to realize that continuously introducing one designer after another in the tweets can be rather boring, but he asks that fans bear with him because he wants to introduce as many of these artists as possible. (duckroll note: It seems that the idea of posting some artwork from the game to make it less boring has not dawned upon him, unless he's not allowed? )
Today he introduces another two artists involved in the project - Fumihiro Katagai and RARE Engine.
He also shares that as development on the game progresses, they're seeing a lot of stuff where they go "wow, this is even more interesting than that." He feels that when a project has reached a point where the general direction has already been set, it can be pretty challenging for those joining after. He is very grateful to those who happily accepted the offer to take part.
Takahashi doesn't talk about what the two designers are working on. I can give some background on them though. Katagai is a mecha/conceptual designer who works on anime. He did some guest mecha designs for an episode of Space Dandy, and he worked on various stuff in the past like Last Exile, Votoms, Eureka Seven AO, the Short Peace segment Farewell to Arms, etc. I'm not familiar with RARE ENGINE's work, but he's an illustrator who seems to work mostly on magazine illustrations and artwork for digital card games like Code of Joker and Lord of Vermilion.
Edit: Katagai previously tweeted some of his mecha design work from Gyrozetter, should give an idea of his style:
Hideyuki Matsumoto is the final external designer Takahashi is introducing. They used to be colleagues in a previous company (Both Matsumoto and Takahashi were former Square employees), and Matsumoto helped him on Xenosaga as well. He is a designer who has a profound knowledge of firearms, so for this game he's mainly drawing designs for weapons used by characters in the game (as opposed to mechs I suppose). On reflection, Takahashi gives himself another pat on the back for assembling a top-class team of designers for the game. (lol)
For the backgrounds, they engaged Kusanagi for the design work. It's a company that specializes in background design, and they have a lot of experience on adapting drawn artwork into 3D models, so it was a no brainer. (Kusanagi is a background studio who works on many anime and videogame projects)
He says that he has pretty much introduced all the designers, but lastly he wants to mention the internal Monolithsoft staff. He isn't going to name them one by one, but he just wants to point out that without their hard work, the huge variety of different designs from the various designers would not be unified into one game world.
Takahashi wishes everyone a merry Christmas and a happy new year. Next year Xenoblade X will go on sale, and he hopes everyone enjoys it as much as they can. There won't be any new tweets for the rest of this year. Next year there'll be other Monolithsoft staff members tweeting on the account besides Takahashi, and they also have various updates planned for the teaser site, so look forward to that.
Basically, the tweets say the team is in high spirits as they approach the final stages of development and that we should be seeing an increase of information about the game from around this month.
There really isn't any interesting info there, other than Takahashi again talking about how he's a huge fan of Sawano and has been waiting to work with him for a long time now. How great the tracks he composed are, how he's looking forward to the soundtrack release himself.
Nothing interesting at all. Takahashi is just happy that they finally got to announce the release dates for Xenoblade X and Xenoblade 3DS in Japan, and that April will be great for Xenoblade fans. Fans can play Xenoblade while outdoors during Golden Week, and they can play Xenoblade X while they're at home, etc. There shouldn't be a concern about not being able to finish Xenoblade 3DS in a month either, because Xenoblade X isn't a story sequel.
[Kawabata] This is a sudden introduction, but nice to meet you. My name is Kawabata and I work as Xenoblade X's producer. From now on, Monolith staff other than Takahashi will be using this account to send out Tweets to you all, with me taking the lead.
Counting, it's been about 5 years since Xenoblade's release meaning you've all been waiting for a long time, but, speaking honestly, it feels like a long time even for those of us working here. On top of that, we're also well underway with localization work, too.
However, I believe we have created something that you will feel was well worth the wait, so I hope you can remain patient for the game's release a little while longer.
[Kawabata] So, no one even told me actually, but it seems like we have plans to update the official site each week...Wonder if we'll be ok? But Mr. Nomura and the staff in charge of the site are fully motivated, so I'm sure they'll work hard for you guys.
We're also unveiling those kind people who've lent us their voices along with the character profiles. We have an outstanding cast for this game, so I hope you all look forward to hearing them. Since there was a huge amount of text, recording was quite an ordeal, but each of the cast members remained professional at all times. And, of course, the end result is perfection.
The new update is another one by Kawabata. He talks about how the game uses an extensive amount of sound effects, and that they were produced by Sound Racer and Shojiro Nakaoka. They'll be working on the international version of the game too.
That's an unrelated teaser. It says that a short while ago Takahashi said he was headed to Enterbrain and left the office, and they're wondering what that was about. It's probably hinting that he's doing an interview/preview with Famitsu.
[Kawabata] Xenoblade Chronicles X is using up most of the space on the Wii U disk. It's really, really close to the storage limit. (To the point that at one stage we were considering using more than one disk for the game). To enjoy playing, the enormous seamless map must load quickly (which was achieved through the hard work of our programming division), but we had help from Nintendo proper implementing a further improvement to what we had. I believe we're going to reveal the details of that on the official page in the future, but to people considering purchasing the packaged version of the game, as one of the game's developers, I highly recommend you make use of this improvement.
Today's Tweets are by Koh Kojima, the director of Xenoblade X. Like raven777 said, he's basically just addressing the issue of playtime display. In Xenoblade the play counter doesn't go beyond 99 hours no matter what, but they've fixed that, which is why Takahashi was able to claim that his playtime is over 300 hours in the Famitsu interview. Lol.
The new tweets are just Kojima talking about another thing they couldn't include in Xenoblade but wanted to. Xenoblade X will have a full enemy encyclopedia where you can view 3D models of monsters you have encountered, check what drop items they have, etc. It's something they wanted in Xenoblade, but didn't have the development time. He also teases that the New 3DS port of Xenoblade will include this as well.
Today's tweets are from Nomura (not that Nomura), and he is following up on the Bestiary mentioned previously. The mode has been added to Xenoblade on New 3DS, and they call it "Collection Mode". This was actually shown in a previous Nintendo Direct, where you can view 3D models of enemy characters related to the story, as well as the different equipment variations on the party characters. The models are also displayed in stereoscopic 3D. Xenoblade X will also have a similar "Collection Mode".
Basically, reconfirming off-TV play (the button for which was seen in the presentation from the other day). Lots of requests for the feature from overseas. Thought it might look bad during battles with lots of information on the screen, but was alright when they tried it so they implemented it.
The new tweets are just Kojima saying that they've revealed more information about the avatar creation process, how Monolithsoft is nervous about their first user-created main character, lots of voice options, etc.
Basically, as opposed to Xenoblade you can equip different things on your left and right arms, otherwise it's the same as Xenoblade (head, torso, legs feet). Kojima just goes on about having more stuff that's reflected in the cutscenes compared to Xenoblade and how that's great for players.
[Takahashi] It's been about a month since I posted. The Shulk amiibo came out! I've been supervising this since the early prototype stages, but I'd like to say thanks to all the people who've worked very hard on the amiibo. I saw a production model at the start of this month and I was very impressed with the build quality. This time it's a Smash Bros. figurine, but I'd love for there to be a Xenoblade [amiibo] series sometime in the future, too.
[Kojima] It appears that the Hopper Camera and Navigation Ball have been well received. For straight movement, there's an auto-run feature and of course, there's also the skip travel. As a developer, however, I feel conflicted because I want you to travel leisurely and enjoy the various views and the enemy placement...This is a tricky point, isn't it.
Two comments from Kojima saying that "enemy placement depending on the time of day was already a feature in Xenoblade, but for Xenoblade X we also added effects that impact how battles play out depending on the weather. We wanted to make it more than just a visual change and actually have it add strategy to the gameplay. It was really hard to balance the frequency of weather changes though..."
Just Kojima commenting he enjoyed reading the short story they put up the other day.
Apparently they came up with the background story during a very early stage in development so it was refreshing for him to read it again.
[Kojima]Looking forward to tomorrow's Battle Presentation! We're actually animating Elma, Lyn, and Tatsu - who will be the presenters - specially and specifically for the video. We thought about this a lot, without meaning to; changing their positions around and so on.
[Kojima] Soul Voice, as thoroughly introduced during the Battle Presentation, will allow for lively battles, expanding on Xenoblade. It was hard work coming up with character-specific dialogue for the 20 avatar voices + the the set sub-characters, in addition to the audio recording of all of it which was also an effort. ...Yes, the Soul Voice dialogue will vary depending on the personality of your avatar.
"You must be wondering who that squid-headed female alien at the end of the battle video was, huh?"
"You can tell she's an evil creature. She's very popular with the development staff. We think she turned into a really cool character. The design was made by Yoko Tsukamoto by the way."
Kojima:
We had a new plush made for Tatsu... but at the start of development, there were actually quite a few arguments about whether we should put Nopon in the game or not.
Then the event planners started pushing lots of Nopon-related ideas, and in the end, Takahashi joined in on the fun and came up with the character of Tatsu. Now, we're really glad that we put them in the game after all.
By the way, have you noticed that the top image on the homepage can be changed? Try clicking the < or > to the left and right of the main visual!
[Kojima] A word about the Arms Companies, a new feature related to battles that wasn't in Xenoblade Chronicles. [With this feature] You can enjoy characteristic equipment designs from each company. The companies' logos and marks were made with the hard work of Monolith Soft's team of designers. These markings can also be used to slightly customize the B.L.A.D.E. Home area, so please try that out.
Kojima is talking about the BLADE home area again. He realized that they haven't really talked about it much so far. It'll be the player's home base both online and offline, and is a location the player will be visiting very frequently in the game, so they've prepared various customization options, like the ones they mentioned in the previous tweets.
Takahashi talking about being nervous for the Nico stream(for the 3DS version) coming up. It's been five years since they worked on the game, so he's forgotten some details about it(sarcastic laugh). So he's nervous about saying things he shouldn't say on the stream(laugh), and he hopes everyone doesn't judge him too harshly.
[Kawabata] Last weekend there was a lot of goings-on related to the New 3DS version of Xenoblade Chronicles. It will be released this week on the 2nd. Please check it out.
Following on from that, the release date for Xenoblade Chronicles X is now less than one month away. I get quite excited each time the release date for one of the games I've developed approaches.