Xenoblade - Iwata Asks interview focuses on the game's music

- Tatasuya Takahashi is the “overall director”
- Takahashi was there at the start of the project, while he also wrote the scenario, and was even involved in debugging
- Mitsuda’s role was to create the ending theme, as an homage to all the other ‘Xeno’ titles
- Shimomura was involved because Takahashi wanted Xenoblade to have a different feel from his previous works
- this is the first time Takahashi has worked with Manami Kyota and the three ACE+ member
- Kyota was excited to be involved because she was familiar with Shimomura and Mitsuda’s soundtracks from previous games
- Takahashi didn’t want the game to have just one sound or one specific type of instrument
- certain instruments were used to break the traditional feel of RPGs
- again, there are 90 songs in teh game
- Takahashi worked well with Mitsuda, due to their collaborations in the past
- Takahashi didn’t need to explain much to Mitsuda, other than the atomosphere
- Takahashi worked hard to make sure the soundtrack didn’t sound scattered, so much so that he provided the other musicians with samples of ideas
- Takahashi believes the final audio product maintains a cohesive feel, but also showcases the approaches of the various musicians involved
- Mitsuda felt a lot of pressure to make sure the epilogue song worked well and summed up the other tunes

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