An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 from director Tetsuya Takahashi

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is out now on Nintendo Switch – and if you're already knee-deep in this gigantic adventure, you might be curious to find out more about the game's development! Happily, director Tetsuya Takahashi is on hand to explain the ideas and concept behind the next big adventure on Nintendo Switch.

Take it away, Mr Takahashi!

Young adult fiction & boy meets girl

The basic story of this game revolves around a feeling similar to a novel told in first-person. While many countries and factions appear in the game, information such as scheming between countries or political sagas have been omitted from the narrative as much as possible because this information is not directly available to the protagonist, Rex. We wanted to create a story that follows his perspective.

Once this axis has been determined, we next worked on what direction the story would take. While we considered a story with many actors that involves a lot of interpersonal conflict, in which you can't even trust your allies, we thought that now and then it would also be nice to have a story where you can trust your allies to watch your back without any reservations. This is the direction we took for this story.

Even so, an old guy like me born in the Showa era can't possibly write a modern story, and it'd come across as awkward if I tried. So I gave up and decided to just accept the challenge with my outdated Showa sensibilities. I felt that, even if the tone is Showa and the plot points that players feel are sympathetic or moving may differ between cultures, the core of human emotion should not differ that much between regions and time periods. Because we're all Homo sapiens. And in that sense, I can say that the story direction is the same as that for Xenoblade Chronicles.