Monolith Soft shares development struggles from Xenoblade Chronicles 2, some character models were handled externally

You have to wonder how a game like Xenoblade Chronicles 2 comes together. Such a massive scope/scale project, with so many moving parts to keep an eye on. As you might have guessed, it was a rather stressful experience from time to time! In the internet snippet below, Monolith Soft president Tetsuya Takahashi met with Atlus’ Katsura Hashino to talk about some of the rougher times during development.

Tetsuya Takahashi: ...things didn’t go well with the UI. We lost three programmers in the middle of development.

Hashino: Oh, is that so?

Takahashi: We had no choice but to do it with our remaining members, and we endured to the very end. The team worked hard, but that part was frustrating.

Hashino: How much of it was handled in-house at Monolith Soft? Was the character modeling done internally?

Takahashi: Monolith Tokyo has a little less than 100 developers. Of that group, between 50% to 60% was helping Nintendo with Zelda (Breath of the Wild). Of the remaining 40 to 50 people, several were part of R&D (Research & Development), and the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 staff was made of the remaining 40-plus members. However, we couldn’t make it with just these members, so we outsourced then revised what we got, and that was the flow of things.

Hashino: So the character models were done externally?

Takahashi: Yes, they were produced externally and adjusted internally. Rex, Pyra, and several other models were done completely in-house from our members. We had some talented new recruits who were assigned with it as well.