[Last updated 2025.02.20]
After the Xenosaga series ended in 2006, Tetsuya Takahashi and Monolith Soft (and their various freelancers) have continued making other games and given interviews for those. While these interviews are mostly not relevant to Xenogears and Xenosaga, occasionally there has been a reference to those earlier works, or interesting information shared about the developers themselves, the company, the approach to writing scenario (and so on), in such newer interviews that are potentially useful to archive for use in articles or discussions. So I created this page for the purpose of preserving such quotes and links to the sources. I have attempted to list these excerpts in Chronological order.
2010
From a Nintendo Everything article.
https://nintendoeverything.com/iwata-explains-xenoblades-name-change/
"At E3 2009 it was announced with a temporary name, 'Monado: Beginning of the World.' We decided to call it XENOBLADE to honor Mr. Tetsuya Takahashi who poured his soul into making this and who has been working on the XENO series."
- Satoru Iwata (Nintendo's financial briefing, January 2010)
From Anoop Gantayat's article on andriasang.com's covering what Tetsuya Takahashi said in the February issue of Famitsu.
https://web.archive.org/web/20121025030639/http://andriasang.com/comhbl/xenoblade_preview/
"The world setting, story and other elements have no relation," explained Takahashi on connections to past Xeno games. "It's a completely new title."
- andriasang.com (February 2010)
Design philosophy also appears to be different here. Past titles from Monolith have focused on events and scenario, Takahashi admitted. However, he feels that this type of development has reached a "dead end." The Xenoblade project started off by looking at the origins of the RPG genre. Takahashi wanted to make a game where it was simply enjoyable to adventure.
He suggested that players consider the "Xeno" part of the title to be just a symbol. "I wanted to to have some sort of common point with the games I've made."
- andriasang.com (February 2010)
Takahashi was a little shy in fully explaining the Xenoblade name to the magazine. "Xeno" has the meaning of "different nature" or "uniqueness," he explained. As for the "Blade" part, Takahashi asked that we refer to the game's ending to find out.
- andriasang.com (February 2010)
Takahashi came up with the idea for this unique world setting after a meeting about Soma Bringer, a past Monolith project. "It seemed like it would be enjoyable to adventure on top of the body of a giant god," he told the magazine. He immediately returned to the office, wrote up a design document, and showed it to a number of other people, getting a positive reaction in the process.
In order to better get the point across about his plan, he had one of the Monolith staffers create a model of the two gods in their final resting position. The Famitsu article has an image of this model. The two gods, one winged, are facing each other, with their swords clashing like they're engaged in battle. One is kneeling while the other looks like he's about to fall to one knee.
This model, the magazine notes, was created far before actual production began on Xenoblade. "It was of great help when explaining the project to Nintendo," said Takahashi.
The entire game world is set on the top of the corpses of these two gods. The rest of the world is nothing but ocean. It's an entirely enclosed space. You won't find outer space if you look up. And it does not seem to be the case that the two gods are resting on a planet.
- andriasang.com (February 2010)
From "Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 1: Sound."
https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/wii/xenoblade/0/0/
"I was involved in every aspect of the game, from coming up with the original concept and writing the script, right through to the debugging stage."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 1: Sound)
"This title has 'Xeno' in its name and so partly for that reason, I got Mi-chan [Mitsuda] to work on the music for the epilogue."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 1: Sound)
"For Xenoblade, I wanted to try a lot of new ideas without being bound by any pre-existing concept of what an RPG should be. This also applied to the game's audio content and I wanted to create a different atmosphere to that of titles I'd worked on previously."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 1: Sound)
"I'd feel that he [Takahashi] could see right through me, as if he really was paying attention. In that sense, I really had a lot of confidence in him, and I enjoyed working on this project."
- Yoko Shimomura (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 1: Sound)
From "Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 2: Story."
https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/wii/xenoblade/1/0/
"I was heading back to the office after a meeting, and as I was on the train, I was struck by the idea that it would be interesting to have people living on the enormous bodies of some kind of gods. That was where it all began."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 2: Story)
"As soon as I was back to the office, I got the idea down on a piece of paper before showing it to (Hirohide) Sugiura and the others. They all thought it looked interesting, and (Yasuyuki) Honne was good enough to offer to turn it into a 3D model. So he rushed out and bought lots of materials for creating a diorama and made it. This model focuses on the two towering gods: Bionis and Mechonis. I'd also had an unrelated idea for a story, and I thought that if I could successfully combine the two, it might well make for an interesting RPG. This is how the planning process for Xenoblade Chronicles began."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 2: Story)
"As I was Executive Director for this project, I knew that my workload was going to get pretty heavy. To make the development process more efficient, I thought it would be a good idea to have a partner with whom to collaborate on the scenario. That's when I got in touch with Takeda-san, whom I had known for ten years."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 2: Story)
"After the first episode of Xenosaga, we collaborated on the scenario for audio and anime versions. But in terms of working together on something of this scale was a first for us."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 2: Story)
"Most of my work has been writing scenarios for anime. I have also worked on a number of games, but my job was to take the original animation scenario and create a base scenario, which could then be made into a game. In terms of working on the entire scenario for a game as I did on this project, my first experience was the Nintendo DS version of Xenosaga. This project was the second."
- Yuichiro Takeda (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 2: Story)
"With an animated feature, there are time restrictions, and you have to create a drama that will fit within those designated limits. I'd say the biggest difference between working on video games and writing for anime is this restriction on volume."
- Yuichiro Takeda (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 2: Story)
"I did not give any detailed instructions [about writing the scenario] in the beginning. At the preliminary stage, I explained the basic premise to him [Takeda] and we agreed on the approach to take. We then took that as our base and conducted a to-and-fro discussion as if we were playing a game of catch."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 2: Story)
"Takeda-san worked on a general overview of the plot, which I then gave to the Monolith team to check over and revise. I then gave that to Takeda-san, and he would do rewrites based on that. So we kept up that game of catch for some time."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 2: Story)
"I haven't done it [played catch on my projects] all that often. I mean, there's a time when you try to play catch where you throw the ball but not get it returned in the way you'd expected. [...] It would be something like "Where did you throw it!?" (laughs) That's why, when you play catch, you need someone who is at least as experienced as you are, otherwise it won't go according to plan."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 2: Story)
"[I learned from Takeda that] for a 22-minute episode of an anime series, the script would be about 15,000 (Japanese) characters long. So if Takeda-san wrote a section of the scenario of that length, we'd know that this would make about 22 minutes worth of story content. This made it much easier to plan the overall structure and schedule."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 2: Story)
"Takeda-san spoke a little earlier about how, when he was working on anime scenarios, he would make the section leading into the commercial break or the cliffhanger at the end of an episode exciting. Well, when I came to read the scripts he wrote, I'd be able to tell "Ah, okay. There's a dramatic point here on the fourth page." When we were sifting through the cut scenes, deciding which ones to use, we would take pages three and four of the scenario to be about five minutes worth of material, and we would then steadily ramp up the excitement over that period. We could then judge how best to space out the cut scenes to keep costs down over the subsequent five minutes. In that way, we were able to use the script itself as a set of guidelines, which really helped."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 2: Story)
"I think it's vital to have the more objective viewpoint of an editor when you want to make something that will appeal to a broad section of players, and not just a limited audience. In that sense, I was really grateful for Nintendo's input."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 2: Story)
"Now when I look at the final scenario, I can't really tell where my ideas end and the ideas of others come in."
- Yuichiro Takeda (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 2: Story)
"Takahashi and I were the first on board to write the basis of the scenario. After that I wrote a real script, one which he was supervising as I went through. I'd say that up to Agniratha, it was only my ideas that were being developed. However, what followed from there mostly came from his head instead of mine."
- Yuichiro Takeda (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 2: Story)
"The hero in this game is Shulk, and we made one of our themes that he should be 'a hero who isn't hated'. [...] It's something I've felt about my own games, of course, as well as games by other people. Essentially, the heroes and heroines in RPGs often end up being disliked. Naturally, there are well-loved characters too, but I'd say that in general, they end up being hated. I think it comes from the huge emotional investment the player has made in the hero or heroine. [...] Player characters are a part of yourself, and for this reason, they shouldn't think or do anything that you don't want them to. With RPGs, there is one way to ensure the hero isn't hated – and that's to make it so they don't utter a word. [...] Not making the main character say anything is easy, but for this title, we wanted him to speak. This meant we were groping for a way to get that 'resonance'. In the end, I think we managed to achieve that to some degree."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 2: Story)
"In a TV or film drama, you could have each of the five members in a separate location and show all kinds of situations. You can then make the story more complex, or change the pace. But with a game, and especially an RPG, all five members of the party basically need to be in the same place. That's something very particular to games."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 2: Story)
"As I really didn't become aware of this until I got started, I did slightly regret not having made it so one or two characters didn't speak, as that would have made things easier. Looking back now, I see that in Takahashi-san's earlier work, they had properly considered this issue. So I came to realize "Ah, that's the thinking behind this character and that character... [So there are no silent types in Xenoblade Chronicles]"
- Yuichiro Takeda (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 2: Story)
"After founding the company, I started by employing a team, and there were times when most of them would have been inexperienced. [...] This was a project where I was fortunate enough to have the assistance of a whole range of people. Previously, I would have been forced to expend energy wastefully. This time round, this didn't happen at all. All of the team members gave their all in their area and while we managed to make a vast world, we were also able to make it richly detailed. I think it's a fitting tribute to our first decade at Monolith Soft."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 2: Story)
"For this title, we started with this giant model...We built the game world based on this, and what I really wanted to explore was how these tiny beings, the hero and his companions, would grow, and whether they would be able to embark on their adventure. That's why I think that if I were to sum up this title in a single word, I would say that it was 'embarking'. In the initial part of the game, the hero and his companions set out on their journey, facing the future in an unfamiliar world, and I wanted to describe the way they progress."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 2: Story)
From "Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 3: The Development Process."
https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/wii/xenoblade/2/0/
"I had originally wanted to complete work on Xenoblade Chronicles much sooner, but once we began, we encountered a lot of difficulties and development ran into trouble. I realized that if I went ahead with all the things I wanted to do with the game, we would have no chance of making the release date that was originally scheduled. So I went to Yamagami-san to discuss the idea of abandoning certain aspects of the game. [...] It's something we were very reluctant to do, but we knew that as professionals, we had to adhere strictly to the original schedule for completion. But at that point, Yamagami-san said "look, you've come this far. You should see it through to the end. I'll convince the others at the company."
There's an old Japanese proverb about a cricket trying to swim across a river. At first it's swimming away happily, but halfway across, it just seems to give up. I'd worked on a lot of games up until that point, and there were times when I've done the same. So this time, I was prepared to accept that I wouldn't be able to achieve all I'd set out to, and was mentally preparing myself to shift directions somewhat. But then Yamagami-san told me to see it through to the end, and I was really taken aback by this experience of Nintendo's willingness to keep working at something until they're satisfied the job is really done."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 3: The Development Process)
"We began by making models of the two titanic gods, Bionis and Mechonis [in July of 2006], and the planning developed from there."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 3: The Development Process)
"Takahashi-san's modus operandi when making games is often to start with an image and go from there, isn't it?"
- Satoru Iwata (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 3: The Development Process)
"Right."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 3: The Development Process)
"I do actually tend to be rather guarded when I meet people for the first time. But as soon as I realize that I can work with this person, my attitude changes completely."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 3: The Development Process)
"There were a lot of instances where I'd be writing the scenario and be deeply engaged in taking things in a particular direction, and while I'd be really excited by it, Hattori-san would point out that she couldn't really understand what we were getting at. One case in point is the game's ending. Initially, we'd come up with what we felt was an ending with a rather explanatory feel. But in fact, she told us that even with this explanation, she couldn't really understand it. When she pointed this out to me, I could see what she meant. There were things that seemed perfectly clear to us, but which were actually tricky to understand for players who didn't have previous knowledge. If you're referencing things that people know nothing about, it's really a meaningless exercise, isn't it?"
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 3: The Development Process)
"Takahashi-san's style used to be to work in his own office space and communicate his ideas via email, or speak to the team leaders, without coming into the development section."
- Koh Kojima (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 3: The Development Process)
"I made it my practice to speak directly to the dev team as little as possible as my comments had seemed to be taken too seriously by them."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 3: The Development Process)
"But with this project, things were different. He would come right into the dev team's workspace and give direct instructions to the members of the team. This was something I'd hardly ever witnessed before, so we'd say 'Look, Takahashi-san has descended from the clouds...'"
- Koh Kojima (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 3: The Development Process)
"When I was younger, my sole aim was to express myself. If I enjoyed it, and could give the players a product that reflected my own taste, it was enough if it appealed to those players who understood what I was doing. I was compelled by the belief that this was where the appeal lay in an RPG. [...] But in a way, I think that was a really good thing. When you're young, you're brimming with creative energy after all, and it is a path everyone goes through. Among young game creators today, there is no shortage of people with the same approach I had, making games solely for those players who will understand what you are trying to achieve. I think that this sort of game is necessary in the video game industry.
But now, when I ask myself if I still have that drive, which was in a sense rash and reckless, the answer is of course that I don't. At the same time, I now have a better view of the overall shape of things, and I feel that my creative range has increased. Recently, especially since becoming a father of two, I've been thinking more and more about how to make a game that will be enjoyed by a large number of players and that will strike a chord with them."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 3: The Development Process)
"With Xenoblade Chronicles, partway through the development process, I had accepted that we would have to cut corners to keep the initial completion deadline. However, when Yamagami-san was good enough to tell me to see it through to the end, we somehow managed to get the job done properly."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 3: The Development Process)
"We created this title with the intention that players should invest a lot of time in it, and become thoroughly absorbed in the game world."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks - Xenoblade Chronicles, Volume 3: The Development Process)
From "Xenoblade: The Secret File - Monado Archives" released in Japan on November 19th, 2010.
https://archive.org/details/xenoblade-the-secret-file-monado-archives/mode/2up
"I must say that we did a lot of brainstorming on how we could appeal to a wider audience. When we started the development of Xenoblade Chronicles, the Wii had only just come to the market. It was so new, in fact, that we had little idea as to whom our target audience would be. As it was a Nintendo system, we figured that our potential player base would be larger than what we were normally used to. Knowing that, we turned our attention to what we could do to appeal to the general public without alienating them, while bringing a brand-new game system to our existing fans."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade: The Secret File - Monado Archives)
"If Xenoblade's world feels open ended, it's most likely because a great part of the development team plays foreign games."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade: The Secret File - Monado Archives)
"Developing for new hardware is always exciting for me and the team, with how it motivates us to innovate graphically and invent new game mechanics. That said, most of the time our inexperience would be our downfall."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade: The Secret File - Monado Archives)
2011
From the video feature "Xenoblade Chronicles - The Origin of an Epic." In case the videos ever disappears I also post screenshots.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpojtuheCIw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMdXIA3dbsg
"This game was unusual because the story was added later, like a postscript. Maybe that's not the right way to put it, anyway, [...]"
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade Chronicles - The Origin of an Epic, Part 1: Achieving our vision)
"With all games, not just this one, I like to base the story around a clash between two opposing elements, whether they're different forces or perspectives or whatever. Since I had created Bionis and Mechonis, I thought about a story involving humans and machines - two different types of beings living in these two worlds."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade Chronicles - The Origin of an Epic, Part 1: Achieving our vision)
"Characteristics I'd call 'uniquely Takahashi' can be clearly seen in this game, and I think fans of his previous games will enjoy that aspect. At the same time, I feel the qualities of the entire development team have been skilfully integrated into the game too. In that sense, I believe that this title has a 'new' feel to it."
- Koh Kojima (Xenoblade Chronicles - The Origin of an Epic, Part 1: Achieving our vision)
"Our approach was simple in that respect, and created a somewhat orthodox experience. There are elements needed in an RPG, like vast fields and a degree of freedom. Care has been taken to pour such elements into Xenoblade Chronicles."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade Chronicles - The Origin of an Epic, Part 1: Achieving our vision)
"We wanted the game to be like a boys’ manga where a classic storyline is loaded with twists. This is what boys’ manga are known for."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade Chronicles - The Origin of an Epic, Part 4: Directing the Details)
"For instance, the game starts with a boy getting the Monado sword and this changes the world. So the story is pretty far-fetched right away, like something from an anime. Japanese animation has certain defining characteristics, such as tempo. Besides that...well, maybe people should experience these characteristics for themselves in the game. We started out hoping that people overseas would play it too. With this in mind, we incorporated these traits of Japanimation as much as we could so that users everywhere could experience them."
- Koh Kojima (Xenoblade Chronicles - The Origin of an Epic, Part 4: Directing the Details)
[Screenshots 1][Screenshots 2][Screenshots 3][Screenshots 4]
From "Iwata Asks: In Conversation with Takahashi & Sakaguchi."
https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/Iwata-Asks/Iwata-Asks-In-Conversation-with-Takahashi-Sakaguchi/In-Conversation-with-Takahashi-Sakaguchi/1-Reunion-After-Eight-Years/1-Reunion-After-Eight-Years-211179.html
Iwata: How closely did you work together when you were at Square?
Sakaguchi: Back then, Taka-chan was the top graphic design man in the FF team. You started work on the series from FFIV, right?
Takahashi: That's right. I joined when we were working on FFIV.
Sakaguchi: Right, and I can still clearly remember being really taken aback by how realistic your design for the stone wall in the background was. I remember thinking: 'That's really something!'
Iwata: It was just at that time when people started to take note of the quality of the graphics of the Final Fantasy series. It was a period when the leaps that were being taken technologically on video game hardware meant a dramatic raising of the bar for realistic graphics.
Sakaguchi: That's right. It was just at this point that Taka-chan joined us. I'm really grateful for all you did for me back then! (bows)
Takahashi: No, no! (laughs) Thank you! (bows)
Iwata: Takahashi-san, what was your first impression of Sakaguchi-san?
Takahashi: Let me think... Well, back then there was still a culture of gaming on home computers and I had been a fan of titles Sakaguchi-san had been responsible for, such as Cruise Chaser Blassty. So I thought of him as someone who had created games that I had spent a lot of time playing.
Iwata: I think that there is a real difference in viewing a creator from a distance, and then seeing them close-up. How did you find working alongside Sakaguchi-san?
Takahashi: What I always found really impressive was how he would get to the office before anyone else and be the last to leave. He was someone who was always at his desk, with a capacity for work far beyond that of a regular person.
Iwata: I'd imagine you weren’t staying at the office late because you were trying to impress anyone. It's rather that when you're focused on making something that's really good, the more time you put into it, the better it gets. And then before you realise, it's got late.
Sakaguchi: Sure enough, those were the days when things were very hands on. I can still remember the sight of Taka-chan at his desk. There was a good atmosphere back then, with everyone really focused on what they were doing.
Iwata: This was a time when you could see the results of your efforts really clearly reflected in the end product, which served to motivate you.
Takahashi: There was a lot of responsibility, but at the same time, you felt the effort you put in was worthwhile.
Iwata: Back then, the FF team were developing those titles at quite a clip, giving them real depth, and making them vast in scale. How did you structure the team in order to successfully bring about those dramatic developments in the evolution of the series?
Sakaguchi: Well, a really important element was that we were able to gather an impressive pool of talent, including Taka-chan of course. Then there were also the improvements in the hardware which increased the range of what was possible. For instance, even if there was just the smallest tweak in the amount of memory available for graphics, it would inspire the craftsman in you to make something of it. There was a real sense at that time that we had to constantly change and improve things.
Takahashi: Back then, arcade machines had higher specifications than home consoles, so our ambition was to create something that would surpass them.
Iwata: So you'd be fired up with the desire to really impress players using consumer electronics which at that time were not on the cutting edge of technology.
Sakaguchi: That's right. Back then, we were free to design things as we saw fit. Do you remember the Magitek Armor that appears in the opening sequence of FFVI?
Takahashi: Yes, I do.
Sakaguchi: Now, I actually wanted to make it identical to the Magitek Armor that appears in the game. But Taka-chan went ahead and drew it his own way... (laughs) And he really came up with something amazing.
Iwata: So you had no choice but to admit that it was better than what you’d originally had in mind.
Sakaguchi: Right. And it hurt a bit to admit it! (laughs) I’d say this kind of thing was pretty common back then.
Iwata: Well, I know how team spirit gets a real boost when everyone is coming up with all kinds of ideas, and those ideas are gelling well together.
Sakaguchi: Taka-chan has always had a talent for motivating people and bringing them together as a team.
Takahashi: But back then Square had its own particular culture. On the one hand, there was a real desire to change things, while at the same time there was this sense that things shouldn't be tampered with. I would always worry about whether I was on the right track.
Sakaguchi: Is that right? Wow... It’s amazing to hear about people’s worries and fears back then after all these years. (laughs)
Takahashi: But there’s always the need to actively push things forward, otherwise nothing changes.
Iwata: So after meeting, how long did you work together for?
Takahashi: I was on the FF team up to VI. Partway through VII, I left the team. I stayed at the same company, but I was in charge of a separate team.
Sakaguchi: I remember that back then those teams would always be dividing into smaller units. If someone displayed leadership skills, they would be given the independence of having their own team. At the same time, they would often ask me: 'Is Final Fantasy all this company can let me create?' I used to worry about that.
Iwata: When you keep on repeating the same thing, even if it's something of real value, people start to lose that sense of it being special. There need to be fresh ideas added to the mix. But there was a lot of disagreement over just what kind of fresh ideas were needed.
Sakaguchi: Right. But Taka-chan had some really good people working for him, and I think it was for the best that he got to head his own team.
Iwata: So how did you come to head up your own independent team, Takahashi-san?
Takahashi: I recall going to see Sakaguchi-san and telling him that I was looking for a new challenge. That was when we were all in the middle of FFVII.
Iwata: FFVII marked a real turning point in the series. For someone who was such an integral part of it to start out on their own, well, Sakaguchi-san, it must have been hard to lose him, even while you wished him the best.
Sakaguchi: Yes. That's true. If I'm being honest, I felt a little lonely. One really clear memory I have is that no sooner had Taka-chan formed a separate team than his desk became completely covered in Gundam models and toy guns. It was then that I realised he’d always wanted to work on this kind of thing.
Iwata: It was as if he'd graduated.
Sakaguchi: Right. Well, that was just the sense I got...
Takahashi: ...So that’s what you were thinking! (laughs)
Iwata: When you left the FF team, what kind of thing did you want to do?
Takahashi: I wanted to see whether we could make a game entirely in 3D, not simply the event scenes. My initial motivation was to try to make games that achieved that.
Iwata: So you wanted to utilise 3D in a way that differed from its use in FFVII.
Takahashi: That's right. I felt that the company needed to develop knowledge on how to utilise 3D in a different way from that of VII. I wanted to make levels entirely three-dimensional and allow the player to freely alter the angle they view the game world at.
Iwata: There's a real difference between simply being responsible for the graphics, and coming up with entire game concepts and bringing all the necessary elements together.
Takahashi: Indeed there is, and I really had to feel my way at first.
Iwata: But back then, everyone was just feeling their way.
Sakaguchi: FFVII was entirely a process of feeling our way.
Iwata: I'd go as far as saying that, back then, there was hardly anyone who had a clear conception of what the finished product would be from the start.
Takahashi: Ninety percent of my team were actually new kids who didn't know the first thing about 3D. The most difficult thing was the psychological side: helping people adjust to the team, talking through their worries and concerns with them, and so on. It was then that I realised that Sakaguchi-san had been dealing with this kind of thing all along.
Iwata: It's only when you fly the nest that you realise what your parents did for you! (laughs)
Sakaguchi: I see what you mean!
[...]
Iwata: Facing the immense challenge of running your own team, what was it that spurred you on and kept you going?
Takahashi: Let me think. Well, I had a strong sense that I could definitely do this, that it was going to be alright. That was the only thing I could really fall back on. Now when I look back at it, I realise that if I'd done more to inspire that same feeling in my staff, it would have been easier to build a team.
[...]
Sakaguchi: [...] Simply because you've been involved in games for years doesn't necessarily mean your technical skills are superb. But I think what you do have is determination and tenacity. That can become the glue that binds a team together, and when you combine that with the technical skills of the younger members, games themselves will change.
Iwata: I really felt that The Last Story and Xenoblade Chronicles took shape thanks to that kind of determination. We at Nintendo were right there with you in order to see those games through to the end.
Sakaguchi: Now that you mention it, the release date for both titles was delayed, wasn't it?
Takahashi: We'd often talk about which game would be the first to come out. (laughs)
Sakaguchi: I used to be faster, but this time I was beaten to the punch. (laughs)
Takahashi: Something I've felt recently is that a lot of people of our generation have taken on roles as producers, and that they've actually been too hasty to distance themselves from the actual game development process. If you look at films or animation, people in their fifties or sixties remain very active. If we retire from actually making games, that spirit of craftsmanship won’t be handed down to the next generation. That's why I think it’s better that we maintain a hands-on role in the game development process.
Sakaguchi: Right, I really felt like I'd gone back to the coalface this time. By getting involved in the day-to-day creative process, I think that the determination and tenacity I possessed came into play and may well have changed the way the team worked together.
Iwata: At the very least, if Sakaguchi-san hadn't been the director, or if Takahashi-san had put distance between himself and the dev team, those titles would not have become the games they turned out to be. The younger team members really reaped the benefits from the determination and craftsmanship you both possess.
Iwata: And Takahashi-san, while Xenoblade Chronicles has been out for quite a while now, you must get a real boost from all the players who are still enjoying it and talking about it.
Takahashi: Yes, of course. But actually, there are times when I want people to be more critical. I’m actually the type of person who gets fired up by negative energy... (laughs)
Iwata: A film will always end at a specific, defined time. But games will continue for as long as you wish to play them. You won't finish them unless you put in the effort, and for some reason this enhances the depth of the experience and makes the game resonate more with the player.
Takahashi: Right. Absolutely.
2012
From "Sharpening the 'Blade," an interview with Tetsuya Takahashi in the March 2012 issue of American Nintendo Power conducted by Casey Loe.
https://archive.org/details/nintendo-power-issue-276-march-2012/page/64/mode/2up
"To be honest, there аrе times when І think I've atrophied as a writer since the Xenogears era. For example, take a story sequence like, “a massive meteorite falls into a city, obliterating everything within 100 kilometers." Thirteen years ago, І would have written something like that without a moment's hesitation. But now І get caught up in viewing it from so many perspectives outside of that of a writer: How much would it cost to develop the City? How many people would we need to model the pieces of rubble and program the explosion effects? Should we hire additional employees to do it, or just outsource it? And it isn't just visual effects scenes; I find myself thinking the same sorts of thoughts about the event scenes that would be necessary to develop each character that I create.
There's no doubt that sort of thinking affects the development of my stories to some extent, but if I'm not realistic about that sort of thing—for example, if the story is more ambitious than the budget will allow—then the whole project will fail. I often find myself thinking, "One of these days, I'd love to free myself from these sorts of restraints and write whatever I truly want to write," but I think for that to happen, I'd first need to make a game that was a hit not just in Japan, but also in the West—and especially in the industry's largest market, North America."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Sharpening the 'Blade, Nintendo Power, March 2012)
"In terms of how close we came to achieving the original vision for the game Xenoblade Chronicles, I'd say it's pretty close to 100%. The qualifier there is that there are a few minor things I wish we could have done, like made the user interface easier to use, added a bestiary, and had all of the event scenes use the full-spec models.
But in terms of my own personal goal—my vision of an ideal game—I'd honestly have to say that it's barely 5% of the way there. My goal is to re-create the world itself. I think it's valuable to always develop projects with such lofty goals in mind."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Sharpening the 'Blade, Nintendo Power, March 2012)
"The hardest part was simply getting everything done. There's a Japanese parable about a cricket trying to swim across a puddle, in which the cricket gives up and swims back the way it came, even though it had already swum halfway across. The meaning is that people embark on new ventures with lots of enthusiasm, but often give up, even when they should have gone all the way. І think that this is a very common situation in Japanese game development. I understand that there are all sorts of reasons why it happens, related to development costs and changing circumstances, but I also feel that this is connected to the malaise that Japanese RPGs have found themselves in."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Sharpening the 'Blade, Nintendo Power, March 2012)
"[...] after spending a quarter of a century creating games and making lots of mistakes, the intuition that I've cultivated by ruminating on those mistakes is everything to me. Now, І certainly don't think it's perfect. My intuition is still developing, and next time І expect that it will be even more accurate."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Sharpening the 'Blade, Nintendo Power, March 2012)
"I believe that music is an extremely important element to games. І honestly don't think that it's ап exaggeration to say that music can make the difference between a good game and a bad one."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Sharpening the 'Blade, Nintendo Power, March 2012)
"I know that this is a pretty radical idea, but I think the future of the genre is world creation that is good enough to be the equivalent of reality.
I'm sure that if games ever did evolve to that point, it would cause all sorts of problem in the real world, like in that old movie Brainstorm. But as a game creator, I'm constantly thinking about how much I'd like to advance the genre to that point."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Sharpening the 'Blade, Nintendo Power, March 2012)
"I always build room for sequels into all of my games."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Sharpening the 'Blade, Nintendo Power, March 2012)
"I think that because Western RPGs were originally derived from tabletop RPGs, the ultimate goal of the genre had been to create worlds for players to inhabit that are indistinguishable from reality. And in fact, that's the same goal that inspired me to get involved in game development. I suspect the reason Xenoblade Chronicles ended up resembling Western-style RPGs is that it was designed to be a step toward a goal that is held by so many Western developers."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Sharpening the 'Blade, Nintendo Power, March 2012)
"While Takahashi is grateful for the game's positive reputation, he's quick to point out that he and his team didn't set out to make Xenoblade Chronicles into the company's magnum opus. It was made to be an experiment"
- Casey Loe (Sharpening the 'Blade, Nintendo Power, March 2012)
From "Five Questions With Xenoblade Chronicles' Executive Director" - a short Gameinformer website interview with Takahasi.
http://web.archive.org/web/20221110220542/https://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2012/04/06/five-questions-with-xenoblade-chronicles-39-executive-director.aspx
Gameinformer: Though the characters of Xenoblade definitely fit into JRPG stereotypes, the dialogue and overall tone of the story seems more mature and subdued than a lot of games in this genre. Was that something you attempted to do on purpose? Do you want to pursue more mature writing in future projects?
Takahashi: Yes, it is something that I did on purpose. I’m very happy to hear that the story gave you the impression that I intended for it to have. I plan on pursuing more mature writing in future projects as well.
From a 2012 Siliconera website interview.
https://www.siliconera.com/monolith-soft-tried-using-a-turn-based-battle-system-for-xenoblade-chronicles/
"I thought that it would be more interesting to incorporate the ability to see the future into the game using a real-time battle system. I did experiment with a turn-based system that included the ability to see the future, but it didn’t go very well."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Interview with Siliconera, 2012)
2013
2014
From a Xenoblade Chronicles X interview with EDGE magazine.
https://www.nintendo-insider.com/xenoblade-chronicles-x-helped-monolith-soft-to-lay-hd-development-groundwork/
"Xenoblade Chronicles X is the first HD project for Monolith Soft, so instead of setting a number of hard-to-achieve targets, we are working on steadily building up key skills. Our goal with this game is first to lay the groundwork for [our] HD game development, so as to not overreach ourselves and cause problems."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade Chronicles X interview with EDGE, 2014)
2015
From "Xenoblade X January 28th, 2015 Famitsu Article + Interview"
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WDBYfaVE4R1r5D0YSUKCyx3StF1PQy-b2tqv7gfBYyA/pub
"We're pulling from Xenoblade's popularity [with the title], but in order to move the experience[or series] in a different direction, we didn't make this a sequel. While Xenoblade followed an orthodox structure as far as RPGs go, this game is a massive open world type of RPG."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade X January 28th, 2015 Famitsu Interview)
"Since Xenoblade had one main story thread, I feel it was a more linearly constructed game. Whereas in Xenoblade X you can take quests from all over the place, and the story unfolds in a multitude of directions."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade X January 28th, 2015 Famitsu Interview)
"While it's easy to think of something '2'[as in, if this were called 'Xenoblade 2'] as purely a continuation, we wanted a different kind of challenge from the last game, so we called it 'X(Cross)'. [This challenge is the] inclusion of an online component, which is a first for Monolith Soft. The 'X(Cross)' is related to the meaning of distant players being able to play together."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade X January 28th, 2015 Famitsu Interview)
From "Iwata Asks: - Xenoblade Chronicles 3D – Exclusively for the New Nintendo 3DS XL."
https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/3ds/xenoblade-chronicles-3d/0/0/
Iwata: First, could you look back a little on what you were imagining for the world of Xenoblade Chronicles when you started development for the Wii version?
Takahashi: Of course. My first thought was that I wanted to build a masterpiece within the JRPG genre... So while I worked towards completing the game, I carefully gathered all of the many elements necessary to make that happen.
"Most Western gamers like realistic games with high definition graphics."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks: - Xenoblade Chronicles 3D – Exclusively for the New Nintendo 3DS XL)
"I think it was quite different from a Western-made game. One difference is that it did a good job of incorporating the innate heroism of JRPGs...allowing the user to become the hero, to become the protagonist. On the other hand, games made in the West - and this is only my personal opinion - they are very well made, down to the last detail, but there's something stoic about them, and often the heroism aspect seems to take a bit of a back seat."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks: - Xenoblade Chronicles 3D – Exclusively for the New Nintendo 3DS XL)
"I also loved Star Trek and Star Wars. At the time, I lived in Shizuoka, so I could stay in the theater all day...
[...] Since it was a movie theater in the countryside, I could see the movie multiple times in a day, and I could even see two different movies. At one point the theater was showing Star Trek and Star Wars, and I stayed in the movie theater all day."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks: - Xenoblade Chronicles 3D – Exclusively for the New Nintendo 3DS XL)
"I always liked messing around with machines. So then I started drawing them...drawing spaceships and rockets and those kinds of things... I just remembered that. I tried to think about why I liked rockets, but I think it stemmed from a heartbreaking incident. When I was four years old, I went to Expo '70 [...] I really wanted to go the American Pavilion to see the moon rock. But, as I'm sure you know, Iwata-san, the crowds were huge... [...] My father went ballistic in front of the American Pavilion. He said, "We'll never get in, no matter how many hours we wait." Then he said that we should go look at other places, and took us to all the pavilions with no lines. [...] I really wanted to go to the American Pavilion and the Robot Pavilion, but I couldn't go to either of them...I think you can call that heartbreaking, don't you? (laughs)"
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks: - Xenoblade Chronicles 3D – Exclusively for the New Nintendo 3DS XL)
"I've got another heartbreaking incident in my childhood. My father wouldn't buy me the toy robot I wanted, and I sobbed all the way home. That's how much I loved robots."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks: - Xenoblade Chronicles 3D – Exclusively for the New Nintendo 3DS XL)
"My son calls me a Gun-Ota. (laughs)"
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks: - Xenoblade Chronicles 3D – Exclusively for the New Nintendo 3DS XL)
Iwata: Sci-fi often has a lot of contradictions in the storylines, so it's easy to joke about it, and when you start talking about that, it just makes things even more fun.
Takahashi: That's true. When I was...I think it was in middle school...there was a sci-fi magazine called Starlog. I read sci-fi magazines and armed myself with all the knowledge I could. I really started to express myself then, thinking up my own stories and things like that.
"I took apart home electronics. [...] things like taking apart the stereo and the TV. (laughs) [...] We had a really nice, big stereo in the house, and when I took it apart, I couldn't put it back together. (laughs) My father was so angry. [...] If I remember right, I think he hung me upside down in the closet! (laughs) [...] I must have been in kindergarten. [...] I was the kind of kid who couldn't see a screw without wanting to unscrew it. I was really curious about what was inside."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks: - Xenoblade Chronicles 3D – Exclusively for the New Nintendo 3DS XL)
Iwata: At the start of our chat, you mentioned you wanted to make a JRPG masterpiece. What were your ideas for making that happen?
Takahashi: To give a brief outline of the structure of JRPG, first you have the story as the y-axis, and the game system and game play as the x-axis, and it's really important to keep those two things balanced.
Iwata: It can't lean too much to the story side or the game system side.
Takahashi: That's true. Now, before we built Monolith Soft, we were working at Square...
Iwata: So this was Square, before it became Square Enix.
Takahashi: Right. I joined right after the development of Final Fantasy III had ended, and I was involved in IV, V and VI. Final Fantasy was always one of those titles that had the x-axis of gameplay, but where a lot of care went into the y-axis of the story. It was a lot of fun to debug. Someone was always playing through the whole game on the development deadline day...
Iwata: That was a tradition for the Final Fantasy team.
Takahashi: That's right. (Hironobu) Sakaguchi-san and the rest of us would watch the play through, and when it finally finished successfully, we would all cheer. It was a lot of fun.
Iwata: Right.
Takahashi: But after that - and this is my own failing as well - I felt like...more and more, the y-axis of the story started to overtake the x-axis of the gameplay...
Iwata: Ah, you felt that as a JRPG, the balance was off.
Takahashi: Right. So the first thing I did when I was making Xenoblade Chronicles was to use my experiences to decide what a good balance was for the x-axis and y-axis, and structure it that way.
Iwata: It must be the fact that you made sure that the x-axis of the gameplay was just as rich as the story of the y-axis that gave the game such depth.
Takahashi: I think so.
Iwata: You must have had a lot of trials even after you figured out your direction.
Takahashi: It was less trials and closer to burning bridges.
Iwata: Burning bridges? What do you mean?
Takahashi: We began Monolith Soft in 1999, with funding from Namco before they became Bandai Namco. The first game we made was Xenosaga, but because we were developing it while we were building the organization, we didn't have enough people. The programmers and the planners were all rookies. At the time, the director of Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles X, (Koh) Kojima, had just joined the company right after graduating college.
Iwata: So even Kojima-san was a rookie.
Takahashi: That's right. And, it's a bit embarrassing to admit, but the graphics engine was only completed six months before the development deadline. That's the schedule we were on.
Iwata: Now that sounds like a fierce schedule.
Takahashi: So - and this is a bit of an excuse - but at the time, I felt that because no one on the team making Xenosaga had any experience, it might be a little too difficult for us to make our ideal game yet.
Iwata: Right.
Takahashi: But even on that team we had a few extremely talented graphic designers. The game design came out of the idea that "the only thing we can do is make the main component some sort of event."
Iwata: So you designed a game that played to the strengths and weaknesses of your team.
Takahashi: That's right. We released three games in the Xenosaga series, but they weren't very well received. It was really mortifying. All of the young team members felt that way, not just the leaders. So we all decided, "Next time we need to make a game that players will enjoy." So that made the atmosphere during the Xenoblade Chronicles development very different compared to other games.
Iwata: You couldn't make excuses anymore.
Takahashi: That's right. We couldn't run anymore. And that's why I say we burned our bridges for the Xenoblade Chronicles development.
"But when we made Xenoblade Chronicles, 10 years had passed since Monolith Soft was built, and the team members had all gained experience... [...] It really confirmed the fact that with these team members, we could make something with a balanced x-axis and y-axis."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks: - Xenoblade Chronicles 3D – Exclusively for the New Nintendo 3DS XL)
Iwata: Why were you able to make that map so well?
Takahashi: Looking back, the team that made Xenogears at Square is the team who really became the core of Monolith. This was back during the era of the first PlayStation, and at the time there wasn't a single game that had a 3D map.
Iwata: Right.
Takahashi: With the specs back then, you could choose to make your characters 3D or your map 3D.
Iwata: Because of HDD's spec, you could only do one or the other.
Takahashi: That's right. So with Final Fantasy, they chose 3D characters, at the same time those of us who were working on Xenogears choose to make the map 3D.
Iwata: I see.
Takahashi: Then (Yasuyuki) Honne became the leader, and he specialized in map development. What we started doing then really evolved into what Monolith Soft is doing now.
Iwata: In that sense, you had several members of the team who had a lot of experience in building worlds that people would enjoy, who had begun making 3D maps at the predawn of 3D games. And that really contributed to making Xenoblade Chronicles into something of this quality.
Takahashi: That's right. A lot of people on the team had worked together at Square. And I think our combined experience is really important when it comes to making games.
[...]
Iwata: Do you have a much different approach to making games now than you did when you worked at Square?
Takahashi: It is different. I think that I communicate very differently now. In the past, I just told people to "Just do it."
Iwata: When I talk to people who knew Tetsuya Takahashi-san in the past, they seem to have the impression of a "strict and scary" senior who, once he had taught them to do something by watching him, would say "Just do it!" (laughs)
Takahashi: Oh, is that so? ( awkward laugh) The thing is...I was never taught properly myself. (Yoshio) Kiya and (Masaya) Hashimoto, who I worked with at Nihon Falcom, as well as Sakaguchi-san at Square, were like that. You had to kind of watch them and figure out, "Well, I guess this is how I do it." So I could only borrow their way of working...
Iwata: It sounds like the world of craftsmen.
Takahashi: I really was nurtured by craftsmen. But I think it's really important to always learn something, even if no one is teaching you something. I thought a lot about what I should be making, and my conclusion was Xenoblade Chronicles.
Iwata: So the time was ripe for both you, yourself, and Monolith Soft as a corporation to make Xenoblade Chronicles.
From "Inside The Development Of Xenoblade Chronicles 3DS" on Gameinformer website.
http://web.archive.org/web/20240305001417/https://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2015/04/15/interview-inside-the-development-of-xenoblade-chronicles-3ds.aspx
"Japanese RPGs are faced with a reality in which, with just a very few exceptions, they're mainly built with small-scale budgets targeted for the internal Japan market. The non-inclusiveness of this market has slowed the advancement of the RPG genre, bringing it into stagnation. With this game, the first priority as we considered the design was how to channel our limited budget and resources to create something gamers not just in Japan - but around the world - would seek out. Along those lines, we scrutinized all the game aspects we needed, assigned priority levels to each one, and carefully built it up from there. With this game, we devoted everything we could to satisfy gamers."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Inside The Development Of Xenoblade Chronicles 3DS, Gameinformer, 2012)
"From a story perspective, the theme of the heroes trying to overcome a predestined future was always there, so that idea came out from the ensuing feedback among the designers. It'd be weird if you could do certain things in the story but not in battle, as well. So when you're faced with the danger of death in battle, you're able to unleash that ability, making it important to use your assorted Battle Arts to change the future and avoid that fate."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Inside The Development Of Xenoblade Chronicles 3DS, Gameinformer, 2012)
"In terms of technical aspects, the feedback we received was all pretty obvious things, so none of them are worth particular note here. The biggest feedback we received came in terms of the stances and frames of mind each member of the team brought to the project. I think the fact that we were able to devote time and attention to things like not giving up on what you want to make, and figuring out what gamers want and how to make, that happen instead of pushing your own likes forward had a pretty big effect."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Inside The Development Of Xenoblade Chronicles 3DS, Gameinformer, 2012)
From "Iwata Asks: Xenoblade Chronicles X"
https://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/wiiu/xenoblade-chronicles-x/0/0/
"I'm Kazuho Hyodo, and I worked on the script. [...] Takeda-san invited me to this project, so I helped out with the script."
- Kazuho Hyodo (Iwata Asks: Xenoblade Chronicles X - Creating a Whole Planet)
[Kazuho Hyodo is a scriptwriter who has worked on various animated series such as Mobile Suit Gundam Seed Destiny, Mobile Suit Gundam AGE, Unlimited Psychic Squad, and Robot Girls Z.]
"We're a group created by motivation and willpower. Large parts of the staff at Monolith Soft are the kind of people who are determined to pull through once something is decided. They are all so faithful to their duties that cutting corners wasn't an option."
- Koh Kojima (Iwata Asks: Xenoblade Chronicles X - Creating a Whole Planet)
"The majority of the staff has a strong belief that once something is determined or started, it should be completed to its fullest potential."
- Koh Kojima (Iwata Asks: Xenoblade Chronicles X - Creating a Whole Planet)
"After we decided on creating an open world, we needed to begin creating a world that can withstand various situations, so we focused on creating the base of the story. From there, we had several meetings about the story with not only the scriptwriters, Takeda-san and Hyodo-san, but also with Kojima-san and Yokota-san."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks: Xenoblade Chronicles X - A Novel-like Plot)
"For this game, a large amount of the plot was written beforehand by Takahashi-san, so I started off by reading that."
- Yuichiro Takeda (Iwata Asks: Xenoblade Chronicles X - A Novel-like Plot)
"Come to think of it, Takahashi-san wrote a lot. I've worked with Takahashi-san for a long time, but this was the first time I've seen him write so much for a game's plot. It was as if he was writing a novel.
It was quite a read on its own, so I even suggested to Takahashi-san to get it published."
- Koh Kojima (Iwata Asks: Xenoblade Chronicles X - A Novel-like Plot)
"I carefully picked out the stories that fit with the game's content and scale and turned them into scripts."
- Yuichiro Takeda (Iwata Asks: Xenoblade Chronicles X - A Novel-like Plot)
"I thought, 'This workload requires two people, so I need to find someone I can trust,' so I asked for Hyodo-san's help."
- Yuichiro Takeda (Iwata Asks: Xenoblade Chronicles X - A Novel-like Plot)
"When I was invited, the first thing the producer from Monolith Soft told me was that the job's requirement was to not run away from the project! (laughs)
I think they were joking at the time, but I had a strong feeling that I should never run away from this project if I accepted it."
- Kazuho Hyodo (Iwata Asks: Xenoblade Chronicles X - A Novel-like Plot)
"[...] this is something that Takahashi-san and I share, but I like middle-aged male characters. "
- Yuichiro Takeda (Iwata Asks: Xenoblade Chronicles X - A Novel-like Plot)
"Actually, the main story might be shorter than Xenoblade Chronicles. However, the quest stories are matched up with the open-world game design, so there's more depth to the quests."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks: Xenoblade Chronicles X - A Novel-like Plot)
"Early in the project, I was discussing with Kojima-san that it's about time to be able to fight in robots."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks: Xenoblade Chronicles X - Buying a Skell like Buying a Car)
"[...] the X symbolized alien life of the unknown, and exploring an unknown planet. In the Japanese version, we refer to the X as "cross," as in a place that can serve as a crossroad where people can come across one another unexpectedly. The game has an online aspect, so there will be a lot of player interactions, as if they're meeting each other at an intersection or a crossroads. A lot of intelligent life from other planets will also appear, and interacting with them can be a lot of fun as well. For example, they won't come to your town unless you find a way to come across and interact with them."
- Genki Yokota (Iwata Asks: Xenoblade Chronicles X - Thoughts About the Title)
"When we reached out to Sawano-san, the passion and energy that came back from him in agreeing to work on it was unbelievable. He said he doesn't really play video games, but he brought up unconventional ideas like bringing in vocals to the battle music. We requested a total track list that was out of the ordinary, but he agreed to make all of them right away."
- Koh Kojima (Iwata Asks: Xenoblade Chronicles X - Thoughts About the Title)
"This being the very first HD game from Monolith Soft, we started by forming a team, and delving into experimental development. We first decided that the key pillar would be making it an open world. We continued on development deciding that we wanted to make the robots (Skells) another key pillar. But along the way, we adopted the notion of having the game loosely connected online, and that became our mantra. We changed the main protagonist to an avatar, and had to abandon many of the things we had built up to that point."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Iwata Asks: Xenoblade Chronicles X - An Abundant Game)
From "Xenoblade Chronicles X's director on building an RPG for multiple audiences" on VentureBeat website.
https://venturebeat.com/games/xenoblade-chronicles-xs-director-on-building-an-rpg-for-multiple-audiences/
"The simplest answer, probably, is that I felt like, after working on a fantasy setting, it might be nice to try something new [after Xenoblade Chronicles]. Science fiction is a great change of pace [for Xenoblade Chronicles X]. It's a really interesting flavor."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (VentureBeat website interview, 2015)
"I do have to say that you don't always want to do the same thing every time. People get tired of playing the exact same experience. You should treat every new development project as a new challenge. But to answer your question [about Japanese RPGs going back in a traditional direction] more specifically, I do enjoy many of the elements you find in this Japanese style of game-making, but I want to make sure that it's accessible to a wider audience as well."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (VentureBeat website interview, 2015)
"To be honest, I don't feel much pressure in this situation. Maybe it's just one of my idiosyncrasies, but as soon as I've finished a development project, all I can think about is the next one."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (VentureBeat website interview, 2015)
GamesBeat: A lot of the Xeno games aren't tied to each other directly, but do they have an overarching theme, going back to Xenosaga and Xenogears?
Takahashi: The theme is actually a little bit different every time. I don't think there's necessarily a thematic link between each game. Rather, I think of what sort of game I want to make, what sort of challenge I want to take on. There are links between each game, but they're not quite that clear.
GamesBeat: Is it almost more like a director's signature? All your RPGs have a "Xeno" on them.
Takahashi: Yes, that's right.
From "Xenoblade's Director Talks Witcher 3, Zelda Wii U, And His Favorite RPGs" on Gameinformer website.
https://venturebeat.com/games/xenoblade-chronicles-xs-director-on-building-an-rpg-for-multiple-audiences/
It seemed as though this project was announced by Iwata as a completely new game series, so why did you retroactively make this part of the Xenoblade line?
Tetsuya Takahashi: So as it turns out, the idea of it being part of "Xeno" was always there. I have to clarify a little bit because not in the sense that it’s a sequel to the previous game but rather it is a new series that is still "Xeno". That's how I was thinking of it.
Does Xenoblade Chronicles X have the same level of connection to Xenoblade Chronicles as say between a Xenogears and a Xenosaga?
Takahashi: It's maybe even a little more loosely connected than that, but yes there are a few links that you might be able to pick up on.
"Within the JRPG context, you haven't really seen in the past the freedom to go absolutely anywhere in a game like this."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade's Director Talks, Gameinformer, 2015)
Do you ever find inspiration from your own work in the past? Do you ever go back and play those games. Are other RPGs that you go back and draw inspiration from?
Takahashi: So I do have the opportunity once in a while to play some games that were developed in North America or Europe. I guess it's maybe not the best way to say that "I'm inspired by them", as I "take the time to inspect them". [Laughs]
It's a very clinical eye?
Takahashi: That's exactly right. I try to get my hands on as many titles as I can, but I often only play them for about 8 hours or so each just to get a sense of what the game systems are all about.
"I feel the situation for a lot of folks who work on games in Japan is that they probably don't look at internet comments because people are too concerned about what kind of weird things might be written about them, especially if they're negative or critical. But, personally, I look at everything because I actually derive a certain sense of power from being able to confront criticism in that way. If you see anything negative about you, that drives you to work harder. Whether it's to disprove those people or just to put it out of our minds.
After Xenoblade Chronicles was released, there weren’t all that many negative opinions that I encountered online. And, to be honest, I wanted more. I wanted more negativity that I could confront and use as a personal driver. One thing that I did take away is that people talked about the importance of creating characters that were very appealing. That’s something that I kept in my head and also dogs my process as I was working on Xenoblade Chronicles X as well."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade's Director Talks, Gameinformer, 2015)
"I think that the challenge of creating appealing characters is finding something that is going to stand up to the online reaction, where people are so quick to judge something. Saying it's either cool or it's not cute enough, there's a very quick judgment there. So I feel like we spent a lot of time in the beginning of the development of Xenoblade Chronicles X thinking about character design in those terms... We don't actually have designated character-designers at Monolith soft. We have a couple of very talented illustrators that we work with, but sometimes it's about finding the partnership that works and doing a bit of trial and error every single time."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade's Director Talks, Gameinformer, 2015)
"So there was a time in development where we actually considered creating many different planets that you would be able to explore one after the other. Then we realized how limited the experience would be if we tried to spread out the content, so we decided to just focus on one planet. The question then became how many continents we were gong to make. Once we mapped it out and realized how much content we wanted to be available to play on each continent, the number that we came up with was five."
- Genki Yokota (Xenoblade's Director Talks, Gameinformer, 2015)
Has learning how much to bite off, how much of a project you can tackle, been a tough lesson to learn throughout your history of game development?
Takahashi: [Laughs] Rather than say it’s a lesson I've learned over time, I think I have to relearn it every single time. Honestly, this is a very difficult task and this time around is the first title we're developing in HD. That really changes how you’re planning has to work because your understanding of the development time in terms of cost is completely different.
"Probably my all-time favorite [RPG] is Dragon Quest III, but I've spent maybe the most time with Final Fantasy XI."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade's Director Talks, Gameinformer, 2015)
Are you nostalgic at all for turn-based RPGs or do you think that real-time combat systems are just the way of the future?
Takahashi: So I actually really like both. I still play turn-based games like Shin Megami Tensei and I can see the benefits of each system. With turn-based you can think out your strategy and decide what you're going to do, but then real-time you have the excitement of having to react quickly to each situation. So I think it really comes down to the preference of the player, even in a particular moment, of what sort of experience they want.
With your career, is there a particular moment or accomplishment that you're the most proud of? Maybe one that doesn't get enough credit for how difficult it was?
Takahashi: It's an interesting question because I don't know that I’ve ever allowed myself the luxury of feeling satisfied. In the course of my career, I'll finish working on a title and it will go gold and all of a sudden I find myself consumed with the next project. So I never really have the time to stop long enough to think about what I've been able to accomplish in a personal sense of satisfaction like that, rather I feel a great sense of satisfaction about how our company has leveled up each time over the course my career.
From "Xenoblade X Official Guide guidebook" reported by Siliconera.
https://www.siliconera.com/xenoblade-chronicles-x-director-wants-to-focus-more-on-the-story-for-his-next-game/
After Xenoblade Chronicles X released in Japan, some players felt that it was missing the strong story seen in previous Xeno games, and executive director Tetsuya Takahashi had some comments to to share on the matter in a guidebook for the RPG.
In the comment section, Takahashi thanks fans for all of the feedback, and how he actually agrees with most of them. Some of these include wanting a more passionate and rich story, and the fact that the UI was a little difficult to use. Also that the battle system had a bit too much going on.
Some of the other feedback shown on the page mention how the letters are too small, how tedious it was to invite other party members, how it would be cool to be able to go into outer-space, and how fans want more lively online features in Monolith Soft's next title.
"Being several years behind others in the development of an HD title and taking into account Monolith Soft's company size, there are just some thing that we could not achieve, which couldn't be helped, but in order to move on towards the next step, there was no avoiding this. And that is the truth," writes Takahashi.
Takahashi concludes by saying that he'd like to use the experience him and Monolith Soft have obtained in the development of Xenoblade Chronicles X in order to make his next title something that is rich in story.
From "Designing Xenoblade Chronicles X" interview by GameSpot staff.
https://www.siliconera.com/xenoblade-chronicles-x-director-wants-to-focus-more-on-the-story-for-his-next-game/
As for the game's lineage--it's the fifth game in the Monolith's Xeno series and the second Xenoblade title--Takashi was adamant that X is unconnected to its history. Other than an emphasis on exploration, X is not a sequel to Xenoblade Chronicles or any other titles that came before. Keeping the Xeno in the title is Monolith's way of letting players know the kind of game they're getting, with Xeno being the studio's stamp.
"I guess for me, the idea of Xeno doesn't necessarily carry one deep meaning that is consistent throughout all of these titles, but rather, they are a helpful way of communicating to people that these are all games that we here at Monolith have worked on," Takahashi explained. "I will say that the Xeno that you would find on each of these titles might refer to something different in each of these games each time. That's something that I really want players to discover."
[...]
As for the skell design, according to Takami, mech anime such as the Gundam series played a big role in their creation. Their use also ties into the type of story the team wanted to tell: a near-futuristic tale linked to real human history but with several more fantastical elements--hence the migration to an all-new, beautiful, and dangerous planet and the use of mechanical suits.
"First, on the idea of using a near-future setting with technology that's out of reach but is something that might be attainable, I feel like in terms of story advantages this gives you something that can feel really relatable," Takahashi added. "It also makes you use your imagination to think about how humanity might have reached this point in what might not have even been a really long time from where we are now. Engaging the imagination of the player in that way, it's something that I feel ultimately aids in immersion.
"As for why we used mechanized suits in the first place, that's something that might actually have some culturally specific origins as I feel that in Japan, we have this very romanticized notion to them, a lot of positive attachment to the idea of a mechanized suit that you can climb into. That's a very appealing version of the future for us. I'm not really sure what might be the equivalent of that for Americans. For us, it definitely taps into a deep well of feeling around that."
[...]
During my time speaking with them, the team continuously reiterated that Xenoblade Chronicles X represents a culmination of game ideas they've wanted to try for a very long time.
"The way I feel about taking fantasy as the basis for our story means you can really do absolutely anything with no limitations whatsoever," Takahashi explained. "Sci-fi, as a world, has a little bit more strict definitions to it. You have to try and think of the scientific basis for things, for example. For several decades I've dreamed of building a game where you could have player characters on foot and in large mechanized suits in the same field. You might remember in previous games, we got around that by having entirely different stage design, whether you are on foot or in a mechanized suit. That was something that I always really wanted to create."
From "Tetsuya Takahashi Talks Xenoblade Chronicles X" interview by Gamereactor staff.
https://www.gamereactor.eu/tetsuya-takahashi-talks-xenoblade-chronicles-x/
"In RPG development, the sections that cost the most are the cut scenes and events in the main story. Since this is Monolith Soft's first high-definition open world title, we decided to focus less on these and instead shift our resources into improving the quality of the gameplay - which is most important - especially the "hack and slash" combat. This is the reason that we decided to make the player's character an avatar without a real personality. In exchange, we focused on designing lots of quests, and added a lot of supporting characters related to these."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Interview by Gamereactor, 2015)
"I've heard that some Japanese users who played Xenoblade Chronicles X said they enjoyed a more story-driven type of game. So if we have the opportunity to make another game in the series, I'd like to made another typical JRPG-style game like Xenoblade Chronicles again."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Interview by Gamereactor, 2015)
"I imagine a large part of the appeal is in this being the first open-world RPG from Japan. I also think it's really meaningful that this is a middle tier title, rather than a AAA title. The Xenoblade series has always had a different genre for each game, with the previous game being fantasy, and now turning to science fiction. I hope we will be able to continue the series like this, exploring lots of different settings, rather than being confined to a specific genre."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Interview by Gamereactor, 2015)
"This is just my personal view, but I think that Monolith Soft should continue making the kind of games that can't be made within Nintendo. As you know, before we were Monolith Soft we worked at Square Enix, so Xenoblade Chronicles is the result of those Square Enix influences combining with influences from Nintendo. Just as human civilisation has developed through the intermingling of different peoples and cultures, I hope that Monolith Soft can continue to develop further through having various opportunities to work with Nintendo."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Interview by Gamereactor, 2015)
From "5 Things Xenoblade Chronicles X Director Tetsuya Takahashi Told Us" interview by Time magazine.
https://time.com/4149809/xenoblade-chronicles-x-director-tetsuya-takahashi/
"Japanese tastes are unique compared to those in the West, so if you focus solely on gamers within Japan, you'll always find yourself running into this problem. (I think this is easy to see when you notice that FPS-style games sell only around 100,000 copies or so in Japan, as opposed to 10 million worldwide.) This may be a surprise to hear, but I don’t have very much interest in "current" Japanese anime and games, and I don't play them, either. (I do get hands-on with them for future reference, though, and I still love older games that came out 30 or so years ago.) Most of the movies, TV dramas, novels, and games I pick up are made in the West. I don't do this deliberately; that just turned out to be the kind of thing I like. As a result, I've come to the realization that it's best to try and organically make the kind of things I like, or want."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Time magazine interview, 2015)
"I tend to get bored with things pretty easily, so I'd like to keep creating things with different approaches every time. Along those lines, I'd definitely like my next project to look and feel pretty different from this one. The 'Xeno' name, by the way, really just exists to make it clear that these are Tetsuya Takahashi productions."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Time magazine interview, 2015)
From "Monolith Soft and Making RPGs for Everyone" article by GameSpot.
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/monolith-soft-and-making-rpgs-for-everyone/1100-6432551/
"In the very beginning of Monolith, right after I'd left Square, there were certainly a lot of times when we were working very late into the night. We were still building up the company so there were not that many people involved.
We still have some of the early core members with us now like [director Koh] Kojima and [art director Norihiro] Takami who were there from the beginning. Certainly things have changed quite a bit over time, but I think it's not quite as grueling as it was in the very beginning. Working with Nintendo has changed our approach to [making games] and given us a little more freedom in terms of how we schedule things out. We don't have to necessarily drive people in the traditional overtime way that you would see at a lot of Japanese companies."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Monolith Soft and Making RPGs for Everyone, GameSpot November 2015)
"I play a number of western games, sometimes for fun, sometimes for research. I'm sure there was some influence that I would pick from them. For me personally, I prefer JRPGs, but I will always pick up and play a little bit of each Grand Theft Auto that comes out. And I'm the sort of person who will probably never clear the main story, but I'll usually play a little bit of the Fallout games when they come out as well. BioWare games are also something that I'll play out of interest as well.
Something that has impressed me recently was Grand Theft Auto V. They managed to marry the gameplay and story, and showcased the story in such a way that you really did feel like you were the main character in a movie. That was handled exceptionally well."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Monolith Soft and Making RPGs for Everyone, GameSpot November 2015)
"World building is something that's really important to me in creating games, and it's something that on the player's side and takes some time," Takahashi explained. "In order for you to feel like you're almost living in this world, you have to spend some 20 to 30 hours there. If immersion and a deep sense of detail in the world is my goal, then I need to use a design that will allow people to spend that much time in it, because it's an essential element. When I say it takes perhaps somewhere about 30 hours to feel like you're actually immersed in a role and living there, what keeps people coming back to these games is that they want to live in roles like this in these games."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Monolith Soft and Making RPGs for Everyone, GameSpot November 2015)
From "Takahashi's castle: An RPG master's journey from Final Fantasy to Xenoblade" article by Eurogamer.
https://www.eurogamer.net/takahashis-castle-the-man-behind-xenoblades-breathtaking-worlds
"Basically, I'm the kind of person who always believes they are right, so I never doubt my decisions during a project. Of course, after a project ends there are times when I look back and see things I could have done differently. There are also some decisions that are not easy to make. Like when one person would be happy with a decision, but someone else would not. Facing such decisions where there is a trade-off is all part of creating something. Ultimately you have to rely on your intuition. I try to make decisions not only considering the immediate consequences, but also considering where Monolith Soft is heading in the future."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Takahashi's castle: An RPG master's journey from Final Fantasy to Xenoblade, Eurogamer 2015)
"My goals still lie ahead of me. I feel like now that Xenoblade Chronicles X is done I'm finally standing on the start line."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Takahashi's castle: An RPG master's journey from Final Fantasy to Xenoblade, Eurogamer 2015)
"Many of the games developed in Europe or in the States provide an exciting target. They inspire me. Back when I was figuring out what to do with my life the early computer games coming onto the market caught my attention. I saw both the immense potential for development of computers and the interactive possibilities they could provide. I felt a day could come when computer games would surpass other existing cultural outputs. That's why I decided to join this industry. It's why I'm still here."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Takahashi's castle: An RPG master's journey from Final Fantasy to Xenoblade, Eurogamer 2015)
2016
2017
From IGN's E3 2017 article.
https://www.ign.com/articles/2017/06/14/e3-2017-xenoblade-chronicles-2-is-more-than-a-simple-sequel
"It's a completely different world, with completely new characters. It's a different game."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (IGN article, 2017)
"The way I see it, I feel as though Xenoblade 1 and 2 are connected and linked in the sense that they're linear and story-driven games, whereas Xenoblade Chronicles X was more focused on open world and exploration, and maybe an online aspect. I feel like I'd like to continue to create games separating those two aspects out."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (IGN article, 2017)
From GameSpot's E3 2017 Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Gameplay Demo (Nintendo Treehouse).
https://youtu.be/tAdGaknQA5g?t=1000 (From 16:40 to 17:56)
"So the word 'Xeno' really means something different, or something kind of not familiar, and I think in life when we're living you meet different people and they have different personalities, different backgrounds, and it's the interaction between those people that create the drama of life. And I thought it would be great if I can drop that drama into video games, and that's why I add 'Xeno' to a lot of my games."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (GameSpot E3 XBC2 Gameplay Demo, 2017)
From "Xenoblade 2: Meet its Creator, Tetsuya Takahashi" article by French gaming news site Gamekult.
French original: https://www.gamekult.com/actualite/xenoblade-2-a-la-rencontre-de-son-createur-tetsuya-takahashi-3050796525.html
English translation: https://www.reddit.com/r/Xenoblade_Chronicles/comments/6j2f2h/xenoblade_2_interview_with_tetsuya_takahashi/
"Targeting a wider audience was one of our goals but we also wanted to make it so that characters had more facial expressions. Masatsugu Saito's character design is a way to make the protagonists more expressive. As for the story, we wanted to highlight the values of friendship in the first game, as well as Shulk's revenge, which was the driving force behind the plot. In this game, it's more about an initiatory journey and Rex's coming-of-age story."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Gamekult interview, 2017)
"He's [Rex is] clearly hot-blooded (nekketsu) like a character in a shônen manga but he's also older than he looks. When the story begins, he's been a Salvager for many years, helping the lost souls in the universe of Arst. He also lives in a world of adults, meaning he's a lot more mature than his apparence makes you think. The objective of Rex and his party is to go to Elysium, a sort of paradise. Those who live there know it is a legendary land, where everything seems to be perfect. Of course, the discovery of this place will be the driving force behind the main quest."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Gamekult interview, 2017)
"Exploration will be even more important in Xenoblade 2. About the amount of places you will be able to discover and explore, I think we will go far beyond what Xenoblade X proposed. As you have been able to see in the trailer, you can expect to traverse a lot of varied environnements, some natural, some artificial, created by humans."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Gamekult interview, 2017)
"Personnally, I like games that are long (laughs)."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Gamekult interview, 2017)
"I'm admirattive of his [Mitsuda's] compositions, that are always good, even the first draft. They also go very well with the world we're trying to create. Over the years, we've created a good working relationship : Mr. Mitsuda understand what I want without having to go into long winded explanations, and likewise, I also immediately understand what he's trying to create. That make our relations easy and effective."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Gamekult interview, 2017)
What game made the strongest impression during your career ?
Takahashi: It might not be the best moment, but I think the creation of the first Xenosaga was an especially difficult moment because it was done at the same time as the creation of Monolith Software. We had to handle the developpement and create a structure to handle employees, a multifaceted challenge. Xenogears is another game that comes to mind, as everyone on the team was a beginner. We all gained experience and matured together. Today, I think I can say our team is made of seniors, and everything seems easier.
Xenosaga was planned to be 6 chapters long. Would you like to come back to the series to finish it one day if the opportunity presented itself ?
Takahashi: If someone financed it, certainly (laughs).
From Time magazine interview "Why ‘Xenoblade Chronicles 2’ Has a Character Designed by Tetsuya Nomura."
https://time.com/4848935/xenoblade-chronicles-2-interview/
Interviewer: [...] Elysium [the name of a location the protagonists are searching for in the game] signifies something like heaven or paradise. Are you playing at all off Judeo-Christianity?
Takahashi: It’s nothing directly related to or connected to anything biblical or the Bible itself, but I think looking at it conceptually, it’s similar.
Interviewer: When we spoke about your last game, Xenoblade Chronicles X, you told me you’d distanced yourself from philosophical themes in that game’s core story. Where do your interests along those lines lie these days?
Takahashi: In terms of a theme in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, there are all of these Titans, and their lifespan is about to end. The people living on these Titans now have to find a way to continue their lives, because the land they’ve lived on is about to die. So it’s about these people’s quest to find where to live.
Also, there are these lifeforms called Blades. They’re not human, as the title indicates — the “Xeno” part of the title, which means they’re not human. They’re unique lifeforms, and there’s this theme of how humans and Blades can coexist and learn to live with each other, and learn to not only coexist, but protect the world that they live in.
Interviewer: In the Xenoblade series specifically, you seem fascinated with size, scale and perspective, with organisms living symbiotically, small-scale to large-scale. Where does that come from?
Takahashi: When I analyze myself and the type of person I am, I'm actually pretty short, even for a Japanese person. Maybe it's like this in the States, too, but the bully in school is typically big in stature, and I think I've sort of developed a little bit of an inferiority complex. That's why I really like things that are large in scale, and might be why I take such an interest in the differences between small and big elements in games.
Interviewer: The vast tree we see in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, is that in any way a reference to the world tree Yggdrasil in Norse mythology?
Takahashi: At the beginning of the game, I think it's safe to assume that. But what it really is, I think that’ll be a really interesting and great discovery, so I hope you play the game and enjoy it.
Interviewer: I noticed artist Tetsuya Nomura’s name in the trailer credits [as the designer of two characters]. He's obviously a longtime Square Enix fixture [he's currently directing Kingdom Hearts III and the Final Fantasy VII remake], so I'm wondering how that happened?
Takahashi: Good question. This story goes back 20 years. Back when I was about to start on a new game, and the name "Xenogears" wasn't set yet, for that new title I needed a designer. And at the time there was someone who was directing the Final Fantasy series, Mr. [Yoshinori] Kitase. And then Mr. Nomura and I were in the team together doing character design. At the time, Mr. Kitase was handling Final Fantasy and I was doing this new title, and I wanted to work with Mr. Nomura.
So I was waiting for the final call to be made, whether he was going to be working on the Final Fantasy series or on this new title of mine. And then Mr. [Hironobu] Sakaguchi [the creator of the Final Fantasy series] came and said ‘Tetsu is going to do Final Fantasy.' So I thought 'Okay, I've got to find myself a new designer.'
But I've always wanted to work with him. And this idea of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 came up, and I thought I'd love to work with him again. After our discussion with Nintendo went through and this project was a go, I went directly to Square Enix, thinking that I’d be denied, asking if I could work with Tetsu. To my surprise, it was approved, and that's how it happened.
Some years ago, [Mario and Donkey Kong creator] Shigeru Miyamoto talked about shifting to smaller creative projects. Do you ever feel that desire to scale down?
I think the inferiority complex I mention earlier is almost like a driving force for my game development, so I think the games I work on naturally end up being large in scale. All the games that I've had the opportunity to develop, it just turned out that they were big games.
Before I worked at Square Enix, I used to work at a Japanese PC game company called Nihon Falcolm, and they also make big games. So it's almost like I developed this habit of creating big games. I do have interest in creating smaller games, but I think what happens is that out of habit, it becomes a big game.
From "Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - Big World, Big Battles, Big Changes" on Gameinformer website.
http://web.archive.org/web/20240407024018/https://www.gameinformer.com/games/xenoblade_chronicles_2/b/switch/archive/2017/11/07/xenoblade-chronicles-2-hands-on-feature.aspx
"Xenoblade Chronicles X was a game really focused on exploring and [having an] open world and [defeating] monsters. When we thought about starting to develop the next game, I wanted to go back to a more story-driven design. And so in that sense, this focus on a story-driven game is kind of the legacy of Xenoblade Chronicles 1, so we decided to kind of make it the next iteration of that."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - Big World, Big Battles, Big Changes, 2017)
"We [wanted] to make it into kind of a young man's adventure. It's kind of lighthearted – there's a lot of discoveries to be made, so we made it almost like an anime you would watch. But you know the kind of person that I am; the story does get a little bit heavier, a little bit darker. If you expect the same kind of evolution from the story that you would expect from a Xenoblade game, you're probably on the right track."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - Big World, Big Battles, Big Changes, 2017)
"We felt that in Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and X, the facial expressions [were] kind of a little bit hard, a little bit stiff. We really wanted to put a little bit more focus on creating facial expressions and for the characters to be more expressive, and so that's why we went with the direction we did, which I guess you could say is a little bit leaning toward something like Japanese animation."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - Big World, Big Battles, Big Changes, 2017)
"Now that we've gone through the process of development, we're in a spot now where I'm beginning to think about what we want to do next. We'll really be keeping our ears to the ground to see what fans are wanting, what they're looking forward to. We've enjoyed this collaboration with Nintendo so far."
- Koh Kojima (Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - Big World, Big Battles, Big Changes, 2017)
From article with scenario writer Yuichiro Takeda published on Nintendo UK's website.
https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/News/2017/November/Find-out-more-about-the-story-writing-process-of-Xenoblade-Chronicles-2-1309679.html
"If I were to introduce Xenoblade Chronicles 2 from my perspective as part of the scenario team, I would say that this story has the most director Tetsuya Takahashi flair to date.
For this script, director Takahashi provided us with a rich plot right from the start, and Kazuho Hyodo and I split the writing in half. I worked on the even numbered chapters while Mr Hyodo worked on the odd numbered chapters.
At the same time, Takahashi was writing the whole story himself. Then, the three of us all came together when we had our scripts. We built the script by leveraging our unique personalities and adding in corrections and revisions from Takahashi. This is very similar to the screenplay technique used for movies.
I think that the story of this game will be the ultimate experience for fans of Takahashi. But that’s not to say that I was cutting corners on my end! While writing the screenplay, I was able to dive into the world of Alrest thanks to Masatsugu Saito, who kept designing more and more interesting characters.
My personal favourite is the story about Tora and Poppi in Chapter 4. I love robots and I feel like this story fully reflects my infatuation with the Nopon. I hope that you all like it too."
- Yuichiro Takeda (Nintendo UK article, 2017)
From article with composer Yasunori Mitsuda published on Nintendo UK's website.
https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/News/2017/November/Find-out-more-about-the-music-of-Xenoblade-Chronicles-2-1310312.html
"Xenoblade Chronicles 2 was the biggest and most challenging project I have ever worked on. It consisted of a number of processes, including composing (needless to say), acting as a co-ordinator (for recording sessions), a producer (managing budgets) and working as a sound director, managing schedules, proofreading every composer’s scores, finalising/brushing up the scores and printing them all out, looking at the sound controls for Nintendo Switch, etc.
I was careful especially in choosing the musicians, and in being efficient in recording sessions as much as possible, Another point to highlight was that musicians from all over the world were involved, such as a chorus from Slovakia, an orchestra from Japan, vocal songs sung by Ms Jen Bird, who came all the way from England, and finally the Irish chorus group ANÚNA. One of ANÚNA’s performances is featured in a music video. All kinds of genres of music were made, so I am sure that the game will not bore you no matter how long you play it."
- Yasunori Mitsuda (Nintendo UK article, 2017)
From a Siliconera article summarizing a Famitsu interview with Tetsuya Takahashi and Yasunori Mitsuda.
https://www.siliconera.com/xenoblade-chronicles-2-devs-talk-many-female-rare-blades-super-rare/
"Mitsuda-kun (composer Yasunori Mitsuda) is a mother ship-like being to me. I end up wanting to work with him after not doing so for a while."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Famitsu interview, 2017)
"The reason we request designs from outside is because Monolith Soft doesn't have a character designer."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Famitsu interview, 2017)
From a Nintendo Everything article summarizing an interview with Tetsuya Takahashi on the Japanese news site 4Gamer.net.
https://www.4gamer.net/games/368/G036837/20171130058/
https://www.siliconera.com//xenoblade-chronicles-2-devs-talk-many-female-rare-blades-super-rare/
At first the team tried to make a type of story setting in which the Blade characters would look like Ultraman. But as they couldn’t put a 40m-tall giant on the screen, they ended up reducing their sizes to be around the same as humans. They also made the story that depicts a hero and heroine, thus connecting it to the keywords "Boy Meets Girl" and "Juvenile."
4Gamer was surprised to learn that the team changed the setting from Ultraman to Boy Meets Girl. Takahashi says this could be due to him being a fan of Galaxy Express 999. Recently there have been too many titles with characters living in savage worlds, so Takahashi wanted to go back to his innocent, childhood-like mind and base the characters around his favorite series in the past.
Takahashi admits that they intentionally included an MMORPG element where there are extremely strong monsters loitering around in the beginning areas. Monolith Soft wanted to include an element that will make players interested in playing the game forever when creating the game world. Having such monsters provide motivation and players coming back after getting stronger to beat these monsters would have a different sense of accomplishment when compared to linear game design. They also wanted to make the monster algorithms more elaborate than the first Xenoblade.
Takahashi notes that Titans do grow up as they age and they take energy from the Sea of Clouds. People can think of it as them eating clouds to grow up.
From "A Peek Inside The Mind Of Xenoblade Dev's Legendary Leader" interview with Tetsuya Takahashi by GameSpot, June 2017.
https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/News/2017/December/An-introduction-to-Xenoblade-Chronicles-2-from-director-Tetsuya-Takahashi-1314702.html
"In terms of the drama between humans and previous games, this game has the name "Xeno." Like I mentioned, it's about differences or something out of the ordinary. Just take for example all of us in this room, we're all from different places, and we are different personalities, and the way we think is different. To gather all of those people into one place, I think there is both positive and negative that can come out of that...Looking at a bigger scale, it can be survival of the fittest or things on a country-based scale, like invasion, something like that."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (A Peek Inside The Mind Of Xenoblade Dev's Legendary Leader, June 2017)
"I think for me, all of them. The reason I say that is when I'm creating games, and once we complete a game, there's always this phase of post-mortem where I think to myself, "I could have done this better, or I could have changed that." It's not limited to just what I think of it. I also take in some of the players' feedback and other people's thoughts and think about, "Maybe if I do this next, people will enjoy it more. Maybe if I do that or change this, it would turn out better."
It's the cycle I go through for every game that I am a part of. If we started with Xenogears, there is a post-mortem that happened there that I put to use in Xenosaga. Then we went into a different title and then to Xenoblade and to X. It's just a reiterative cycle. To me, every single game is an opportunity to learn, and it's also an opportunity to challenge myself."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (A Peek Inside The Mind Of Xenoblade Dev's Legendary Leader, June 2017)
"Xenoblade 2 is kind of like a culmination of all the things that I have done--and would like to have done--from my past."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (A Peek Inside The Mind Of Xenoblade Dev's Legendary Leader, June 2017)
GameSpot: Do you ever feel interested in working on a smaller project, one with a team that's very intimate that can work together and where you can have that sort of direct influence?
Takahashi: If it was just a simple yes or no question, I would have to say yes, I would love to do something like that. But Monolith in and of itself has grown to be a big company, so we need big projects to sustain that company, for one. At the same time, if for example the next generation of developers and staff that could really handle a big game on their own [arrives]--if that comes up--then I'm kind of free to do whatever I want. When that time comes, I would love to work on maybe smaller projects.
GameSpot: Do you only want to create RPGs? Are there any other genres that interest you or any other methods of play?
Takahashi: Actually, my favorite type of games are first-person shooters. Obviously, I like action games and strategy games. I like RPGs as well, but what happens is when I get involved in creating a game, it makes it hard to enjoy that game. For example, right now it's very hard for me to enjoy RPGs because my perspective becomes that of a creator and not a user, in that I would always think, "Well, why is it this way? They could have done this, or this could have been done that way to improve." It's hard to get back into the user perspective. Although I'm interested in it, if I were to make different genres, then I wouldn't be able to enjoy those.
GameSpot: What games do you play in your spare time?
Takahashi: Probably out of the games I'm playing right now, I think the most that I've sunk time into is Battlefield 1.
GameSpot: How do you feel about the the fact that video games have become such a huge business? Is it good for you? Is it good for the games you have to make? Or does it present unique challenges that sometimes make you nostalgic for when times were simpler?
Takahashi: I think the current status of the Japanese gaming industry is exactly that, where a lot of developers and publishers are kind of exhausted from creating major triple-A titles. There's a lot of companies that are creating smaller-scale games like on smart devices. I feel like these kinds of games are kind of reminiscent of older games that were a lot simpler. Although I don't think it's bad, I don't personally like it. I think a lot of publishers and developers have this kind of vision where--if you've seen the movie Brain Storm--you kind of put this equipment on, and you can actually go into the world itself. It's almost like Matrix basically where you can really immerse yourself in the world and live in that world. I feel like myself included, that might be kind of like the ultimate form of interactive entertainment. With that said, the industry is right now at a point where it's really not suitable to create big titles; however, I do have that vision that that's the ultimate place, and I want to keep going. That's why I create big games, and I would like to keep going until I can't anymore.
GameSpot: Have you spent much time playing virtual reality games, and if so have any in particular stood out to you?
Takahashi: Yes, I have spent a little bit of time playing VR. I guess the most impressive is maybe adult entertainment, but that's not video games.
Going back to video games, I think one of the problematic issues with VR is that in moving your character, you yourself aren't moving, so it can cause a lot of motion sickness. I think that's one of the hurdles that virtual reality needs to overcome.
In terms of an incredible or amazing title, I don't think it exists yet because a lot of the big companies haven't been able to make any seriously major investments into VR, so that kind of truly impressive content isn't out yet. In terms of what's available now, I had the opportunity to play...I was interested in Resident Evil 7, so I tried that out, and I found it to be extremely scary to the point where I couldn't move forward. I thought that was impressive, that it can create a reaction in a user that prevents them from moving forward because they're too scared. I thought that was impressive.
GameSpot: Locomotion is obviously a big challenge in VR, but you mentioned adult entertainment--typically being present when something is happening around you. Would you ever be interested in making a passive VR experience as a mean to communicate your thoughts and ideas?
Takahashi: If I were to make a virtual reality experience, I would definitely want to make it interactive.
From a Xenoblade Chronicles 2 article with Tetsuya Takahashi published on Nintendo UK's website in December 2017.
https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/News/2017/December/An-introduction-to-Xenoblade-Chronicles-2-from-director-Tetsuya-Takahashi-1314702.html
"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.
For those who are already playing the game, you might have noticed that Rex's catchphrase is "Let's go!" As these words suggest, he will always keep moving forward. And he won't turn back to the past. His characterisation is probably due to the fact that I was born and raised in the Showa era. This is just the reminiscence of an old man, but I felt that it was a good thing that we always looked forward in the past. Even if there were individual differences in how well your life turned out, we had the hope of achieving a bright future so long as we worked hard for it. Of course the world around us was still gloomy, but society flourished because we could avoid looking at it. That is why we all worked hard and kept looking forward.
The world feels more constrained now, even with all this information flying about. We're forced to observe the dismal world around us regardless of whether we want to or not. Corny old words like "hope" aren't popular in the current times. But I thought, wouldn't it be better to have a character like Rex precisely because we live in such an era?.
Rex is a salvager. While he has some physical prowess due to his occupation, he's not a hero's son or the prince of a major country. He's just a normal kid that you might find anywhere. Of course, he's not in the military either, so he won't be leading armies or fighting courageously against legions. His reasons for fighting are very personal, and it’s because he’s fighting for a single girl (and their friends). There are limits to what one boy can do even if he acquires supernatural abilities. But if a boy were to race to his limits for the sake of a single girl, what kind of future would await them? And even if I can fight for myself (to some degree), can I fight for someone else?.
These thoughts are collected within Rex, and this is what I mean by the themes of young-adult fiction and boy-meets-girl. This is the basic concept behind the game, and the root theme throughout the story. While most people probably expect many buried hints and hidden information from the Xeno series, the story for this instalment is a lot simpler and straightforward, and covers more well-worn territory. And that’s because this is Rex's story."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Nintendo UK article on Xenoblade Chronicles 2, December 2017)
2018
From "Xenoblade 2 OST Interview Snippet" translated by Lugalbanda on Xenomira.
https://xenomira.wordpress.com/2018/05/30/xenoblade-2-ost-interview-snippet/
Interviewer: As for Monolith Soft, as Xenoblade 2 wraps up, What sort of direction do you want to go in the future?
(Koh) Kojima: We want to keep the numbering for the Xenoblade series going. So...The game before this one was Xenoblade X, and we want to take good care of that too. So we want to get Xenoblade 3 out, but also a 2 for cross (X). But if we keep doing numbered titles, it's gonna get stale, so we want to do something completely original too. And if we say "Hey, Mitsuda-san's talents would be appropriate for this," we'd like to work with him again.
Takahashi: Me personally, I want to do something you’d see on an American cable drama like ABC. Violet and erotic and heavy. Something that there’s no way we would be allowed to do it.
Kojima: No, I think we can do it. I think that's fine.
Mitsuda: Sounds good.
Kojima: We can just go Z with X. (Note: the equivalent of M in America)
Takahashi: Completely serious though, I would like to do a Z rated game, and just do whatever the hell I feel like doing.
Kojima: In regards to music, I'd like to take on surround sound. We actually had a proposal for it when we first started, but considering the money and time involved, we gave up on it. But hopefully, we'll get to do it someday. There are ways around surround sound with the proper tracks and sound effects. I'd also like to have tracks change depending on the events taking place in the game at the moment, and I’d like to take on those developmental challenges, tinkering with the system and consulting each other, if we had the time.
Mitsuda: I agree with Kojima-san, and would like to try out more interactive expressions of music. Something only possible in video games. Horror is a genre that is especially well worth the effort. So I want to do that Z rated game.
Kojima: This might happen quicker than we realize. (laughs)
From a Nintendo Life interview with directors Tetsuya Takahashi, Koh Kojima, and Genki Yokota.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2018/09/feature_xenoblade_chronicles_2_team_talk_torna_female_blades_and_the_ending_that_never_made_it
"Speaking purely from a personal perspective, I'd say if you haven't played either, you should start with the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 main game, finish up until Chapter 7, then play through Torna - The Golden Country, then finish the rest of the game from Chapter 8. That's sort of in line with our original concept that I outlined in my previous answer. But, of course, we designed both of these games to be able to be played by players who aren't as familiar with the series, but I would say that Torna - The Golden Country features a number of updates from the main game that may make it easier for new players to get into, so that might be another way for players to approach the series."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Nintendo Life interview, September 2018)
"When comparing the look of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 to Xenoblade Chronicles X, we're making these games for a worldwide audience, and I think we have a feeling at Monolith that if we're going to be sending these games out to a worldwide audience as Japanese game developers, we feel more comfortable adopting a style that we feel we can do justice to, as opposed to skewing too close to something that would be overtly realistic. So, we went for a style we felt we could do the most justice to."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Nintendo Life interview, September 2018)
"Originally we envisioned the ending sort of in an Inception-style where you would see a cutscene with Rex's core crystal glowing, and that would be the end of the game. But, while making the final scenes of the game, I really thought we should give players a clearer sense of closure, and I really started to come around to the feeling of ending the game on a happier note. The players have been through this incredibly long, trying the experience of completing the game, so why not give them a happier note to finish on? So we thought, "Well, okay, we'll bring back Pyra or Mythra, which one should we use? Or maybe we'll bring back—what's her name? The green-haired one." In any case, we thought about ending the game with one of these female characters joining Rex again, but I decided to roll with the feeling of a happy ending of sorts and thought as a bonus why not bring both Pyra and Mythra back as a bonus for the player at the end of the game?"
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Nintendo Life interview, September 2018)
"At Monolith Soft we're constantly thinking of new things we want to create, and that, of course, includes the Xenoblade series, but at present, we have no firm plans for continuing the series."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Nintendo Life interview, September 2018)
From a USGamer interview with Tetsuya Takahashi.
https://www.vg247.com/xenoblade-chronicles-2-sales-outside-japan-far-exceeded-monolith-softs-expectations
"I'm someone who gets bored of whatever it was I did last," he says. "If the [Xenoblade Chronicles] series continues, you just might see it take a third option. It might go down a path it hasn't gone down before."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (USGamer interview, September 2018)
From another USGamer article with Tetsuya Takahashi.
https://www.vg247.com/xenoblade-chronicles-2-postmortem-breaking-down-the-inaugural-switch-rpgs-success-with-tetsuya-takahashi
Monolith Soft commissioned many popular manga artists and Japanese character designers to construct dozens of unique Blades (and a few of those designs courted controversy). The main point of including so many styles, Takahashi says, was to give Xenoblade Chronicles 2 a "festive" atmosphere by offering so much visual variety.
Kunihiko Tanaka's and CHOCO's messages from "Xenoblade 2 Production Notes" on the game's official website.
https://www.nintendo.com/jp/switch/adena/production-notes/index.html
https://xenomira.wordpress.com/2023/09/10/tanaka-kunihiko-production-notes-message-march-2nd-2018-and-mugitani-koichi-choco-production-notes-message-january-10th-2018/
Hello. I'm Tanaka Kunihiko, and I designed the Rare Blades "Ibuki2" and "KOS-MOS Re:". I was very surprised to be able to be a part of "Xeno" once again, and it made me very happy.
For our initial meeting, Takahashi-san, the Executive Director, and Kojima-san, the Producer/Director, came to visit me where I live, in Saitama. I believe the initial conversation was something along the lines of: "It's been decided that KOS-MOS Ver.1 will be included in this title. If it's Ver.1, then we need to get Tanaka."
In response to that, I replied: "This is an opportunity."
At the start of "Xenosaga ep 1," I was responsible for KOS-MOS' design, and I solidified her design in terms of the general facial features, hairstyle, and the back of her head, but I couldn't find anything beyond that, and I was struggling quite a bit. This was due to the fact that I had not done mech-like designs that actually resembled mechs at all until then. But then, I was told that someone was added for mech design, and Takahashi-san showed me one of their illustrations. That was my first encounter with CHOCO-san. After that, I asked CHOCO-san to handle the design for KOS-MOS, and KOS-MOS was designed with ideas that I would probably never have come up with, and became a long-beloved character. For KOS-MOS and "Xenosaga," I think it was a fortunate result (Apologies if it comes across like I'm saying: "I'm responsible for the success of KOS-MOS!")
However, as time went by, two thoughts within me, one, that I was glad CHOCO-san did the design for KOS-MOS Ver.1, and two, that I wanted to persevere and finish the design on my own, began to clash with one another. Because of this background, I was very happy to hear about this opportunity, and truly understood and felt what it meant to be given an opportunity.
I thought it would be appropriate if I kept the [overall] silhouette as Ver.1, but create a design of my own, and my request to do so was graciously granted. My initial idea for the lore of the design was that it was a basic restore, or repaired version of KOSMOS after ep1, before her Ver.2 body. But as I refined her design, I began to think that blades should be a personification of a weapon (or vice versa), and in that case, KOS-MOS should be a representation of Xenosaga.
As I worked to create something that was both new and also familiar, I once again felt the craft in what CHOCO had created. Takahashi-san's idea was to have her visor fire the beams instead of her abdomen opening up, and that's what we went with.
- Kunihiko Tanaka (Xenoblade 2 Official Site, Production Notes)
Meh-meh, Happy New Year, friends. My name is Mugitani Koichi (CHOCO), and I designed Theory and Praxis for "Xenoblade 2."
[...]
[...] Our affinity is always maxed out!
And that's no surprise because my relationship with Monolith Soft goes back to its founding. The corporate logo that's currently used is the one I first designed, too. Thinking back on it, that one character that also appears in this game was designed in 2000. That's the last century!
At the time, I was contracted for a mech design job at Monolith Soft, but for some reason, I was also asked to design character costumes later on. It was a very niche request; a robot girl side character, dressed in a bondage-like outfit. I thought that Director Takahashi was someone who was very keen on his own interests...
I designed the costume, Tanaka Kunihiko-san drew the face and made beautiful adjustments to make an appropriate illustration, and the 3D modeler over at Monolith modeled it, and thus, the newborn's first cry was heard in cyberspace: "Good morning, Shion. All systems are normal."
18 years have since passed; she's been in a variety of titles, became an enchanting half-translucent figurine at one point, did a comedy routine with her partner, and occasionally wore baseball uniforms and swimsuits, and all the love that has been given to her has resulted in her reaching eighteen; the age that matches her appearance. I didn't think that niche side character would be loved for so long. When fans tell me, "I love KOS-MOS!", that makes me happy to this day. But her being a beloved character is only possible because of the love that was given to her by her numerous parents; those who elevated my initial amateurish design art (I cringe when I look back at it) to something beautiful, and through the power of the titles that she was featured in. I'm proud to be able to count myself as being one of those parents.
- Mugitani Koichi (CHOCO) (Xenoblade 2 Official Site, Production Notes)
2019
From Kunihiko Tanaka's Blog Posts, November 2018.
https://xenomira.wordpress.com/2019/09/17/a-short-update-regarding-kunihiko-tanakas-involvement-with-future-xeno-games/
"I'm doing an illustration for this [KOS-MOS] figurine. This is probably my final job for Xeno artwork."
- Kunihiko Tanaka (Blog Post 2019, Translated by Lugalbanda)
From "The Tribulations of Xenosaga created Xenoblade. 'Harada Breaks It Down' Vol.7 interview.
https://www.4gamer.net/games/368/G036837/20190416018/
https://xenomira.wordpress.com/2019/06/07/the-tribulations-of-xenosaga-created-xenoblade-harada-breaks-it-down-vol-7-we-asked-takahashi-tetsuya-about-monolith-soft-summary/
https://nintendoeverything.com/monolith-soft-boss-unsure-about-dabbling-with-other-genres-outside-of-rpgs/
After Ep I, Namco did not lend Monolith Soft a hand, says Takahashi. He says a consultant working for Namco thought it was in the best interest of Monolith Soft to be put in a tough spot to grow as a company. He says he heard it from the consultant himself.
Takahashi describes the company during Ep I development as “a sleepless town,” working without any holidays. He explains this as the reason for the disaster that was Episode II, saying:
Takahashi: We swung too far in the opposite direction. There was an atmosphere of “working within deadlines and budgets,” so as to not be a sleepless town once more. And so, we end up with a game where, sure, we didn’t become a sleepless town again and we worked within budget. But we sacrificed a lot to do that, and when it released, the players’ reactions were… less than stellar. So we took that feedback in, and now the atmosphere is more “This isn’t the right way, we have to change this,” but we’re already working on Episode III at that point. There were many people who said, “we worked within budget, so who cares?” But we acknowledged that be that as it may, we ended up in hot water because of it. So we tried to course-correct, but we couldn’t fix all of it. I’m very sorry. But the only reason the Xenoblade series exists today is because of those three games, I think. The experience we acquired from making Xenosaga was an immense asset for us.
[...]
Takahashi: [...] But one more thing. When we were establishing Monolith Soft, we actually had one more company besides Namco that we were considering. The representative for the other company was very respectful, and Sugiura (Hirohide, CEO of Monolith Soft) and I deliberated quite a bit on which to choose. We ended up choosing Namco… I often wonder where we would be if I chose the other option.
Asked what kind of experiences Takahashi looks for in new hires, he says "people who have gone through hell and back."
Monolith Soft employee numbers are based on seniority, and the newest workers are in the 300s. He says the current number of people working for the company is in the 200s, and so about 100 have quit. Numbers 50 to 100 is where the most vacancies are, and Takahashi says that that corresponds to the people who joined Monolith Soft around Ep II.
Monolith Soft has sent Nintendo 10+ business proposals for approval over the years, but the only one that has been approved recently was Xenoblade, says Takahashi.
Harada: I can definitely see that. When I'm playing an RPG though, I enjoy the excitement of finding out how the story advances or what enemies will pop up as I explore the world. But you already know all of that...
Takahashi: That's true... but then... do you know the movie Commando (80’s movie featuring the manliest handshake ever conceived… and also the most terrifying villain)?
Harada: Ah, that.
Takahashi: I love that movie and I watch it at least once a year. I already know all the story ("story"), but I still enjoy it every time. For me it’s the same with games. If I can still enjoy the game even after knowing the story, the levels and the flow of the action inside out, then I can have faith in it as a product.
2020
From an interview with Spanish video game news website Vandal and translated by gamingbolt.
https://gamingbolt.com/monolith-soft-wants-to-focus-on-continuing-to-build-the-xenoblade-chronicles-brand
"From the point of view of giving Monolith Soft more variety, I would like to do a smaller-scale project if the opportunity arose,” he said. “But right now, I think we should focus on increasing the value of the brand that we have created with the Xenoblade Chronicles saga. Of course, if we manage to organize ourselves in a way that allows us to do so, I would also like to give a small-scale project a chance."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Inside The Development Of Xenoblade Chronicles 3DS, Gameinformer, 2012)
From VG247's Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition interview.
https://www.vg247.com/xenoblade-chronicles-definitive-edition-interview
"The stories and characters that appear in the Xenoblade Chronicles series vary with each entry, but the same concept is shared among them all; it is players immersing themselves in the game world, and freely walking around and adventuring in it. Maybe it would be better to rephrase and say that the concept is to get players to want to remain in the game world. We've kept this concept unchanged since Xenogears, although the Xenosaga series might be the only one of these series that doesn’t follow that concept."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade Chronicles interview: talking ten years of Xenoblade and Definitive Edition, 2020)
"From the beginning, each entry in the Xenoblade Chronicles series has depicted a single episode within the flow of a larger time and space. So they are, at their roots, closely connected with each other, but we’re flexible with changing the means and ways in which we depict this in each entry.
Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 are like two sides of the same coin which might be why it feels like the connection between them seems to be particularly standing out."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Xenoblade Chronicles interview: talking ten years of Xenoblade and Definitive Edition, 2020)
2021
2022
From "An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi" on Nintendo's website, February 2022.
https://www.nintendo.com/us/whatsnew/an-introduction-to-xenoblade-chronicles-3-from-executive-director-tetsuya-takahashi/
"The key visual features a broken great sword of Mechonis and the body of the Urayan Titan with a gaping wound. I imagine everyone who saw the trailer was quite surprised by the final scene. What is this visual hinting at? I can't reveal that just yet. What I can tell you is that this visual was conceived quite some time ago. More precisely speaking, we came up with it sometime between the end of development of Xenoblade Chronicles and the beginning of development of Xenoblade Chronicles 2. So, it's not something we recently added to the series."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"The music in this game maintains the unique Xenoblade Chronicles touch while also taking on a new challenge, namely that of integrating a flute-based melody as its motif. The flute is actually one of the key themes in this game. A variety of other elements and themes are hidden in the trailer and we'll be revealing the details a bit at a time going forward.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a new adventure bringing together the worlds of Xenoblade Chronicles and Xenoblade Chronicles 2 to take players into the future. While there is still some time left before the release of the game, I hope you'll look forward to it."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
From "Ask the Developer Vol. 6, Xenoblade Chronicles 3" on Nintendo UK's website, July 2022.
https://www.nintendo.com/en-gb/News/2022/July/Ask-the-Developer-Vol-6-Xenoblade-Chronicles-3-Chapter-1-2244637.html
"I'm Tetsuya Takahashi, senior director and chief creative officer at MONOLITHSOFT. As the executive director of the Xenoblade Chronicles series, I was involved in all aspects of the project for this title, including the initial planning and script writing, as well as supervising and directing a thousand other details."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"I'm Kojima from MONOLITHSOFT. I was a producer and director for this game. At least that's what my title says... My main job was to coordinate between Nintendo and MONOLITHSOFT, and also between Takahashi-san and MONOLITHSOFT's development team."
- Koh Kojima (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"This title is the third entry in the Xenoblade Chronicles series following Xenoblade Chronicles (2) and Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and is like the culmination of the trilogy.
The first entry depicts how the main character and his companions living in the world of Bionis, the god, utilise the future-seeing blade, the Monado, to protect the world they live in and fight for the future.
The second entry depicts a story of finite and eternal life, in which the main character, who lives in the world of Titans up in the skies, meets an immortal Blade girl, and they work together to reach paradise.
This third entry is a story about six young soldiers belonging to two hostile nations, set in Aionios, where the worlds of the first and second titles link together."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"Although some elements and designs from one and two will appear in this third entry here and there, there is no need to have played the first and second games to understand the story or how to play.
However, since this is a series of works, the underlying theme is consistent, and in each case, the story unfolds based on "the relationship between foreign things".
Also, I used the word "culmination" earlier, but this title brings together all the themes that have been developed over the past 15 years since 2007, when development of the first title in the Xenoblade Chronicles series began, as well as the gameplay systems that have been developed throughout the series."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"This story's starting point is "unreasonable power”. The story itself begins on a battlefield. There are two hostile nations, and for the young people living there, the world is a place where fighting is a part of everyday life.
Then, young people from these two nations band together against this "unreasonable power" that forces them to fight on a daily basis. The story is about how they, with their inherently different ideas, cultures, and histories, will resist this great power."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"In creating my stories, I always try to portray the enemies in such a way that even a powerful enemy has their principles, justice, and righteousness so that we can partly sympathise with them. That is why I have always tried to cast the enemy in an ambiguous light, rather than making it clear whether they are good or bad.
By doing so, players can understand and immerse themselves in the enemy's perspective, and I think that is sometimes what makes the story interesting. But this time, I wanted to depict it from a different angle.
The reason is that I think "power" actually takes many forms, and that it is not about philosophy, justice, or righteousness, but more often, it is about something as simple as dignity or greed."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"At first, I thought it didn't feel like Xenoblade Chronicles at all... I think Takahashi-san was deliberately trying to remove the sense of "Xenoblade-ness" of the series.
The stories for the first and second games were completely different, but there was this "Xenoblade-ness" that was common to both of them. I didn't feel that at all at the initial proposal stage. And the reason for that is because this game's world is very serious.
That is the world that Takahashi-san wanted to depict in this title, but I was concerned about whether it would be acceptable to deliver it to players of previous games in the series, for what it is.
The design this time was also different from the previous games in the series. But after a lot of trial and error, we found a good balance, and in the end, I think we were able to create this "Xenoblade-ness."
- Koh Kojima (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"We humans have a life span of 70 to 80 years, and for some people, 90 years or more. But I have wondered how our perception of life would change if our lifetimes were shorter. So, if I simply set the life span to 10 years, I thought about which decade of life I should choose.
Looking back on my own experience, I think that the formative years for my personality were between the ages of around 0 to 10, but I also think that the most influential period for something like my outlook on life was between the ages of 10 and 20, the years when people are most impressionable.
It seems to me that, while they are both 10 years in length, it was a vulnerable period when I was exposed to many things, took on challenges, and created things as well, and my values and ways of thinking changed drastically. That is why I set the main characters to this period in their lives."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"I also wanted to convey to young generations nowadays, through my story, that they can create their own path however they want and that they should not give up on their dreams and goals."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"The first title is kind of like a straight-A student for me. The second one is not quite a straight-A student, but it has a much brighter and more lighthearted start...
For the third title, I wanted to stop being a Goody Two-Shoes. It was a challenge when thinking about what kind of response I would get from people who had played the first and second titles, but one of this title's themes was "finding your new self and a new path toward the future", so I knew that I could not go back to the past or do the same thing again."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"If a person who has his own beliefs, who has a somewhat philosophical view of the world or life encounters various changes and events throughout the story and faces problems that cannot be resolved by his own logic, what kind of answer will this person find? In this way, I wanted to portray the character [Noah] as a philosopher or a poet."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"This time, I wanted to depict the feelings of the six main characters equally, so I tried to keep the word count of the dialogues as even as possible.
Of course, the central figures Noah and Mio have a few more lines, but compared to the first and second titles, which focused on the hero and heroine, you will notice that the other characters are also strongly involved in the story.
It may sound extreme, but I didn't want the other characters to just be nodding along toward the end of the game..."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"Having more than one main character is something I have wanted to do for a long time. The main idea is similar to ensemble drama, a method of creating films or TV series, and I wanted to try to somehow incorporate this idea into a game.
Different lives, different positions, different points of view are interchanged to weave a single story.... In fact, this is very incompatible with RPGs. (Laughs)
In an RPG, the player projects themselves on to the main character, but it becomes difficult to follow the story if the player switches the viewpoint as they progress through the game. Also, the game requires all six characters to be in the same place at the same time, which was also an incompatible point.
I had to consider what kind of plot and setup I could use to make the story flow smoothly, while shifting between different points of view, as well as making it work as a game. Keeping these in mind, I implicitly incorporated it into the traditional game creation process.
It may be difficult for the players to notice, but personally, I feel that I was able to gain confidence in this method of game creation."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"The Ouroboros system is implemented in this title as the symbolic form of "foreign things becoming one"."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"This idea of "foreign things becoming one" is something we have been trying to express since the time of Xenogears back in the day. A person's life is basically built up of relationships with other people. A relationship with foreign things. I'm always conscious of this perspective when I'm making things."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"The relationship between “Xeno" (foreign) things is at the core of the series that bears this name."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"As with Xenoblade Chronicles 2, we asked Saito-san to design the characters. However, since the story is more serious than the previous titles, we designed the characters to look more mature by making them taller.
We also designed the costumes to be not too flashy to match the tone of the story. In the scenes where the main characters make their first appearances, they are wearing the military uniforms of their respective nations, although they are dressed differently in the key art."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"Kojima-san always tells me to make the cutscenes shorter. (Laughs)
With motion capture, we can show the characters' abundant facial expressions in cutscenes. However, not everything can be expressed using motion capture. To make the difference less recognisable between scenes with motion capture and other scenes, we made adjustments by inserting scenery or emotional scenes in between to make the transition between the two scenes seamless."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"This title is one of the culminations of our efforts, and I feel that from the next title onward, we can aim to create highly immersive works that seamlessly connect any scenes from any kind of situation."
- Koh Kojima (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"The cutscenes, the music, the character design, everything is the culmination of what we have cultivated throughout the Xenoblade Chronicles series. I believe that the challenges we faced in this title will help us create something better in the future."
- Genki Yokota (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
I would like to ask you, does MONOLITHSOFT determine the story first and then think of ways to play, or do you have in mind the gameplay you want to create first and then come up with the story for that? Which comes first?
Kojima:
The story is the basis. There is this story or world that Takahashi-san comes up with, and we develop it into something that customers can experience hands-on. Of course, Takahashi-san makes gameplay suggestions as well, so we do our best to incorporate those into the game.
[...]
Have you always approached development this way?
Takahashi:
Yes, it hasn’t changed. However, a big part of me thinks that the story and the gameplay are developed at the same time, rather than one coming before the other.
When creating the first and second titles, we would suggest gameplay ideas to match the world and stories that were being crafted at the same time.
...But I guess the story is still the base.
The reason is that in order to create an RPG, the overall volume of content has to be determined first. To some extent, we need to decide at the beginning how many hours the main story will be, how many characters, how many maps, and so on.
"I think the feeling of "having a lot of content" differs from person to person, but ultimately I like having an abundance of content."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"I really recommend the story. So far, we have made the first, second, and third titles, but I feel that this is the story where we could best achieve what Takahashi-san wanted to do, so I hope you will try it."
- Koh Kojima (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
"We have talked about this title in terms of it being the "culmination", "closure", or "summary", but it has been approximately 15 years since we began development on the Xenoblade Chronicles series.
I feel that this game represents everything we have done so far and is filled with answers to all our questions.
At the same time, we have taken on a variety of new challenges in this work, and I believe that we were able to implicitly share a glimpse of what MONOLITHSOFT wants to achieve in the future.
I think imagining what MONOLITHSOFT’s future games will look like while playing this title would be another way to enjoy it.
Also, this is the third title in the series, but you can, of course, enjoy it on its own. We believe that both newcomers and those who have been playing the series for a long time will enjoy this title."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (An introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 from Executive Director Tetsuya Takahashi, 2022)
From Xenoblade Chronicles 3 e-mail to Japanese customers containing a message from Tetsuya Takahashi translated by Nintendo Everything.
https://nintendoeverything.com/monolith-soft-shares-xenoblade-chronicles-3-message-another-tease-of-the-future/
"[...] Xenoblade 3 has been called the culmination of the whole series up until now, and it truly is the culmination. We at Monolith have put everything we have cultivated over the past twelve years into it.
It is also a stopping point to me. This title depicts the conclusion of the Xenoblade story that began with Klaus's experiment.
While it is a conclusion, that does not mean it is the end of the Xenoblade series. It is just a stopping point in my mind. I think that everyone who played this title and the additional stories in the Expansion Pass can imagine what lies in the future for Xenoblade."
- Tetsuya Takahashi (Message from Monolith Soft's senior director of Xenoblade Chronicles 3, 2022)
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