Nintendo gamers are once again itching to get their hands on some brand new content, even with the power of Animal Crossing New Horizons still compelling them. And their wishes will be granted next week as Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition will arrive on the Switch. This will be a truly updated and modern version of the Wii cult-classic, and of course, there is going to be brand new content via the Future Connected epilogue.
Monolith Soft has been talking a lot about Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition recently, and have spilled some very interesting details in the most recent issue of Famitsu (as translated by Nintendo Everything).
Director Tetsuya Takahashi noted that work on the game started earlier than you might think:
“Planning began sometime at the end of 2017; I recall it being pretty much right after the release of Xenoblade Chronicles 2. That’s when Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country was in development, so we worked on both at the same time. We put together the proposal for Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition along with the new game that our 1st Production Team is currently working on and presented them sometime in May of 2018. We formally began work in August after post-production on Torna wrapped up.”
He further noted that at one point in time, the Monolith Soft team were working on three different projects at once. Takahashi later touched on something everyone has noticed, the much-improved graphics of the title:
“It goes without saying, but considering we had restrictions like production costs and time, we couldn’t remake everything. So we started off with deciding what we would remake and what we would not. Specifically, we went as far as upconverting the textures and adding shader textures for the enemies and maps. Then we remade things like the main and important characters’ faces and hands, the new equipment in the Definitive Edition, the Monado, the facial animations during cutscenes and scripted events, and so on. Even though we divided things up like this, before long, each member of the team began showing their passion and abilities, so we wound up incidentally touching things up like NPCs and enemies that we didn’t intend on changing initially. “
Finally, in regards to Future Connected, the director stated that the content can take from 10-20 hours to complete depending on how much time you invest in the side content. All in all, Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition seems like it’s going to be a wonderful game to play when it arrives on May 29th.
