by mento
I've been playing a considerable amount of Xenoblade this year. It's fair to say I'm a little addicted to it. While there's plenty of positive things to say about the major parts of the game (graphics, sound, the combat, etc.), there seem to be an incalculable amount of smaller design improvements that it's making to slightly hoary JRPG trappings, going some way towards bringing the genre to the 2010s. Some of the following items wouldn't be out of place in many modern Western games perhaps, but it's refreshing to see in a genre I find myself becoming an apologist for more and more as the years go on.
I should also say that Xenoblade isn't perfect, in spite of how adulatory this list comes off as. It's as occasionally interminable as any large-scale MMO-but-not game like Monster Hunter or FFXII and the lack of HD for such an attractive game would probably irk anyone who seriously cares about that sort of thing. But man, if I haven't fallen for it hard. I hope this convinces a few of you fence-sitters to try it out when it arrives in the States in a few months' time.
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I mentioned this briefly in that comparative review blog thing I did towards the end of 2011 but, essentially, the world of Xenoblade is an endless ocean with two colossal deities standing in it. Both deities killed each other some inestimable time ago, creating all manner of lifeforms (including humans, called Homs) from their decaying corpses in the interim. At most points in the game, you can look towards the horizon and see the towering figure of one of these deities (usually Mechonis, the one you aren't living on). It floors me almost every time. Creepier still is when the weather gets so dense that all you can see in the distance are its eerie glowing red eyes, hundreds of miles away and above.
I don't want to harp on about the graphics, since the Wii can only do so much. However, the swamp level is the other thing I wanted to bring up about the game's visuals. During the daytime the Satarl Swamp (which is situated on the Bionis' ass, as if reminding the player to avoid extremely long game sessions) looks like a miserable swamp. However, at night there is some serious psychedelic Aurora Borealis shit going down as all the bioluminous flora and fauna get their glow on. It's more than a little visually intense and quite alien, which is more or less this game's aesthetic in a microcosm.
The game has a day/night cycle. While an excuse to get some pretty scenery changes going on (see above), it also has the practical application of doubling the population of any given area: certain monsters are only out during the day or night, and this applies to most NPCs as well. However, the game recognizes that players would not appreciate having to wait around for the opportune time of day to finish a quest or talk to a NPC or what have you, so at any point you can change the clock. Not just day to night like Ocarina of Time either; you can select the exact hour. The change is instantaneous too.
There's a lot of these. It wouldn't be a sprawling open-world type game without them. However, unless there's some actual NPC bonding to be doing, all fetch quests immediately end once you have the requisite items, or killed the requisite number of monsters. You get the reward then and there. Handy.
So these huge maps that make up the world are fine and all. It's nice to have a big playground to play in. But it sure makes getting from point A to point B a pain, especially when the quest sponsor is on the other side of the world from the objective. Except.. there's fast travel. You can warp to any landmark from any point in the game, and there's usually a landmark in any NPC settlement. Not exactly groundbreaking perhaps, but appreciated.
Perhaps the most notable features of the game are the time-bending powers of the Monado, the big plot McGuffin and the main character's weapon. I'm not too far in yet, so the powers I've unlocked might only be the tip of the iceberg. One of these powers is getting a heads-up whenever a monster is about to launch a particularly damaging attack. You can then prevent it from happening by either defending, buffing the target character, drawing aggro to a different character, disabling the monster's ability to perform that attack (say, by knocking it over) or just eliminating the monster before the timer counts down. You even get bonus rewards for doing this.
The precognition doesn't end there either. It can also inform you of an outcome to a quest you're following, occasionally adding extra optional steps to prevent a disastrous, hitherto unforeseen conclusion. If you pick up an item on the field that will later be part of a fetch quest, it'll tell you about that too so you can hang onto it. Everything else, therefore, is vendor trash. So, so convenient.
If you've ever played a Tales game, you'll know that building affinity between characters can pay off in more ways than simple cute story moments. Popularity leads to intimacy, this is true, but in Xenoblade it also means being able to use each other's skills and building up chain attacks faster, increasing the power of buffs and lots of other near-imperceptible boons. There's so many points in combat where you can give big ups to a party member on a particularly fine attack or dodge and improve your affinity with them, making frantic battles an oddly endearing support-fest. Go Team Discovery Channel!
I've never seen this in a game and I kind of wonder what the point of it is, but you can see a massive flowchart of relationships between every non-story named NPC in the game. As you talk to NPCs and help them with quests, these relationships change for better or worse. It's a definite curio and it's kind of neat, too.
There are collectibles, which are ubiquitous blue dots you can run over while exploring the landscape. You can use them up by putting them in a "Collectopedia", which unlocks various rewards once you fill up rows and tables with them, Bingo style. You can also trade them to NPCs for items or gift them to each other for affinity boosts. But it's all optional. It's just another thing you can do, if you wanted.
