Xenoblade Chronicles

I like Uncontrollable a lot more than You Will Know Our Names, personally.

But the new game should just have its own themes. Let it be its own thing.

edited 10th Feb '17 8:41:48 PM by Perseus

Music direction, at least, I hope they take more cues from XC than XCX.

I wouldn't mind if YWKON showed up in SOME capacity, though. Maybe for a Bonus Boss reference to the previous game.

Speaking of which, I hope we get another level 81 reddish-orange ape-like creature described as territorial, patrolling around one of the early levels. That needs to be a tradition following Rotbart and Hayreddin.

Edit: I also just realized that both names relate to red beards. That's cool.

edited 10th Feb '17 11:01:57 PM by Anomalocaris20

Not to restart last page's villain discussion, but the Ganglion are less memorable than the XBC rogues because the game doesn't treat them as very important. The original villains have lengthy introductions and a huge amount of agency. We know what they're after and why they are the way they are. In XCX the villains are obstcles between you and your goal and while they're nasty we only have a general idea of what the Ganglion are like as individuals.

As for music, I think the choice of musicians means Xenoblade 2 will be thematically very similar to the original's ost. I'm guessing we'll hear some familiar bars, and I know the main theme will supposedly be very similar to Xenoblade's title track (or Beyond the Sky, forget which) so we have that to look forward to.

edited 11th Feb '17 10:08:26 AM by Watashiwa

XCX music has a lot more hits and misses in the general fandom, myself included. I don't mind the likes of Black Tar, and I enjoy Uncontrollable and No EX 01, but some of the tracks are extremely overused. I'm talking about Don't Worry (Skell Flight) and the Ambush theme. Then there's In The Forest, which I blatantly despise.

Only tracks I don't like in XC is, again, the ambush themes, but due to the mechanics of ambush between the two games, this happens far less often. Otherwise, I'd agree that Xenoblade's soundtrack is legendary.

I'm expecting the general style of music to be more akin to the first game than X in XC2, at any rate- The rap and electronic music focus made perfect sense in XCX, a game about near-future Earthlings stuck on a different planet^note A LOT MORE THAN WE CAN MANAGE, not so much for the looking-to-be-more-fantastical Science Fantasy settings of XC and XC2.

edited 11th Feb '17 6:48:54 AM by Pulse

There's no reason to think XC 2 won't be more like XC in terms of music simply because ACE+, Manami Kiyota and Yasunori Mitsuda are back to score this game.

I like Hiroyuki Sawano but his engrish lyrics are goofy as fuck lol

I mean

Usually the issue is more that he can't get singers who can enunciate in English all that well- His lyrics make sense, at the very least, even if they are on the goofy side.

Then again, given the depth of the situation humanity is in in XCX, maybe the new music being made is all that silly.

Got Sharla's final skill tree. Now I can move on to NG+

Another problem is the music direction and mixing in X just didn't seem as nearly good. With the original Xenoblade the songs and cutscenes seem like they were composed together, almost to fit the scene first, or at least taking it into consideration. Whereas it seems like Sawano just composed music he thought sounded good separately from the designers' work and they tried to weld it together after the fact, That actually seems to be a recurring thing with Sawano's music in general, as a lot of his anime soundtracks are just nice sounding leitmotifs that don't always blend well with the show proper.

That's actually probably what happened. Sawano composed a soundtrack because Takahashi liked Unicorn, but did it independently, and Monolith ran with what they got.

We haven't seen the mecha in Xenoblade 2 yet.

That said, the Blades definitely tic the required Robot Girl box for me.

Lv 64, near the end of Mechonis field. I decided to go back and kill more Setor Elks with Shulk/Fiora/Dunban. The team crit like crazy. Obtained a few Topple Plus VI and Quick Step VI.

So uh. Mitsuda's recording Xenoblade 2 music with an Irish choir.

They're pretty great but it's still not what I would have expected for X2.

Sure, why not.

I'm game for anything at this point- They seem to be pushing more for the fantasy angle this time around. I'm guessing it's to further differentiate it from X.

I don't think there'd be much of a chance of confusing Gaur Plains with Noctilum's theme. Just the instrumentation difference between Sawano and ACE would be enough.

Sawano's fingerprints are all over the battle and event tracks especially.

Regardless, ACE will do their thing and I think it'll be rad, but also even more fantasy-y than Xenoblade 1.

edited 18th Feb '17 11:31:48 PM by Pulse

Er, you read my post backwards—I think the soundtracks are VERY distinct, and it's hard to confuse the two if you're slightly familiar with either one. Sylvalum and the * Waters sound most like XBC, but even they have significant differences in instrumentation.

EDIT: ah you caught that. Yeah, the music should be really good, the pedigree is there.

I'm going crazy over the lack of information. I hope the game IS out this year, preferably over the summer.

edited 18th Feb '17 11:34:39 PM by Watashiwa

Yeah, I did!

And then I tried to save face by editing it and just made everything more confusing. This hasn't been one of my finer moments.

edited 18th Feb '17 11:34:53 PM by Pulse

Living up to your signature, I see.

Did a quick search and this really is the first piece of news we've had about XB 2 since the translated bits of the presentation were released. This is.... maddening.

Well, wishlists?

I really hope we have a four-man active party ala X this time around, though I always prefer larger active parties or, failing that, some way to hotswap members in battle.

I definitely want another style of combat like how the switch from XC to XCX featured the core style altered by major mechanical changes. I do want a more set in stone party though, rather than the more pick and choose style from X. Hotswapping would definitely be cool, since neither of the previous games had that and if it's designed around doing so there could be some really creative fights.

Mitsuda is known for his strong Celtic influences and Xenogears and Xenosaga's OST also featured them prominently despite being very far on the side of scifi. Likewise Beyond The Sky had an Irish vocalist. It's just Author Appeal. I do hope XB 2 doesn't lean too heavily on the fantasy side of things though because I think the first game hit that magic-technology balance perfectly and there's no need to fix what ain't broke or whiplash back from Xenoblade X.

As for the game mechanics, while I appreciated X's deeper gameplay I did prefer how the original didn't force you to have Shulk in your party like X did and how it focused on a smaller party but with more distinct class roles and gameplay styles.

Yeah, I'm expecting party roles to be a much bigger thing, with no chracter able to do everything another can. I think I mentioned on my wishlist that I'd like to see XBC's party affinity benefits come back—shared passives, maybe add unique dual arts, etc.

Didn't know that about Mitsuda, how cool.

I've made my wishlist a few pages back, but the thing I want most is more accessible and important sidequests.

The character difference in XBC kinda gets blurrier in the late game. Dunban and Fiora are very similar.

edited 19th Feb '17 8:41:10 PM by RAlexa21th