Xenoblade Chronicles X Story Trailer, Gameplay Unveiled – Update

Giant robots and alien planets? Count me in for a 2015 release.

Monolith Soft has shown off their upcoming game Xenoblade Chronicles X during Nintendo’s E3 2014 presentation, with a vast and powerful army of spaceships and mecha attacking the survivors of a war that has forced them to flee Earth. The war is between two opposing species, and Earth, it seems, is just a casualty in their war. The game is scheduled for 2015. Multiple characters were shown, apparently a group of survivors from an intergalactic war, they will defend themselves from a hostile invading force of aliens who want to wipe humanity from existence.

A character, presumably the protagonist, was shown awakening from an escape pod called a “BLADE,” or Beyond the Logos Artificial Destiny Empancipator. Another named character was shown, a female soldier named Elma. The game was previously announced to be open world and use an upgraded version of Xenoblade Chronicles‘ combat system. Developers are calling the game a spiritual successor to Xenoblade Chronicles.

Update: During a later Nintendo Treehouse presentation, A Xenoblade Chronicles X developer explained more story details. Earth is the casualty of a galactic war between two alien species, neither of which truly intended to damage Earth or cared when they did. Humanity fled Earth in giant ark ships as a last ditch effort when they realized there was no hope for the planet, and only a handful escaped. The story follows a single Ark ship – labeled United States in the intro sequence – that crash lands on an alien planet. Escape pods are scattered across the world, with huge ones containing entire cities.

Following that intro, a brief character creation period was shown, with customization options like hair, face style, and clothes available. The player was greeted by Elma and rescued in the first scene, and thrown into a free roaming environment. As the player went into combat, they were able to use auto-attacks and alternate them with targeted skills in the free roaming world – all real-time. Timed button presses allowed for boosted attacks or hit point recovery. Different characters were said to have different kinds of auto-attacks available, with some having multiple types. Your allies were mentioned to dynamically call out combat cues for you, telling you which kinds of attacks to make use of. Otherwise, the combat seemed very similar to Xenoblade Chronicles for the Wii.

Classes for the player will be divided along three distinct trees of abilities, but switching between them will be allowed on the fly out of combat. Each of the three main classes had two trees of abilities for itself. Later on, it was implied that the mechs players used would have their own classes.

Enemies in the open world had their levels above them, and symbols indicating whether or not they could see you, whether they were hostile, and how combat with them would be triggered. The open world seemed quite large, with shifting weather and time of day effects triggered, in the demo, by story events and exploration. Monsters on the overworld will have a separate set of behaviors for different weather conditions and times of day. Herd animals, for example, would sleep at night. “If you see it,” a Nintendo representative said about the way the world was designed, “You can pretty much go there.”