Senior Director For Xenoblade Chronicles X Reveals When You'll Get A Skell
Say what you want about the Nintendo E3 Digital Event, there was one thing that Nintendo did that pleased many a fan, they gave the official release date for Xenoblade Chronicles X, a game we’ve been waiting for a long time.
One of the big appeals of the game isn’t just the vast open world to explore, but the fact you get to drive and battle a massive exosuit called a Skell. But, as in all things, the question of when you’ll get the Skell has arisen amongst the fanbase. So, in an interview with IGN, Senior Director and Chief Creative Officer Tetsuya Takahashi revealed that you’ll be able to get a Skell about 30 hours into the game. Why? Well…
“The reason we decided to do that was because the scale of the game changes once you get a Skell,” he explained. “We wanted to make sure that the initial difficulties you might have had maneuvering across terrain or trying to figure out how to reach a certain spot would be something you had a full sense of before you got the Skell.”
Mr. Takahashi added, “We didn’t want people from the very beginning being able to be to zip towards the exact opposite end of the continent. We wanted people them to have the experience of knowing that distance first hand by running it. Once you do have the opportunity to control a Skell, it really does change the feel of the game. And we feel like these are gradual steps that ease you into that process.”
Also though, he’s not worried that this timed-wait will affect how people feel about the game.
“When people hear 30 hours of gameplay, they might be reacting to that number a little bit. But I think that something that’s going to be familiar to MMO players is the idea that 30 hours is not necessarily a really long time if you think about the total gameplay time that might pick up. Now, certainly in traditional JRPG terms that may feel like that’s quite a ways out, but I think that we’ve designed the content in such a way that it feels fast as you’re going through it.”
So, what do you think about this? Let us know!