Takahashi's castle: An RPG master's journey from Final Fantasy to Xenoblade

It's not enough for a video game to 'sprawl' anymore. Where once the size of a virtual world provided a somewhat useful measure of its creators' effort and ambition, nowadays, entire galaxies can blossom from a few seemingly throwaway lines of code. If ever you grow tired exploring one of Minecraft's worlds, simply load a fresh one; the next unique arrangement of hills, trees and caverns will keep you busy for months. There is, in fact, already more virtual real estate in video games than humans will ever be able to chart or fathom.

[Takwin]

Wife got this for me for Christmas but will not let me play it until then. Just beat Fallout 4 so I'm going to have to play some Diablo 3 or Hearthstone to tide me over.

[acekaze]

Gf did same thing, i had to beg for her to let me play it earlyer XD we reached a deal, I can play it on the 14 (time we come back from our vacation together), because i told her XD

"If i only get it on christmas, i am gona spend christmas night playing :D"

[PygmelionHunter]

Truly a masterful move you pulled there, sir.

[gamerb6]

I feel your pain, can't wait for this game, my wife has got me an xbone for Christmas and I've got my daughter a ps4. I'm getting impatient lol

[TheOneWhoIsTornApart]

I love Tetsuya Takahashi so much. I wish he was able to finish the Xenogears story with Episode 6 but unfortunately it won't happen

[Ratty]

I think the fact that it's incomplete is part of Xenogears' charm. I wish he'd finish it. I guess he could get the IP back through crowdfunding nowadays. But it probably won't happen.

[TheOneWhoIsTornApart]

There is some info in the Perfect Works Xenogears book about the other episodes of the story. Some of other episodes were actually in Xenogears as flasback sequences but we know hardly anything about the mysterious 6th episode. A new Xenogears game that's main story is the 6th episode but draws heavily from episode 1 in flashbacks would be fuc***g amazing. I want it so bad.

[Ratty]

I read that too. Some of it was even in Xenosaga to some extent. With all the info we have on Episodes 1-4 and the cult following for that game it's kind of surprising no one attempted a quality fangame yet. If my memory serves, there wasn't a lot about episode 6 in Perfect Works though.

[TheOneWhoIsTornApart]

Yea we know almost nothing about the final episode which has been eating at me for many years now. Ever since I saw that curious message at the end "End of Epidsode V" I have been wanting to know what the hell that meant and when I found out that we got bits of a few of the earlier episodes in Xenogears we had absolutely nothing on Ep 6 and that really made me crave information on it. I really want Takahashi to make it because it wouldn't be the same without him and Soraya Saga. It would be like a Metal Gear game without Kojima. Damn sorry for the long convoluted response with run on sentences but I love Xenogears so much and is my favorite game and I have a bit of an obsession with it. It definitely changed my way of thinking.

[DivineAssault]

Xenoblade X seems really intimidating.. Its a massive world to explore with tons of quests, items, etc.. Im going to need an extra large coffee when i boot it up.. I hear it takes more than 25hrs just to unlock the mechs.. This is what a modern JRPG is... Just like the PS1 days needing 4 discs.. Its not that big of a download either.. Wii U might have been able to pull off using DVDs this gen.. Dual layered but still, i dont think theres any games that really need blu rays.. Their games dont even load very much either.. Why do PS3/360 games load so much in comparison?

[Venoxn4g]

I dont think Wii U uses DVD (dual layer) .. I think Wii U discs are up to 25GB (or more I am not sure)

[DivineAssault]

It uses blu rays.. What i was saying is that it SHOULD'VE used dual layer DVD's instead of blu rays.. None of the games take up too much space..

[wonderfulmonkeyman]

5 days to go!

[NXSwitch]

Can't wait for the game but reading the article now it explains why games like Fatal Frame 5 & xeno X & many others to follow will be censor because of this.

For Takahashi, the aim of this endeavour is to compete at a global level in the games market. "Japan is a peculiar country in the sense that - and this not only applies to games, but almost all cultural output like music, movies and books - we tend to look only within Japan for sales and recognition," he says. "There is a tendency to focus only on Japan, and not enter the competition on an international level. As an island country we have a rather closed cultural environment, but as creators we will only lag behind this way. On the other hand, many of our industrial products are still standing their ground on the global market. We at Monolith Soft don't intend to back down from this challenge. We would like to keep our scope open in order to reach as far as we can."

[Adrian_v01]

I hope they don't overkill it. The charm of Japan's culture is that it's isolated, that's what keeps it different and beautiful. Insert foreign influence into that and you lose that unique beauty. Same goes for gaming culture too.

[NXSwitch]

I love my Japanese games & I hope they keep true to their creative ways.