Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Overview

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is an open-world RPG developed by Monolith Software for the Nintendo Switch and is a direct sequel to the first Xenoblade title. The game follows a young man named Rex who is attempting to help a woman named Pyra find her way to a distant paradise known as Elysium. Nintendo released Xenoblade Chronicles 2 worldwide on December 1, 2017, which marked the first time an entry in the long-running Xeno franchise was launched simultaneously in other territories outside of Japan.

Trivia

• Xenoblade Chronicles 2's characters were designed by Masatsugu Saito, a doujin artist popularly known for his work on anime such as Expelled from Paradise and Cyborg 009: Call of Justice. His work on Xenoblade 2 marked the first time the artist ever worked on a video game property, besides providing guest illustrations.
• The development cycle for Xenoblade 2 was the shortest of any game in the series up to that point. Xenoblade Chronicles took over four years to complete and Xenoblade Chronicles X was in development for almost five years whereas Xenoblade 2 was released in just over three years, with development beginning in July 2014. Tetsuya Takahashi, Monolith's founder, stated that the game's speedy development was one of the project's goals from the outset because the team wanted to have a large-scale roleplaying game released early in the Switch's life. A major factor that made this possible was that Xenoblade 2's gameplay architecture and engine technology was heavily based off systems/tech that were initially created for X, making development go by a lot faster.
• Monolith Software does not have internal character designers at the company so a large number of guest artists were hired to design the various Blades the player collects throughout the game. The artists were given some guidelines by Monolith, such as what weapon the Blade uses, but were otherwise allowed to design the characters anyway they wanted. Because of this freedom, a large majority of the Blades ended up being female.
• During Xenoblade Chronicles 2's development, around 60 percent of Monolith Soft was assisting Nintendo in the creation of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Because of this, Xenoblade 2 was made by a core team of only about 40 people, who developed the game along with assistance from outsource studios for modeling secondary characters and other duties.