Wen 丨 Tang and Audit 丨 Thousand Miles
Typography 丨roa
On April 19, Nintendo officially announced that "Blade of The Otherworld 3" would be released on July 29, more than a month earlier than the original release time. This news quickly caused a large number of players at home and abroad to discuss, after all, in the current situation where the epidemic has not yet ended, such a well-known game can not be postponed or even released in advance, which can definitely be said to be a huge surprise for players.
So, what is it that makes the Xenoblade excalibur series still have a large number of fans in the era of the decline of JRPGs?
In Tokyo, Japan in 1995, a couple who were also game producers exchanged experiences about game creation, the wife shared the story of the "multi-personality warrior by chance", and the husband incorporated his own insights from the works of Nietzsche, Freud and others, and thus the "Xenogears" series of magnificent and legendary story prototypes were born.
And this couple is the later "Alien Excalibur" series producer Tetsuya Takahashi and his wife Tanaka Ka. At that time, Mr. and Mrs. Takahashi were working for Square Corporation, and "Alien Armor" became Tetsuya Takahashi's debut as the chief director of game production.
(PS platform's "Heterogeneous Armor")
Unfortunately, at that time, Square devoted all his energy to the Final Fantasy series, resulting in the critically acclaimed sequel to Alien Armor, and producer Takahashi left Square to form Monolith Soft, which continued to lead the production of the Legend of Alien trilogy under the umbrella of Namco.
In 2007, the merged Bandai Namco sold Monolith to Nintendo, and Tetsuya Takahashi, who had just been frustrated in the "Legend of Heterodo" trilogy, was appreciated by Satoshi Iwada, which also laid the groundwork for the success of "Alien Excalibur".
In the 2011 interview, Satoshi Iwata was in the middle
In 2010, Monolith, who had been dormant for a long time, finally released a new work, "Xenoblade Excalibur". As a classic Benguet JRPG, in addition to the exquisite game plot and rich and delicate character portrayal, "Xenoblade" is also equipped with a super map that was rare at the time, coupled with a large number of side quests, making this game known as "Divine Works".
The original IGN score was 9
However, due to the adjustment of Nintendo's console strategy, the Wii platform landed in "Xenoblade" is not much different from the previous generation of NGC, and monolith's developers are difficult to change the poor picture quality of this game. Of course, flaws are not hidden, "Xenoblade Excalibur" is still a successful game work, and has launched a 3D version of the n3DS platform and a remake of the NS platform final version.
In 2015, Monolith released the second game in the Heterogeneous Blade series on the WiiU platform: "Heterogeneous Blade X". As the second work of an emerging IP, the world view of "Blade X" has changed a lot compared with the previous generation, but the two are still inextricably linked. On the other hand, this game further enhances the characteristics of the series "big map", the main stage "Planet Mira" claims to have 5 times the scale of the previous game, and the game quality has achieved a qualitative leap, not lagging behind any game on other platforms in the same period. However, the failure of WiiU led to the lack of popularity of this work, and it can only be regretted that it was not timely.
The style is very different from the previous work "Alien Excalibur X"
Two years later, in 2017, NS turned out to be a game console, and on this handheld and console two-in-one game console, the Blade of Alienity series ushered in the most successful work in the series, "Alien Excalibur 2".
As early as 2014, when "Xenoblade X" was still in the development stage, a japanese domestic player survey allowed Monolith to advance the development of Xenoblade 2. In this survey, Japanese players were not impressed with the changes the development team tried to make in Xenoblade X, and some players even claimed to refuse to pay for it. Perhaps it is for this reason that Monolith, who attaches great importance to the local market, identifies the style of Xenoblade 2 as similar to the original.
The production direction was determined, and the next thing to do was to polish the game details. In addition to the production team, Shoji Saito, the top author of the 2015 Tiger's Den manga sales chart, to take charge of the character image, Tetsuya Takahashi also invited Tetsuya Nomura, who had worked with Square, to participate in the human design work. In this way, there are industry bulls sitting in the seat, the company boss support, just when everyone thinks that the development of "Xenoblade 2" will continue steadily and smoothly, but the change has happened.
In May 2016, Monolith posted job postings through the Internet, hoping to find more experienced developers to participate in the development of Xenoblade 2. As a company that has been in existence for some years and only released a masterpiece last year, this move is a bit confusing. The fact is that the development of Nintendo's "The Legend of Zelda", "Breath of the Wild", needs to be drawn from various subsidiaries to assist in the development, Monolith has assisted in the production of "The Legend of Zelda, Sword of the Sky", naturally it is listed in the list of draws, but did not expect that the strength is too large, the company's remaining manpower is not enough to continue the development of "Xenoblade 2", so it had to carry out emergency recruitment. This anecdote has also become widely circulated in the player's mouth that "Monolith used the edge of "Breath of the Wild" to make "Xenoblade 2".
Recruitment information at the time
Back to the game itself, "Alien Excalibur 2" is a standard Japanese king road plot, the production team has made a certain trade-off between the concept and the market, and the phenomenon of mixing humanities, religion and other elements in the previous works of the "Heterogeneous" series has disappeared in this work, but more intuitive sensory stimulation such as music and drama performances has been highlighted. There are pros and cons to this choice, but at least in terms of "attracting users on the new platform", Takahashi's choice is correct.
A congratulatory picture of the 3rd anniversary of Shoji Saito's creation for Excalibur 2
The year after the release of "Alien Excalibur 2", Monolith took advantage of the hot iron and launched the independent prequel DLC "Elra of Gold", which completed the story before "Alien Excalibur 2" for players with a volume beyond the general DLC, further enhancing the richness and story of the IP of Xenoblade. It is worth mentioning that the price of the physical cassette of the various generations of the NS platform is still high, and I am afraid that this is the best proof that the quality of the game has been recognized by players (laughs).
Wealth management products hammer
At the face-to-face meeting in February this year, Nintendo announced the news of "Alien Excalibur 3" at the end, which connects "Alien Excalibur" and "Alien Excalibur 2" will be officially released in September. As soon as the news was released, it caused a heated discussion on the whole network, and the limelight was no different for a while, and now it was announced that it was a reverse jump ticket, and the excitement of fans can be imagined.
Looking at the entire Heterogeneous series, we will find that this IP can always create heat, whether it is born in the "Legend of heterogeneousness", KOS-MOS, which later became the representative of the machine girl, or the phrase "I like Nia, and everyone" that is widely circulated on the Internet, but even the most sold "Xenoblade Excalibur 2" (2.05 million copies) in the series is far less than the "Pokémon Treasure Diamond Replica" (13.97 million copies) that was sneered at before the release, and the applause has almost become a common disease of the JRPG that is still insisting in this era. But in any case, witnessing the growth and rise of such a series that is not inferior to Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest is definitely not a bad thing for players.