Iwata Asks: Xenoblade Chronicles; The Power of the Silent Protagonist

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Takahashi: Takeda-san spoke a little earlier about how, when he was working on anime scenarios, he would make the section leading into the commercial break or the cliffhanger at the end of an episode exciting. Well, when I came to read the scripts he wrote, I’d be able to tell: ‘Ah, okay. There’s a dramatic point here on the fourth page.’ When we were sifting through the cut scenes, deciding which ones to use, we would take pages three and four of the scenario to be about five minutes worth of material, and we would then steadily ramp up the excitement over that period. We could then judge how best to space out the cut scenes to keep costs down over the subsequent five minutes. In that way, we were able to use the script itself as a set of guidelines, which really helped.

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Iwata: So simply by looking at the script, you could get a clear image of how it would unfold when you made the actual game.

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Takahashi: Yes, that’s right. And because Takeda-san came from the world of anime, I was most excited about what he’d do with the sections where the scripted lines were spoken. There are certain scenes where I’d think: ‘I want the characters to say this…’

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Takahashi: Right. Player characters are a part of yourself, and for this reason, they shouldn’t think or do anything that you don’t want them to. With RPGs, there is one way to ensure the hero isn’t hated – and that’s to make it so they don’t utter a word.

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Iwata: If they don’t say anything, the player is less likely to feel alienated from them.

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Takahashi: That’s right. Not making the main character say anything is easy, but for this title, we wanted him to speak. This meant we were groping for a way to get that ‘resonance’. In the end, I think we managed to achieve that to some degree.

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Iwata: I see. Now, generally speaking, one finds that the bigger the game world gets, the less detailed it becomes. But with this title, you were looking for a world that was ‘both vast and intricately detailed’, weren’t you, Takahashi-san?

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Takahashi: That’s right. I wanted to make it so that even if you went to the far edge of the map, you wouldn’t find it empty. I wanted to ensure that wherever you went, there would be something there waiting for you, be it something you’d been seeking, a quest, or a fearsome monster. In certain places, I also wanted to have secluded spots where players would think: ‘Wow, there are beautiful areas like this here in this world!’

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Iwata: So in other words, you made sure the player’s investment in the game would always be repaid.

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Takahashi:

Yes, and that’s why the number of items you can gather on a quest ended up reaching an absolutely huge total. The staff in charge of a quest would say that they’d make 400 items, and I’d make sure they knew what they were doing: ‘Are you really sure you can make that many?’

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For this title, we started with this giant model…We built the game world based on this, and what I really wanted to explore was how these tiny beings, the hero and his companions, would grow, and whether they would be able to embark on their adventure. That’s why I think that if I were to sum up this title in a single word, I would say that it was ‘embarking’.

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In the initial part of the game, the hero and his companions set out on their journey, facing the future in an unfamiliar world, and I wanted to describe the way they progress.

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