GameSpot's The Lobby - Xenoblade Chronicles X Pre-Review Impressions

[MUSIC] [UNKNOWN] Xenoblade Chronicles X. Let's all do it. [UNKNOWN] cross. Cross. Cross. I'm miffed at you. I did that. Don't worry. Sorry. Cross. The power of Christ compels you to play this video game, which came out in Europe back in April? No, Japan my friend. Yeah. Right sorry, Japan. Back in April. And it's coming out end of this month or December? December 3rd. Awesome. When's Rview gonna go? November 30th. Awesome. But you guys have been playing the game for a little while. We're gonna ask you, without getting into the sort of critical assessment area, all about this game. So for those who don't know, gonna be chronicles for a series I guess. What is cross exactly? So the Xenoblade Chronicles, X Cross however you want to pronounce it, is like, kinda a pseudo follow up to the Wii title Xenoblade Chronicles. They share some similarities in terms of mechanics, but in terms of the world, everything like that, very different games. And it takes place in a very big world, this new one. People liken it to Bigger than the Witcher, Skyrim, and Fallout combined. Yeah. And a truly open world? Like, it's one of these things where if you look somewhere you can go there, right? Yep, pretty much. If you can figure out a way to jump all the way up onto something then you can pretty much climb anything. Or swim? Or swim. You can swim too. It's huge, it's really big. Tell us about the world. It's not Earth. Earth's been, gone, blown up. Crash landed Messed up man. Sorry my voice is a little weird, in case people were wondering why. Anyway, so the spaceship left Earth and then got in the middle of an alien conflict, crash-landed on this planet And you're sort of there scouting the planet to figure out how to make a life for everyone who is part of new Los Angeles. [LAUGH] Which is a section of the massive spaceship that crashed. Man we just destroyed old Los Angeles, why would you make a new one? Yeah. Of all the cities. Yeah. Yeah, no no I just laughed at that because I think Los Angeles is not, it's a silly name. This is a map and all those little towers are like, you go and you put down a probe which means you've effectively colonized or surveyed that area. So what you're doing is you're colonizing this world and you're collecting samples Picking up remnants. The whole big thing is like you are part of a group of people that are trying to find the rest of the people? Like everyone else is in like cryostasis or something?>>Yeah, the ship exploded, right? So it's like all over the planet?>>There's some people that are in cryostasis.>>So you have to go find them and, Yeah, that's definitely part of it. The one cool thing this game does though, right, you explore as part of the story for quests. But as you lay down those probes, as Alexa was describing, those actually play a bigger picture in terms of loot and stuff like that. So you can set these probes to do different things. One of the things they can do is mine As you mine and collect this resource, I believe it's called Miranium/g?>>Miranium/g.>>What you then do is you can use that to invest in different weapons and armor manufacturers and get access to new loot. So the more you explore the more ability you have to unlock new gear, not just by finding it, which you do, but also by investing in companies who develop this stuff. What they're showing right now on the screen are the Mechs, Got down. In Japanese version they were called dolls, now they're called skills. Because? Because whatever. And these are a really big part of the game, but they don't. I'm about 25 hours in and I think I'm Close to the point where maybe I'm going to a lot then? Right. So this is a game which is pushing the 70, 80 hour mark? Yeah. It's a very big game. And I kind of liken it to an MMO. It doesn't play like an MMO, but what it does do is offer a huge amount of quests and sometimes these are easy to find. [COUGH] Excuse me. Other times, like if you go by Chronicles on the Wii, you have to find people in a specific part of time and a specific time of day and have talked to someone else Oh wow, very specific>> So let's get you rested for a second>> Unbelieveable>>Alexa tell me about the quest. Is this like main quest stuff, is it infinity quest which are about Getting sort of extra people on your team. Yeah, there's just so much crap to deal with in this game. And I both love it and hate it. You pick a job, there's like seven, ten, jobs, classes. And they have different things like okay, you're going to focus on colonizing new areas, your gonna focus on finding people that are [UNKNOWN]. You're going to focus on killing big animals. yeah. An you join that group and then you have a separate level of whatever you're doing in that group, and then you have your personal level, and then your have your affinity levels, and your field levels. [LAUGH] Don't forget your blade levels. Oh yeah you're blade levels whatever job you have. Then you have your field level, your archaeology skills, your mechanical skills and your something Being biological skills. And all of these level up separately but together and sometimes you can't do something if a certain level isn't high enough cuz you need to get another level high enough, but you can't level up that till something else is leveled up. There's a lot of person management, character management, quest management. I'd say quest management, world management. If you play it intelligently, when you figure out how everything ties together, it actually works pretty smoothly across the board. You understand How one thing affects another, and so on. It's a little bit difficult to understand at first. [LAUGH] Read the manual, that is my advice to you. Do games come with manuals anymore? What? This, we don't have the retail physical version of this game. We have the disc, but the in-game manual is where you find it. And it's very helpful actually, that's, yeah. Or you could play it dumbly like me. I refuse to read the manual, I'm trying to figure it all out on my own. Yep. And it is so much to take in. I mean I like really thick meaty JRPGs, but this is a JRPGSJRPG. [LAUGH] It's crazy! But it looks good. Tell us a little bit about the world. The idea of an open sort of planet where you can travel anywhere seems very appealing to me. Tell me about the world and its inhabitants and its monsters and stuff like that. So the world, again, is huge, and it is pretty much wilderness. You will maybe encounter some [COUGH] organic, I'd don't wanna spoil anything. Anyway, so yeah. [LAUGH] [CROSSTALK] Big wide world with huge scale, like big mountains, big cliffs. Big animals, big bodies of water. Very big animals. It's huge and at times it's really impressive. At least to me and it's not one of those games where the world is big but it's not interesting. Like the way the landscape is shaped and the way things sort of interplay like the water with the mountains and stuff. Mm-hm. It's actually done really well. There was a lot of attention to detail to give these places a unique feel beyond just This has sand versus grass, and so on. And yeah, and it's really big and you can pretty much go anywhere. I think there are some continents that are disconnected that maybe you need the scale to get to, I'm not positive. But yeah, I mean you're able to wander into areas. One she was telling me about A place called Oblivia. It's sort of connected to the first continent you start on but when you first get there, at least when I did, there were lightning storms, and I was slowly having my health depleted and it was like, "The hell?" Apparently you need to have a lightning sort of debuff thing, but at the same time If you wait, the time of day changes, the weather changes. Once the weather changes, then you can go in there just fine. So it's a massive living world, and there are creatures that will always be agro, always out to get you. There are legendary versions of creatures. Yeah, always be agro. Yeah, always be agro. Then you have creatures that are huge monstrosities. It's like Bulbasaur the Elder, level 93 or something. They difficult fights? Lots of difficult fights. It's easy to get yourself caught in line of sight of an enemy that's too high level. So part of this game is being aware of your environment as well and traversing it carefully. In doing so and yeah, I'm really liking the loop right now of questioning and getting lewd and leveling up. So, that's been great. I've liked that a lot. Cool. Have you played previous games in the series, Alexa? Yeah. Yeah. I played the hell out of Uniblade Chronicles, the last one, which I thought was really great. Does it feel like very similar to it? Yeah because it has like the art system which is like it's the spells and the different attacks. Like, it's a very similar combat system But everything else is just completely different. The quest structure is similar. The thing I was describing earlier with the way [UNKNOWN] missions work. Getting to know people and doing that sort of thing. It's really there for the hardcore folks, because- Fans of the genre. Yeah. [LAUGH] Yeah, can you play this and not [UNKNOWN] hardcore [UNKNOWN] fan? Yeah. This is only the second game in the series and it's not really connected to the prior one beyond Mechanics.>>Are they non hardcore video game fact. This seems like this is the type of game that requires a lot of you and time commitment and effort.>>Yeah. This is definitely a video game's man's video game. Quite long.>>And honestly read the manual. That's just my advice.>>Or don't and struggle. [LAUGH] Or don't struggle with that if that's the choice you're deciding to make on your own. I am playing it dumbly as opposed to intelligent. You could do like a two take review on this one. The [UNKNOWN] versus the non [UNKNOWN] Oh, gosh. I'm still running in like the same circle. [UNKNOWN] versus [UNKNOWN] It is a 70 to 100 hour game. From what we've heard, so. excellent. That's a lot of time. And the review will be up the last day of this month? Last day of this month, awesome. Thank you so much guys for coming on and explaining to me. I just have all this free time, there's not enough open world games out there to play in 2015. None came out this year right? My goodness. Maybe one to get in your Christmas stocking. Let us know if you're going to pick it up later this year or if you are already in Japan and you're just half way through at this stage in the comment box below. We'll be back [MUSIC]