A portion of a Time interview with Monolith Soft founder Tetsuya Takahashi...
T: Xenoblade Chronicles 2 seems to have come together must quicker than Xenoblade Chronicles X. What's it like working with the Switch compared to the Wii U?
TT: The ease or speed of developing Xenoblade Chronicles 2 stems a lot from our having already created this architecture with Xenoblade Chronicles X. The game portion of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is kind of overlaid on top of that fundamental architecture. I think that made the biggest contribution to why development went so fast. And in terms of Switch versus Wii U, another point is that we've only had to deal with one screen, so that also has made development a little bit easier.
And so to add to that, both at Nintendo and at Monolith, we wanted to have a major large-scale roleplaying game early in the Switch's lifecycle. We thought about how we might accomplish that, and we wanted to do the same thing with the Wii U. But the development for Xenoblade Chronicles X was a little bit difficult, and that's why it ended up being released a little bit later in the Wii U's cycle. So we had a postmortem and tried to think 'How can we deliver this at an earlier stage in the console's lifecycle?'
T: In the Xenoblade series specifically, you seem fascinated with size, scale and perspective, with organisms living symbiotically, small-scale to large-scale. Where does that come from?
TT: When I analyze myself and the type of person I am, I'm actually pretty short, even for a Japanese person. Maybe it's like this in the States, too, but the bully in school is typically big in stature, and I think I've sort of developed a little bit of an inferiority complex. That's why I really like things that are large in scale, and might be why I take such an interest in the differences between small and big elements in games.
T: I noticed artist Tetsuya Nomura's name in the trailer credits [as the designer of a character named "Toma"]. He's obviously a longtime Square Enix fixture [he's currently directing Kingdom Hearts III and the Final Fantasy VII remake], so I'm wondering how that happened?
TT: Good question. This story goes back 20 years. Back when I was about to start on a new game, and the name "Xenogears" wasn't set yet, for that new title I needed a designer. And at the time there was someone who was directing the Final Fantasy series, Mr. [Yoshinori] Kitase. And then Mr. Nomura and I were in the team together doing character design. At the time, Mr. Kitase was handling Final Fantasy and I was doing this new title, and I wanted to work with Mr. Nomura.
So I was waiting for the final call to be made, whether he was going to be working on the Final Fantasy series or on this new title of mine. And then Mr. [Hironobu] Sakaguchi [the creator of the Final Fantasy series] came and said 'Tetsu is going to do Final Fantasy.' So I thought 'Okay, I've got to find myself a new designer.'
But I've always wanted to work with him. And this idea of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 came up, and I thought I'd love to work with him again. After our discussion with Nintendo went through and this project was a go, I went directly to Square Enix, thinking that I'd be denied, asking if I could work with Tetsu. To my surprise, it was approved, and that's how it happened.
from GoNintendo
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