Our Xenoblade Chronicles 3 wishlist

We now know that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is officially on the way, and while its existence is not a surprise in the slightest, it doesn’t take away from the hype of having it officially confirmed.

From our first look we can see that the game will take inspiration from both its predecessors in the Xenoblade Chronicles series and, if certain people appearing throughout the trailer are who we think they are, we may be seeing some of the characters from the past games as well. 

I adore the Xenoblade Chronicles games, with Xenoblade Chronicles 2 being one of my favorite RPGs of all time, so it’s fair to say that I’m extremely excited for the next game in this series that I love so much! Today I want to talk about some of my personal wants for the game — my wishlist if you will. So let’s begin!

Connected Maps 

The original Xenoblade Chronicles had a great overall feeling of constantly progressing through the game as the land you were traversing across was essentially one humongous mecha. So while you started lower down on the body of the Bionis, over the course of the game you would gradually make your way up to the higher sections — and the journey felt convincing. 

However, in Xenoblade Chronicles 2, the areas of the world were split across numerous Titans, each of which was like a self-contained floating island. So each time you would progress through the story and move on to the next area, you would see a cutscene or fast travel there. While this made sense for the world of Xenoblade 2, I think I prefer everything being connected — or at least a world in which I have the option to manually travel across.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2’s areas were overall much better than those in the first Xenoblade Chronicles, but the way Xenoblade Chronicles made you feel as you progressed was better. If we could combine these so that we can have that connected feeling to the world and some amazing map designs, then I think Xenoblade Chronicles 3 will be off to an amazing start. 

Gameplay

I know that the Xenoblade Chronicles games have their signature combat, which is a unique hybrid variant of active real-time and turn-based combat similar to that found in a typical MMO, and I enjoy it quite a lot actually. Saying that, though, I would like to see Xenoblade Chronicles 3 try something different. I would be fine if this game was more action RPG-like in its combat — or at least differs in some way to the titles that came before it. 

While I love Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and do genuinely like the gacha-style system implemented with the blades, I do hope that it stays in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and doesn’t make a return. I don’t think it would make much sense given what we currently know about Xenoblade Chronicles 3, plus I just don’t think it would be a great look to include a gambling element to the game given present resistance to things like microtransactions, NFTs and the like. 

Finally, being able to actively switch between party members during combat would be great. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 had the Blade system, where you could cycle between three equipped Blades in order to exploit enemy weaknesses, and that was fun.

However, I would love a system where we could constantly jump between our party members and make use of their unique combat abilities to exploit enemy weak points — or just mix up the way we play. Something similar to Final Fantasy VII Remake would be great, as I think that kind of system really helps to keep combat feeling fresh and fun — especially in a game like Xenoblade where cooldowns on abilities are a thing. Tired of waiting? Just switch to another character!

The protagonist… or protagonists

Both Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 2 are massively expensive, story-driven games that include a ton of different quests, side activities and customisation, and they ultimately come to a close in their main story somewhere nearing the 60-80 hour mark — more if you’re being thorough. I don’t have a problem with long games if the story is good; in fact, I get anxious as I approach the end of these games because I know that the experience is coming to a close. 

With that said, I’m looking at the trailer for Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and other sources of information on the game, learning about the characters and whatnot, and I’m seeing that both Noah (the black-haired human) and Mio (the silver-haired Gormotti catgirl) are listed as the protagonists. There are a few different angles to this, so let me try to get my feelings across as to why this both excites and spooks me a little bit.

The only reason I am slightly fearful of this is that when games have multiple POV characters, it often means that the game is intended to be played twice, once from each main character’s perspective. The game that comes to mind with something like this is Scarlet Nexus, and while it wasn’t a terrible game, I feel like playing through what are essentially the same story segments just from a different perspective could take away from Xenoblade Chronicles’ typically huge stories. 

On the other hand, I would be fine if the game is using these two protagonists to assist in showing how Xenoblade Chronicles 3 connects to the worlds of Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 2. I think it would be awesome to play through segments as Mio’s party exploring something related to the Bionis and Mechonis, and then play through events involving Noah and his journeying across one of the titans from Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

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What do you want to see in Xenoblade Chronicles 3? Let us know down in the comments, or via the usual social channels!

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