StarTopic Monolith Soft Development and Speculation |ST|

[Momo]

On a more serious note, we may get some developer comments about Xenoblade’s future in the Trinity Box OST at the end of the month. IIRC, they did something like that for the Xenoblade 2 OST booklet.

 

[eye0h]

AAAA PAGE 22

 

[Supreme Overlord]

Monolith Soft is currently developing the fifth game in the Xenoblade Chronicles series for the next generation of Nintendo hardware.

Xenoblade X returns for the NX Switch(Nintendo Xenoblade Switch) console, now prettier than ever.*

*optional Gamepad functionality for optimal gameplay requires a second Nintendo Switch Family system, sold separately

 

[chocolate_supra]

*optional Gamepad functionality for optimal gameplay requires a second Nintendo Switch Family system, sold separately

I actually genuinely want this, and have already discussed it in another thread or two.

 

[Dark Cloud]

Where’s the leaks?

 

[Supreme Overlord]

I actually genuinely want this, and have already discussed it in another thread or two.

I also think it would be a good function and have mentioned it a few times ... so these might have been the same conversations, even.

 

[chocolate_supra]

Where’s the leaks?

In the hull of the Lifehold Core

 

[Aostia82]

Where’s the leaks?

There actually is a meaty one at [REDACTED]

 

[MetalLord]

https://www.linkedin.com/in/taishi-ahagon-4413a949/details/experience/

weird,it was not zelda or xenoblade 3

 

[Momo]

https://www.linkedin.com/in/taishi-ahagon-4413a949/details/experience/

weird,it was not zelda or xenoblade 3

Link is either broken or hidden. What’s the context?

 

[Apopheniac]

Link is either broken or hidden. What’s the context?

A CG artist worked on environmental design for Monolith Soft in Tokyo from Sep 2022 to Jan 2023.

That's a short stint. I'm wondering if it's related to what the XCDE crowd has been doing.

 

[EtherPenguin]

A CG artist worked on environmental design for Monolith Soft in Tokyo from Sep 2022 to Jan 2023.

That's a short stint. I'm wondering if it's related to what the XCDE crowd has been doing.

The link's broken for me as well. Googling the name of the guy in the link, unless I got the wrong guy, it seems he was a stage modeler for Smash 4 and Ultimate and was on the staff for Super Mario 3D World. What would be odd about him not working on Zelda or Xenoblade?

 

[Apopheniac]

The link's broken for me as well. Googling the name of the guy in the link, unless I got the wrong guy, it seems he was a stage modeler for Smash 4 and Ultimate and was on the staff for Super Mario 3D World. What would be odd about him not working on Zelda or Xenoblade?

It's his LinkedIn profile, you need to be logged in.

Same guy as the one on MobyGames, I believe.

 

[Zeal543]

https://www.linkedin.com/in/taishi-ahagon-4413a949/details/experience/

weird,it was not zelda or xenoblade 3

Could be the next xenoblade

 

[EtherPenguin]

I'm not sure what to make of it. The timing lines up with what would be the bulk of FR's development. He's not credited on FR though so it probably wasn't that. But I'm also not sure the actual next Xenoblade/Takahashi game would be in full swing development enough to need outside help with environment design while FR was being developed. I know FR was missing some key people like the usual directors, but enough staff was still on it, notably the Art Director/lead map modeler Eiji Takahashi. I would imagine the next Takahashi game was only in pre-production while FR was being worked on.

Though I'm also not sure how big the crew of people who worked on DE but weren't re-incorporated back into the main team for 3 is and if they're even an actual team. Is it possible the Zelda team could've started on something while ToTK was in the polish phase?

 

[N75]

Reposting from the First Party thread:

Not sure when this was put up, but it was updated two days ago. Monolith is hiring a contract UI designer "for action game development".

案件 No.101843

株式会社モノリスソフト ゲームUIデザイナー 派遣社員 の求人 | 職種、年収、勤務地、雇用形態、こだわりなど、あなたの希望条件に合った求人を探すことができるページです。ゲーム業界の求人が豊富な業界専門の転職エージェント、IMAGICA GEEQ / イマジカジーク。

web.archive.org

The listing has since been removed. It was still there in mid-May.

Does the action game live? Will the next Xenoblade be more action-oriented? Was it just for Zelda DLC? All three UI designers for TotK were from EPD, but Monolith could potentially be more hands on with DLC if it exists. It would keep PG2 staff occupied while Fujibayashi and the other EPD leads are planning the next title.

 

[eye0h]

The listing has since been removed. It was still there in mid-May.

Does the action game live? Will the next Xenoblade be more action-oriented? Was it just for Zelda DLC? All three UI designers for TotK were all from EPD, but Monolith could potentially be more hands on with DLC if it exists. It would give PG2 staff occupied while Fujibayashi and the other EPD leads are planning the next title.

I needed this

 

[Deleted member 2]

https://www.linkedin.com/in/taishi-ahagon-4413a949/details/experience/

weird,it was not zelda or xenoblade 3

Can you please start providing screenshots instead of links to people's personal LinkedIn profiles? Or at least giving context to what you're talking about?

 

[chocolate_supra]

hoooooooly shit yall

Xenoblade Chronicles Shulk Monado Sword Pendant Necklace Charm - Etsy

This Pendant Necklaces item by Gudbrand has 871 favorites from Etsy shoppers. Ships from Estonia. Listed on Feb 28, 2024

www.etsy.com

I have a metal Chrono Trigger gate key that's got a similar vibe, I.. think I need this to go with it (my two favorite Takahashi games ).

 

[TheMoon]

hoooooooly shit yall

Xenoblade Chronicles Shulk Monado Sword Pendant Necklace Charm - Etsy

This Pendant Necklaces item by Gudbrand has 871 favorites from Etsy shoppers. Ships from Estonia. Listed on Feb 28, 2024

www.etsy.com

I have a metal Chrono Trigger gate key that's got a similar vibe, I.. think I need this to go with it (my two favorite Takahashi games ).

I made a mistake and scrolled down to "other items from this shop" and then again when I scrolled down to "similar items". Now I'm mapping the banks in the area, trying to figure out which has the best weakspots.

 

[ILikeFeet]

I made a mistake and scrolled down to "other items from this shop" and then again when I scrolled down to "similar items". Now I'm mapping the banks in the area, trying to figure out which has the best weakspots.

Monolith Soft Presents: Payday

 

[TheGreatLugia]

I'm not sure when the site updated, but the staff count is 258 employees as of June 2023.

 

[Instro]

Curious as to what is being said here. Google and DeepL are garbling it pretty badly.

 

[ILikeFeet]

Curious as to what is being said here. Google and DeepL are garbling it pretty badly.

sounds like he's still miffed at being denied BK3

 

[Smile]

Funny little idea bouncing around in my head; the artist PALOW, credited for designing the DLC hero Ino, also designed the final boss for Future Redeemed. Now, it might be nothing, probably is, but I wonder if Monolith wants to keep them on as an artist?

 

[TheMoon]

Curious as to what is being said here. Google and DeepL are garbling it pretty badly.

compare the deepl, google, and bing translations and you get the gist. grateful for the remaster and appreciative of the current bamco folks but has mixed feelings about the former execs who said no to bk3.

 

[Dark Cloud]

Let the man do BK3

 

[Supreme Overlord]

sounds like he's still miffed at being denied BK3

As should we all.

Let the man do BK3

So say we all. Origins worked really well storywise in how it connected with and reframed the original, and it would be neat to see how a third one might do likewise. Beyond that, I just really liked the two that exist.*

But, really, might as well let him make about whatever he wants. I do think it would be neat to see what his Mother project would have been. Just file off the serial numbers and make it something new.

*(On that note, I keep thinking I missed the Switch release, but then realizing I haven't. Did we ever learn for certain how optimal the physical release is?)

 

[Dardan Sandiego]

Let the man do BK3

He can always quit at Monolith Soft/Nintendo and go back to (Bandai) Namco

 

[ILikeFeet]

He can always quit at Monolith Soft/Nintendo and go back to (Bandai) Namco

so they can laugh him out of the room?

 

[brainchild]

Curious as to what is being said here. Google and DeepL are garbling it pretty badly.

Bing Chat Translation:

But, well, I’m grateful for the remaster of Baten Kaitos, and I have nothing but gratitude for the current Bandai Namco staff, but I have a complicated feeling that I want the old Namco team, who retired after opposing the sequel and saying shitty things, to apologize on their knees.

I then asked it to improve the coherency of the translation and this is what it generated:

I appreciate the remaster of Baten Kaitos, and I’m thankful to the current Bandai Namco staff for their work. However, I also feel conflicted because I wish the former Namco team, who retired after rejecting the idea of a sequel and badmouthing it, would apologize sincerely.

 

[Dark Cloud]

That bing chat translation lmao

 

[chocolate_supra]

Didn't notice this before

 

[Supreme Overlord]

He can always quit at Monolith Soft/Nintendo and go back to (Bandai) Namco

Somehow I'm not sure exactly how much more likely that makes a theoretical opportunity for him to develop a third game.

so they can laugh him out of the room?

So they can apologize on their knees.

That initial translation is incredible. I kind of love it.

 

[brainchild]

That bing chat translation lmao

So they can apologize on their knees.

That initial translation is incredible. I kind of love it.

It was honestly so hilarious that I knew I had to post the initial translation in all its glory

That was purely the GPT-4 model inside Bing Chat (creative mode, instructed to translate without using search), BTW. The Bing translator tool is simply not as good. Alternatively, the GPT-4 model in ChatGPT would probably generate something of similar quality to the Bing Chat translation. All the other machine translators pale in comparison.

EDIT:

For curiosity's sake, I ran this through ChatGPT's GPT-4 model and I think it's the most balanced out of the machine translations available, as I didn't have to ask it to clarify the translation after it was generated (it provided that supplemental information automatically):

The sentence is in Japanese and roughly translates to:

"However, well, I'm grateful for the remaster of [game title, likely "Vaten"], and I have nothing but gratitude for the current Bandai Namco staff. But it's a complicated feeling to want the old Namco team, who are now basically retired and who were vocally against a sequel, to bow down in apology."

The text seems to express mixed feelings: gratitude towards the current staff of Bandai Namco for their work on remastering a game, while also having complicated feelings about the older Namco team who were against making a sequel.

Machine translations have come a long way!

 

[thesillyfellaelde]

Sorry if this is gonna be a bit hard to read but it's mostly rambling and speculation about the Monolith Soft Action rpg.

So it's been 4 months now since the 6+ months contract job for UI for an action game was put out by Monolith Soft and I want to re-examine it as I believe its listing holds some pretty interesting questions.

案件 No.101843

株式会社モノリスソフト ゲームUIデザイナー 派遣社員 の求人 | 職種、年収、勤務地、雇用形態、こだわりなど、あなたの希望条件に合った求人を探すことができるページです。ゲーム業界の求人が豊富な業界専門の転職エージェント、IMAGICA GEEQ / イマジカジーク。

web.archive.org

On April 13 this job listing for an action game UI was posted, practically the day Xenoblade 3 wrapped up works and 1 month before TOTK's release. If I am to understand the post correctly, the end period for this recruitment is 2023/10/13, which marks 6 months after the recruitment was posted and would mean that at its latest the game that is being worked on here could be worked on all the way up to April next of next year.


So the question is, is this for the TOTK Expansion or for a new game made by Monolith Soft. Unless the TOTK Expansion had drastic UI design overhauls, my bet is that this is for the action RPG that's been in development for a while. I think the starting period for this recruitment lines up a bit too conviniently with Future Redeemed wrapping up development and TOTK wrapping up development, as it was posted practically everyone in the Tokyo branch had finished working on their projects, and now they're only left with the Expansion for TOTK which will only need some Division 2 members at most, so what are the other 100s of employees doing now?

My thought is that there's probably been a 3rd team at Monolith Soft who've worked on the action RPG ever since it began recruitment in 2017/2018. And now that there's a lot of employees free they're gonna be working on polishing up the action RPG and getting it ready for release sometime next year or the year after (if we assume that the latest the contracted UI person could be working on it is april next year, and that when that work finishes up the game will be polished a bunch). Of course some of the team will be getting ready for the next Xenoblade game with Takahashi, but until then the Tokyo branch will be largely focused on tghe action RPG. One key Monolith Soft staff that's been missing from credits ever since then of course has been Yasuyuki Honne, one of the main people behind the Baten Kaitos series and key artist for the teams games ever since Xenogears. Ever since Xenoblade 2 (where he did some of the artwork, think even making one of the first concept artworks for the game, like he also did the first concept art for the Bionis and Mechonis with a sculpture of them) he's been relegated to Special Thanks in a few games here and there, the latest one being Tears of The Kingdom. Them not being credited isn't always a sign that they're working on other games behind the scenes, since they did art for Xenoblade 1 but none for X, but there's a pretty good chance that they are helming the action RPG if it exists. Hence why they haven't been credited for any games since Xenoblade 2, which released right around the corner of the action RPG recruitment going up.

So the 6+ months contract isn't going to be for the TOTK expansion unless it has huge overhauls, and even if that happened I imagine that hiring would've happened alongside the Zelda hiring and not a month before TOTK releases. TOTK already has UI designers and a lot of work put into the UI so whatever overhauls will be made in the Expansion (if any at all honestly, I kinda dont expect it to be as ambitious as Future Redeemed or Torna, but that's just me lowering my expectations to how the BOTW expansion turned out ) will be based off of and iterated on the UI that already exists.

I'm wondering why the development of this game has taken so long and if it's because of development difficulties, or if they've just needed a lot of time for R&D to get everything in place when full-scale development starts. Like how Xenoblade 2 started development durning X's development, with a smaller team prepearing work for it while X was being worked on, I imagine the action RPG is similairly being worked on in the background. Unlike Xenoblade 2 though, which caused a bit of a development hell for some at Monolith due to them being understaffed and short on time, the team behind the action RPG has had a lot of good time. If the game comes out in a year and a half I'm guessing full-scale development already started a while ago, so maybe it actually started right after Xenoblade 3 released. So right now it may be anything from a year and a half into its development cycle to 2 years, with 1 year of having the extra manpower from the rest of the Tokyo divisions.
But yeah, it's hard to say whether the early years of its development was just R&D or if they tried starting development but issues arose. What they were hiring for in August of 2017 were programers and planners iirc, and then for May 2018 they were hiring for modellers, map/level design, animators, programers, game planners, technical artists, and more, which to me sounds like a full on team. So by then maybe R&D was done. Much like how the recruitment for Divison 1 right after Torna released was hiring for Xenoblade 3 (and Xenoblade DE) had Xenoblade 3 turn out after 3.5 years of development, matching what Takahashi has said about how long their development cycles typically take in some interviews (3 to 3.5 years), I'm guessing that the action RPG would've taken around similair amount of time or a year or 2 more since it's something completely new for them.

Well here we are, 6 years since the recruitment first went of and 5 years since it started its "urgent" recruit for the project. I wouldn't be surprised if halfway through development, after discussions with Nintendo it switched platforms and got a bit of a restart in development to expand its scope. Now that TOTK has released and the new console is on the horizon, it could be a good game to scratch the open world game itch on the Switch 2 when the next Zelda isn't going to be ready for a good while.
Here's my speculated timeline for how the development has looked like and what we'll see in the coming years:

2017 August: Reqruitment page is put up and hiring starts for the action RPG, pre production is done.

2018 May: Full-scale Development is readying up and an urgent recruit for talent is put out. Aimed to be complete and released sometime in 2022/2023.

2020 rolls around: Development of many games are evaluated and the release scheduals for them are changed around if necessary. Nintendo takes a look at its big open world games in the line up (Xenoblade 3, TOTK, action RPG) and decides that these games would conflict with each other if released to closely to each other. With the development of games taking such a hit these open world games could be easily affected, and their release schedual made uncertain so they decide that the action RPG can be pulled back and turned into a Next Gen title instead while TOTK and Xenoblade 3 remain switch titles. The team helps with the development with TOTK and Xenoblade 3 in the meanwhile.

2021: Drake specs and capabilities get finalized internally at Nintendo and next-gen titles for Switch 2 begin development. Action RPG restarts development for the Switch 2 and R&D is done with the new tech and capabilities that comes with it.

2022 August: Xenoblade 3 finishes development and half the Xenoblade teams joins the action RPG development while the other half works on the Expansion exclusivly.

2023 April: Future Redeemed finishes up development and majority of Division 1 shifts to working on the action RPG. Contract work for UI is put out and expected to be worked on at the latest October 2023 to April 2024. At that phase of development the full-scale development is nearing completion, and when the UI is finished the gameplay systems are layed out the game mostly enters a phase of polishing into a final game.


October-December 2024: Game gets released

 

[Dark Cloud]

@thesillyfellaelde

I read most of your post lol. TOTK dlc or expansion is not a given. I’m 50/50 on if it’ll happen. I think if we don’t see it by the Game Awards it won’t happen and if it does I agree there’s not going to be big UI changed.

For the Action RPG I’ve been predicting we will see this game announced at the Switch 2’s presentation. It’ll be a new IP. I think we kind of agree.

 

[ika]

2022 August: Xenoblade 3 finishes development and half the Xenoblade teams joins the action RPG development while the other half works on the Expansion exclusivly.

Nah, I don't think they would stop planning the next Xenoblade game after XC3, unless that RPG is a new massive Xenoblade 4/X2 in the vein of Starfield with a Takahashi flavour that justifies this long development cycle (I don't agree that there should be a "dev hell" necessarily).

They said in the past that Production Team 1 (aka Xenoblade team) was currently divided in three sub-teams (at the time of XCDE publishing): one for XC3, one for XCDE and other supporting both. This doesn't count Production 2 (aka Zelda and supposedly Action game) or Kyoto Studio (external support and assets).

After XCDE wrapping up, that sub-team could potentially started XC3FR (if it was not in development by the main XC3 team in parallel as I suspect going by how quickly it released compared to Torna) or even pre-production of XC4 or porting XCX.

The third team would be helping XC3/FR, and that pre-production or the porting of XCX...

I can't see main Production Team 1 (Takahashi) sub-team doing other thing that the next evolution of Xenoblade, again, unless that fabled action RPG is indeed that next Xenoblade that needed twice the usual development time because new engine or exceeding all previous scope and ambition.

 

[Smile]

There was a piece of concept art of Ethel marked from 2018, probably around Torna was either in development or finished. I know most of us in here assume as much but that likely means the next Xenoblade has already seen some ideas/art/what-have-you laid out for it. Granted there's always the chance that's not true, but their dev cycle seems pretty consistent.

 

[thesillyfellaelde]

There was a piece of concept art of Ethel marked from 2018, probably around Torna was either in development or finished. I know most of us in here assume as much but that likely means the next Xenoblade has already seen some ideas/art/what-have-you laid out for it. Granted there's always the chance that's not true, but their dev cycle seems pretty consistent.

Takahashi has stated that for a short period of time there was technically three games in development at the same time, with Torna alongside Xenoblade DE and Xenoblade 3. Maybe we could try and make a timeline for the development of the Xenoblade games since Xenoblade 2's release to see how they could potentially be going from here. This is all speculation on my part.

April 2017: Small team starts pre-production of Torna while the main team is hard at work at the base game.

December 2017: Xenoblade 2 wraps up development and most of the team moves over to work on Torna.

April 2018: Takahashi and Monolith has a meeting with Nintendo and proposes that they remaster Xenoblade 1 for the Switch and proposes their plans for Xenoblade 3. As well as the plans for the action RPG, which gets greenlit alongside the 2 Xenoblade projects.

May 2018: Pre-production is started for Xenoblade 3 and Xenoblade DE. From May to September, 3 projects are being worked on at the same time

September 2018: Torna finishes development and the team joins pre-production of Xenoblade DE and Xenoblade 3. 3 teams are set up, one to work exclusivly on Xenoblade 3, one to work on Xenoblade DE, and one to support the development of both with assets that are going to be shared between Xenoblade 3 and Xenoblade DE.

October 2018: Takahashi and Monolith Soft puts out a recruitment for the Xenoblade series and the next Xenoblade game. They specifically want programers and technical artists as full-scale development is being prepeared, while the artists they hire for are more for the future of the series (as pre-production has already been mostly wrapped up by now. Some staff from Divison 2 of Monolith move over to Division 1 and some from Division 1 to Division 2, the core team is being set up and awaiting the new recruits. This is done now to establish the core teams for both Divison 1 and Division 2 moving forward with the next projects, giving the Division 2 team 4 years to work on TOTK full-sclae.

January 2019: Full-scale development of Xenoblade 3 and Xenoblade DE start. The game is planned to release in December 2021.

April 2019: New recruits have been fully assembled into Divison 1 and move along with full-scale development.b Monolith Soft puts out a recruit for Division 2's Zelda team (in March 27th, so essentially April) and plans to integrate new recruits in Division 2 by October 2019. The plan for TOTK is to release it in 2022 and have

March 2020: It becomes appearent that development of games are going to slow down in the shift to remote work from home

May 2020: Xenoblade DE meets its original planned release date but takes a bit of a hit durning its polishing phase. The Xenoblade DE team and Divison 1 support team moves to work on Xenoblade 3 fully.

August 2021: Insiders familiar with Xenoblade 3 states that the game is going to have returning characters and aims to have many characters and assets on screen at once. The game enters a phase of being heavily optimized to run well on the Switch, the development of the game happens at a bit of a slower pace. The game is delayed 1 year from its original Devember 2021 release date, coming out December 2022 at its latest. The game is still mostly complete by Devember 2021 but a lot of work has to go into polishing the game.

October 2021: Pre-production for Future Redeemed is started.

December 2021: The game is locked into a September 2022 release as progress on optimization and polish is smoothing out.

Febuary 2022: The game is revealed with a September 2022 release date, slated to come out in 7 months.

March 2022: Behind the scenes at Nintendo it becomes appearent that Splatoon 3 will not be optimized enough for its summer 2022 release, which was initially announced as a summer 2022 release depending on how much progress was being made on the game, making it able to be released anywhere from May to July. Maybe originally slated for June 2023, the game gets a 3 month delay to optimize and polish up the game further. Seeing how Monolith Soft's work on Xenoblade 3 has progressed at a good pace, Monolith gets asked if they're able to get the game out earlier than announced, and the decision is made to have the game come out right before august to space out Splatoon 3 and Xenoblade 3's releases as much as they can.

April 2022: 2 months after the September 2022 release date announcement, we learn that they've changed the release date to July 2022. So we can assume that it was a decision that was made in March. The game enters final optimizations and polish, half of Division 1 moves to full production of Future Redeemed and the other half polishes up the main game for release.

August 2022: Development of Xenoblade 3's main game wraps up and most of the other half of Divisoon 1 joins Future Redeemed's development. After the completion of Xenoblade 3 18 contracted Monolith Soft employees who signed up for Xenoblade 3 leave Monolith and the people who stay in Division 1 will be a part of the next Xenoblade game. Here comes the speculation on how the team in Division 1 has been divided, and what they've been working on since then. My guess is 40% moved to supporting Future Redeemed's development, and the other 40% has moved to supporting the action RPG team. While a small team under Takahashi's lead is setting up plans for the next Xenoblade game. Think the freelance artist that joined from September 2022 to January 2023 comes from a shift in development phase for the action RPG after Xenoblade 3 finished development and more people joined the team to support it.

October 2022: Plans are being drawn up for the next Xenoblade game by Takahashi's team while work on the action game and Future Redeemed continues. Perhaps even Xenoblade X DE has been pitched.

January 2023: Future Redeemed enters final polish for release.

April 2023: Future Redeemed wraps up development and core teams start being established for the next projects. A recruitment is put out for a UI artist for the action game, which is aimed to release September 2024 for the Switch 2. Pre-production for Xenoblade X2 and Xenoblade X DE start and only needs a smaller core team until full-scale production starts.

October 2023: UI artist is intergrated into the team at their latest and is planned to work on the action game up until April 2024/when the game enters polishing phase. Maybe in October 2023 Monolith will put out a recruitment again for the next Xenoblade project.

January 2024: Full-scale production for Xenoblade X2 and Xenoblade X DE start. Some staff from Division 1 that has been helping out on the action RPG move over to Takahashi's Xenoblade teams. Xenoblade X DE is planned to release in April 2025 (lining up with X's 10 year anniversary), and Xenoblade X2 December 2026/April 2027.

April 2024: Action RPG enters polishing phase and more division 1 members join the Xenoblade team's full-scale development.

 

[LitKai]

Takahashi...

A lot of speculative text

Better do something else than speculate on game developments, I say this from experience.

April 2018: Takahashi and Monolith has a meeting with Nintendo and proposes that they remaster Xenoblade 1 for the Switch and proposes their plans for Xenoblade 3. As well as the plans for the action RPG, which gets greenlit alongside the 2 Xenoblade projects.

The "special" (action) game was already in the plans since 2016 at least, which means Nintendo gave them the green light already in 2016 otherwise they wouldn't have put the announcement.

The special page has been there since January 16, 2017. But I'm not sure if the special hiring page was from the beginning for the action game or if it was a general page, because if you look at it, it looked like a general page and then it changed. The thing is, there was also a general recruitment page.

All that is known is that the action game has been in development since 2017.

 

[ILikeFeet]

I suspect the action game is a bigger initiative for MonolithSoft than we think. Probably a means to have a third pillar than just Xenoblade and Zelda. With Xenoblade 3 in planning at the time as well (at least pitched), the action game got put on the backburner. Since we know Drake started planning in 2019, it might have gotten pushed to it around that time

 

[Dardan Sandiego]

The Monolith action game saga has been a trip and a half, I've lost track of what stage we're in. Are we back or is it over?

 

[TheMoon]

There was a piece of concept art of Ethel marked from 2018, probably around Torna was either in development or finished. I know most of us in here assume as much but that likely means the next Xenoblade has already seen some ideas/art/what-have-you laid out for it. Granted there's always the chance that's not true, but their dev cycle seems pretty consistent.

I mean, yea that's literally what concept art is for. Feeling out ideas for a project. Concept artists don't have much to do when a current main project is in the wrap-up phase so just assume they're doing their job (which means drawing concept art for upcoming things which may or may not get greenlit).

I find it a bit odd that this sort of thing is often presented as surprising or a big revelation. Gamedev takes a long time. Especially at this level.

I absolutely guarantee you they were working on rough ideas/concepts for Xenoblade 4 (or whatever they're pitching next) over a year ago already.

 

[pachamelon]

Monolith wants to hire an animator of people, creatures and... mecha.

The next Xenoblade is already underway

 

[eye0h]

 

[TheGreatLugia]

 

[TheMoon]

mind posting a summary or machine translation if you share things that are entirely in Japanese? we can all go do that ourselves but why not just include it to make the thing readable by the majority of people in here.

anyhow, copy pasted the deepl translated version of the tweet here:

I supervised the remastered version and new pub illustrations. I also supervised to make sure that the changes were not out of keeping with the worldview. I did not want to make any changes or additions to the artwork, but I still think it is an RPG that offers a magical experience. If you have any questions, please contact BANNAM [Bandai Namco].

 

[Dardan Sandiego]

I'm just gonna decide that the twitter translation is more accurate and try to find this Mr. Burnham.

 

[chocolate_supra]

I'm just gonna decide that the twitter translation is more accurate and try to find this Mr. Burnham.

Pictured here responding to all the questions Honne is sending his way: