Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Japan Expo presentation French to English Translation

Here in an English translation of the French commentator at Japan Expo for Xenoblade Chronicles 2. It is very quick and dirty.

https://youtu.be/EP2dXtfRDcI?t=251

 "Rex will be our main character. Rex is a driver. As such, he can use blades. As you can see, there are two characters to his left and right giving him energy. We will We will now enter combat. If you are close to an enemy, you will attack automatically. But unlike in Xenoblade, he doesn't attack when he moves. See? When he moves around the enemy, he doesn't attack, which adds a tactical element to the game.

 Then, I will ask you to pay attention to the palette below on the right. This paricular one is availiable when she had the blade "Pyra" equiped.These are arts on the right that will fill up automatically as the character attacks. Once charged, you can use them. Now we'll use an elemental art. As you can see, we have to succeed a quick time event. It does fire damage because Pyra's element is fire. The blade takes damage on the edge and tip. There are crystals that we'll discuss later, we just want you te remember that we picked it up. We get them by defeating a an enemy.

*Gets into fight, repeats how arts charge* *time skip* In the process, you will obtains more materials and objects. Now we are leaving the cavern in which we were, and now you can see a city in the distance and we will stop here to show you in what universe this world happens in. Here, you can see clouds around us, and the bulk of the game happens on the body of a giant. From here you can see the head of the giant we're on. You can also see that is is living creature. Now we'll go to the city, but for that, we'll add more members to our team. For now, we'll add Mia and Taro. These two characters will also be equiped with a blade which is shown under their portrait. Furthermore, we'll also show you what we can do with crystals that we can obtain in the game. when a crystal enters in resonance with a driver., it will materialize into a blade. We'll take the action. Now you'll see that this crystal materialized into a blade. He's named Huga. And now you can see that there are stats on screen that is attached to the blade. There's attack and such, but there's also the type of weapons, like "canon" in this case, which is long distance. There's also an element attached to the blade. It is wind in this case. *Reiterates Pyra is a fire blade goes to menu* As you can see,, each blade have their stats on the right. Each blade is different. Differen type, element, and they add their stats to the driver it is equiped on. There will be man blades in the game, but we're only showing three in this demo. There are two kinds of blade you can get. Sort that you'll get as part of the story and art an integral part of it. Pyra is an example here. And the other blades we have, which are Fudor and Huga are blades you can create from crystals that you find.

Now, you can see two new drivers on screen, each followed by a blade *After reaching restful waters* So for this demo, we'll mostly focus on the gameplay of this new Xenoblade, we won't talk about story details. Now, you can see enormous plains before us. In pure Xneoblade tradition, lots of fauna, plants, creatures you can face in battle. There are also multiple levels as you can see (he means heights in this instance) *Approaches beasts* As you can see, they have different levels. Depending on your level, some you'll want to fight or avoid. Now, the first thing I want to show you is that Taro is an aggro character. There is a red circle around him that indicates that he is drawing attention and attacks from enemies. This allows you to position yourself in a position where arts do more damage. On the right, you can see an art that does more damage in the back, and one that does more damage on the side. There is always a circle if you sued the art in the right conditions. You can also see that blades charge automitically during combat. There is also a prompt that appears, which shows you can use an attack from Taro. This corresponds to his elemental attack. That means that Taro has also used enough attacks to charge his elemental art. The player can then use the art by pressing a button.

*Reiterates button layout* Each time you change blades, you gain access to a new arts palette on the right, letting you use radically different arts. which are different. We will continue the fight, to show you again that they charge their arts using normal attacks. Over time, blades will charge up, then you can switch to another on the left, and when you switch blades, their arts will be fully charged.

We'll now go to the city. In the process, we'll show you some enemies. As you can see, the world is huge, tons of creatures. A difference between this and Xenoblade is that you don't know if a creature is hostile or not. There used to be a red eye showing a monster would go after you for example, but the developpers removed this information so that players could discover their behaviour on their own. Here you can see a level 81 monster. Since we are level 7, we won't fight him, or we'll instantly lose. A level 16 enemy saw us, and since our level is lower, we'll escape to the city. We're in the village now. Like in Xenoblade, there are bubble around the heads of villagers. You may complete quests for them. Again, we won't get into quests today. We'll focus on gameplay and combat.

In the back, you can see a board with wanted posters featuring two characters in our party, and there is a driver looking at it. We'll fight this driver. This driver also has a blade giving her energy. Just to show you that you will encounte rother drivers, and it is possible to fight in cities, unlike other Xenoblades.

*repeats stuff. *time skip* *Seems to be finishing a sentence* We'll see how the city is looking like. It is built around the head of the giant. It is large tree trunks and branches as well as roots that are keeping the structures in place around the giant's head. Here, we can see a military vessel that tied itself to the city. It is a new living creature. Here, we'll enter a military base. You can see there are other people that we cna potentially fight.

We'll avoid them for now to get at this end of this corridor to fight against a slightly stronger enemy who will allow us to use the entire palette of movement we have at our disposal. Here is the enemy in question, you can see he has a more detailed design. *I am not retranslating the entire explanation on combat they gave us last time*. The combo system from Xenoblade chronicles comes back. Break lets you do a bit more damage, then there is topple to knock them down, and launch. Furthermore, elmental arts can be charged at a higher level. On the right, you can see a number 1 on the palette art. It be charged to a higher level. *Charges it to level 2* Now we'll keep using our arts, switch to another blade with fully charged arts, until we reach a level 3 or 4 to unleash a stronger elemental art than we've seen earlier in the demo. Now, we're almost level 3 *reaches it*. There are two QTE prompts on screne instead now.Becaus eit was charged, it does more damage and has a longer lasting effect. *Repeats himself again* Pyra has a potion art that lets you heal up. Again, if an ally is down, press A next to them to bring them back,"

Game design Analysis: Difficulty settings

Calling anything “bad game design” is a bit touchy since a certain design decision might be inadvisable in some circumstances, but be the right thing to do in others. For instances, many role playing games have very slow starts, and that is often considered a cardinal sin of the genre, but in a series like Persona, the slow start is actually a good design choice as it serves the purpose of presenting a cast of characters that is integral to the story as well as setting the general vibe of the game’s world. However, there are a few things in game design that simply cannot be excused in any way. One of those irredeemable design choices is unlockable difficulty settings.

To better understand the issues tied with such a feature, it is important to understand how difficulty and skill is inherently tied in the equation. Each person begins their play through at a certain skill level. One person could be an experienced gamer who has played similar games in the past, or just be naturally skillful at games in that genre. The other might be a newcomer, or simply not be very experienced at this particular type of game. Each player starts at a different skill level and with a different baggage of experiences and traits. This variety in player aptitude is something that can be simply known as “base skill”.

The other element to take into consideration is the rate at which individual skills are built. While there is no such thing as a hard skill ceiling where a player has reached perfection and can no longer improve, players do go through very different learning curves. Some learn very quickly, while others learn at a much slower rate. Some might reach roadblocks that others won’t, and some might breeze through everything. This individual difference in learning speed and potential is what I often call “Skill growth”.

Each individual starts at a different base skill and have a different skill growth curve. As such, someone could already be very highly skilled but still have much room to grow, one could alternatively have high skill, but have less room to grow. In Fire Emblem terms, that would be the equivalent of Oiffey and a Jagen. In other words, there are two continuums to consider:

Low base skill <---------------> High base skill

Low skill growth <--------------> High skill growth

Anyone can lie anywhere on those two continuums for an endless amount of combinations of skill varieties. Furthermore, that is only a per-game basis thing. An individual might place in far different places on those two continuums depending on their past gaming experiences and familiarity with certain features for example.

With all of these things taken into consideration, it is safe to assume that a game with a single arbitrary difficulty setting is bound to not be capable of fully capturing the challenge needs of every single player. If a game is too hard for someone to grasp at first, it might be hard for them to keep going long enough for them to understand its appeal. Furthermore, if a game is too easy for a player, it might become a slog to play through and interest might be lost. To account for that, many developers have added multiple difficulty settings, which can go a long way to aid people of different base skills getting the challenge they are seeking. However, this method does not take skill growth into account. Perhaps someone will start on normal but eventually grow to surpass this difficulty mode’s challenge level. Maybe someone will begin his adventures of hard, but the challenge will rise faster than they can keep up with. In both of these cases, difficulties set in stone would no longer be adapted to their current skill level. One potential solution would be to simply allow players to switch settings on the fly, or something akin to the Kid Icarus Uprising mechanic that actually suggests incremental increases or reductions in difficulty levels based on your performance.

The biggest mistake that developers make with difficulty settings, however, is making them into unlockable rewards. Let us take this scenario as an example: “An enthusiastic Legend of Zelda fan who has played every single prior games in the series decided to pick up “A Link Between Worlds” for the first time. Let us call him “Sir Armando the third” for simplicity’s sake. Sir Armando has quite a bit of experience with the Zelda series and sees that he can only start up the game on normal mode. Sir Armando decided to play through the game and beats it with little to no effort, wishing he could access Hero mode on his first play through. When he finally unlocks it, our dapper aristocrat begins his Hero mode play through and spits out his tea in despair. “My word!” he exclaims as he realizes that he is breezing through the game once again. Wiping his tea-stained silk garments, as well as the warm tears streaming down his face, he comes to this dark realization: “My skill with this game has grown on my first run through! Hero mode has been rendered pointless! Oh, misery, why could I not pick it when it would have once mattered!”.

Locking a difficulty setting only serves on purpose: To frustrate highly skilled players like Sir Armando the third into playing through a game that is far too easy for them, only to unlock a mode that may have become too easy as a result of their accumulated experience. It also makes the initial experience of such players so uneventful that it negatively colours their initial experience. It makes them wish that they had experienced the game’s plot while they were having fun with the gameplay as opposed to wanting to rush through it to get to what they consider to be the “good part”. Locked difficulty settings are one of the only features in games that I can safely say, without a shadow of a doubt and without exception, is bad design.

Game Mechanic analysis: Villager Loop

Origin: Fire Emblem: Gaiden.

In Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, many iconic mechanics from Fire Emblem Gaiden, the game it is based after, we kept intact. This includes what could possibly have been a glitch that was then elevated as a feature in the remake: “The Villager loop”.

To make it happen, you need a male character that is either a villager, or anywhere in the Mercenary, Myrmidon and Dread Fighter line of promotion. On that male character reaches the Dread Fighter class, he can eventually promote again to villager, essentially resetting him to being at a lower class, but keeping all of the stats gains he has gotten throughout his previous level ups. You are then left with a powerful villager that you can keep leveling up. This procures several advantages.

The first is quite easy to understand: You can potentially level up an infinite amount of times, and eventually max out your stats if you so desire. It also means that if there is a character that you really enjoy using but that gets unfortunately handicapped by poor RNG, you can still salvage them. It also implies that if you are going for perfect stats, you don’t have to reset constantly as it means that if you play enough, you’ll eventually reach your goal. You can advance through the story without worrying about messing with the RNG.

The second implication involves class-changing. By levelling up to a villager class, you essentially start your unit over from a class that can promote into every class available for that gender. That means that you can fine tune your team and change their base class, but in order to do so, you need a bit of commitment, which isn’t a bad thing. It is a long term reward for sticking with the character for a while. It removes a bit of the punishment of bad RNG. Since you are no longer are limited by a set amount of possible level ups, there is always a way to recover from simple bad luck.

This feature is quite fantastic, and it would be one of the great things to bring over to future titles. While you would need to make it a general mechanic that applies to all class lines and both genders, it would allow players to play through the games normally without worrying about stat gains as much. A bad level up would be nothing more than a setback that you can easily recover from. A terrible unit could be made good with effort. That alone allows players to go through the game without grinding too much and then, if they want to after the game is over, they can do it. It is essentially a perfect middle ground for those who like to optimize and those who want to go through the story. When the two desires conflict in one person, if can be a detriment to the experience. If one wants perfect level ups, they they will have to restart over and over again, and they will also reach certain chapters with units that are far too powerful. The villager loop is essentially an assurance. It is a tap on the shoulder that tells you “Don’t worry about it, just keep playing”.

This small glitch from the NES era has turned into quite the fun and important mechanic. I understand the appeal of playing with limited resources, but here is the advantage of the villager loop: “It is easy to ignore”. One could play through the entire game, reach max level and choose to not loop a unit back to villager if they so choose. It respects the player’s playstyle choice, no matter which one appeals to him most.

Dark Souls: Lore through gameplay

While few would argue otherwise, Dark Souls has a treasure trove of hidden lore scattered about in every facet of its design. Whether it is item descriptions, level design, or seemingly benign utterances, there is a lot to learn about a world that doesn’t outright force its story upon the player. Dark Souls is a series that shows but doesn’t tell when it comes to the narrative.

The first non-playable character that you will inevitably meet who isn’t immediately hostile is the crestfallen warrior, whose depressed, snarky and dejected tone and posture sets the tone for the narrative. At that point in the game, he is clearly stronger and more experienced than you are, yet, he seems to have given up his quest, the same quest you are about to undertake. One might think that the crestfallen warrior exists only to inspire a sense of dread in the player, but that is in fact the least important aspect to him.

In this game, you are cursed to be reanimated as an undead every time you die. However, even as an undead, you retain enough humanity to still be yourself, to continue pushing forward and try to survive in these unforgiving lands. Your body is rotting away, but your mind still remains. However, there are undead who have lost their humanity completely and who have completely lost themselves to the curse. Those are called hollow, as in “empty”, devoid of all humanity. At first, the trigger for this may seem unclear. Many posit that dying repeatedly while not replenishing your humanity makes you hollow, and it is told narratively that you become closer to being hollow every time you die, but then again, you can die an infinite amount of times and never become hollow. Then what is the trigger? The Crestfallen warrior holds the key to the answer.

For most of the game, his appearance is quite human. He has clearly been capable of maintaining his humanity this entire time, and he hasn’t been repeatedly dying. Yet, at one point, he attacks you, silently, not saying a single word. He still has a clearly human complexion, so he has not recently died, and yet he acts like a typical hollow would. What it seems to be is that death was not the reason for his hollowing… giving in to despair was. In other words, a hollow is someone who has completely given up hope.

It stands to reason that if this is the case, then it explains why the player never sees their avatar go fully hollow. As long as they keep playing, keep moving forward with determination, they can never go hollow. The hollowing process applies to the player, not the character. When they grow frustrated and start to give up, that is when begin to hollow. When they put the game down, that is when they become fully hollow. It is symbolism for having given up hope, letting the game win. That is the fate of all who lose to Dark Souls. They become the next crestfallen warriors.