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sc94597 on 14 April 2015
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Hynad said:
sc94597 said:

Honestly, a mix of what I wrote was opinion and assertions. You can ignore the opinions quite fine, as they are just that, but what about the assertions? Do you know of a 7th generation JRPG which properly incorporated the element of exploration with either a semi or fully open-world? Was it not a standard belief that JRPG's are inherently (to the core of their genre) linear with respect to WRPG's? The bolded seems to me that you have nothing to say nor contribute, but you want to leave with an unsubstantiated characterization of a person with an opposing view (see: Ad Hominem) in order to look like you do have something to contribute, but you are too good to provide it. For that matter, which person is better characterized by hautiness and "thick glasses"? 

Remember, you were the one who posted things like this, "You obviously don't play many JRPGs." I persistently remained polite despite that. 


Ni No Kuni, White Knight Chronicles, Tales of Vesperia/Xillia, Star Ocean 4, and the list goes on.

You choose to take one aspect that Xenoblade did well, and forget to see what other games also did. Even if on a smaller scale, or in a different manner. Xenoblade appears to be open world, but its world is empty and serves mostly as a tranversal method, just like any other RPG, even if it doesn't load as often as them. 

Tales of Xillia had a decent semi-open world similar to FFXII's, but if you thought Xenoblade's world was only a "transversal method" or "is empty" I don't see how you would think Xillia's was anything more. 

Ni No Kuni and Vesperia had traditional world map systems, which while fun to explore, do not have the same scale of what I was talking about. I won't comment on WKC or SO4 because I didn't finish them for reasons other than this particular topic, but I'll take your word that they did eventually do exploration well. 

Anyway, I wasn't only talking about the scale of the world, but the level of detail and how one interacts with it in whichever way they choose by purely exploring, by doing side-quests, or as you seem to have done - just going from point to point. The main purpose of Xenoblade's world, besides travel, was exploration. There were secret areas to find which awarded you with great views of places that you had already visited. For example, I can see the Sword Valley from Colony 6, and Colony 6 from the Sword Valley, with a level of detail so great that I can point out particular locations and buildings. When certain events transform the Sword Valley, it is reflected in my view from Colony 6. The world changed when that event happened. I always see the Mechonis looming accross the vast ocean, and vice-verse with the Bionis. Within the context of a large area I can find secret paths to connect places I have visited before. Furthermore, certain quests made me go back to areas I felt I explored extensively and gave me rewards (such as new skills for a main character) for visiting a new ruin with a backstory (built by Giants) and researching it. Just something small like being rewarded experience for exploration creates an atmosphere that isn't only about travel, as you say. Furthermore, each populated area had an affinity system which allowed you to become more invested in the activities of the NPC's. You also saw connections between named NPC's in these areas, whom you would never have thought to be connected, and they made sense as you did side-quests. No other JRPG has done this without major deficits and flaws, and it shows in that the JRPG's that did attempt it (FFXII most notably) weren't as highly polished and appraised for in that area. Xenoblade didn't revise what people thought of JRPG's because it tried these things, it revised the perception of the genre because it did these things, with every ounce of the game contributing to the development of a natural-like world. The only other games that have provided similar experiences are CRPGs and Sandbox games. But that is what makes Xenoblade so unique. It retained many of the JRPG elements while providing these open-world elements.