I am guessing we’ll be seeing a Direct featuring Xenoblade Chronicles Renaster, soon.
And that might not be all we’ll see from them this year.
Considering XC1 Definitive Edition is not a new game, but a remaster, it’s almost certainly their C team doing it with oversight from the original leads for sing-off gates. Their other teams will be creating something new.
Their primary world creation team likely haven’t had too much to do with Breath of the Wild 2, unless that game will be using a whole new world map. But I am expecting we’ll be seeing a new product from them, potentially, for this holiday season given they’ll be 4+ years out from Breath of the Wild, as most of them would have wrapped their tasks on the project earlier than GM.
There is also the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 team which will have finished 3 years prior to this holiday season.
So, what I expect is a new game with a Breath of the Wild/Xenoblade Chronicles X scale world. Perhaps another part of Mira, or a look back at Mira thousands of years after the initial settlers landed. While it may look like XCX is asking for an immediate sequel, the reality is there wasn’t too much more to say. Takahashi has little issue telling an elaborate story of a time period from 500, 4000, and even 10,000 years in the future. He’s been doing it since Xenogears., where the game fleshes our quite a lot about characters who lived a long time earlier. We know there is something up with Lao, but we can always see how that story unfolded from the future.
What many of Takahashi’s games have in common is a high tech past that gives birth to a new civilization that starts from a lower tech position and rebuilds. So think of White Whale and New LA to be that. They bring humanity back with their Kadamony machine, and install their souls into new bodies. What happens with their memories over time? How does Mira effect that, or the transference from body to body; some might remember completely, while others pass on their personality but not their experiences - this is in line with the three other of Takahashi’s Xeno universes (Although, most explores in Xenogears); and so I would expect to see something like that again.
Needless to say, I am very excited for what they have to bring. I have been a huge fan of this team for most of my life. Since Project NOAH.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
