How about 2 different series at the same time? Xenoblade with characters, story and music. Xenoblade X which focus on open world, gameplay and side quests. There is a dedicated fan base of Xenoblade X, after all.

I do need a sequel to X.

Oh, so there's an implied connection with the other games after all? Interesting...*strokes beard*

I did like the exploration in X...it just wasn't enough to keep me interested unfortunately. Both the characters and story were rather forgettable, and those are my main reasons for playing RPGs in the first place, and probably why I'm that weird guy that puts XC2 ahead of even XC1. I would like to see a lot of the gameplay features return in a future game, the Skells were fun and I missed the Follow Ball.

Nah, I'd prefer Monolith's resources and time not be wasted on an X sequel personally. Their teased upcoming project sounds a lot more interesting.

After their next game, no doubt they will come back to X. Takahashi mentioned about porting it to Switch, we will know if there will be Xenoblade X-2. I'm more a fan of Xenoblade's story myself so of course i don't like X too much. However, i won't deny some aspects of it are superior compared to XC1 and XC2. Open world, gameplay and side quests are the best of all Xenoblade games. The die-hard fans of X are more about gameplay, serious design and they love Sawano music. So i think it is the best to have 2 different series at the same time. Monolith as of now is way bigger than Wii U era: http://nintendo.wikia.com/wiki/Monolith_Soft. If their B team with only ~40 people can made Xenoblade 2, no reason to doubt that they can't make XC and XCX games at the same time with a lot more people.

Oh quite possibly they will, I just wouldn't be interested. X was a letdown for me, I was unbelievably hyped for it and it did get some things very right; Mira was an amazing world and piloting a Skell felt great. But the story and characters were dull as dishwater and in a game that long you really need an interesting narrative to keep me engaged.

Well, i also though the same but X fans argue that we can found the character development and backstories in side quests. And they are correct, that's still dumb though.

You did find out a ton about almost every character in the world through side quests. Heck, even the random people walking around the town that seemed to be just background characters end up being a part of some sidequest or another. So while you may not know them as much as the playable characters, you still find out that they are part of the church or the water facility, or a café, ect.

If you do everything, you learn about seemingly EVERYONE. It's pretty crazy.

I wasn't the biggest fan of X. I see the huge  potential, but there was something amiss. I will say that it was the BEST MMO I have ever played. I so hate how like every MMO in the world seems to have its story revolve around you being the person who goes and saves the world, the main character, ect. It just doesn't make sense that the thousands of people all running around this MMO have all done the story.

Meanwhile in X, you are not the MC. Elma is. You are just another random soldier that helps the cause and doing things here and there to improve new LA and held humanity. Like if your character dies, it doesn't matter, the world will continue, yet at the same time you helped it get to where it was.

and no I never played the online stuff in the game. All offline. Just it felt like a very much mmo game. I am also a huge fan of town builder type games, so that helps. The whole game essentially was an improve new LA, town builder.  I'd probably get a remaster on Switch, solely due to the portability of the game. The game is super grindy type that being able to lounge on couch and play in handhled while watching tv/movie would be immensely beneficial to the game. I suppose I could have done that with WIi U, and I did at times. You know, have the game on the Wii U gamepad while on different input on the tv, but it just never felt the same as the Switch does.

That is why it is dumb. Why the hell we have to know about the background characters and character developments thank to the side quests instead the main story? Not everyone can enjoy playing all the side quests to do research about the characters in the game you know.

Not everyone has time to put 100 hours into a game. By doing what they did, one can just streamline the story and finish the game in say 40 hours instead of being forced to expand upon characters they may or may not care about dragging the campaign out to 100 hours.  (Could finish game way shorter than 40 if they didn't have the main story progression locked behind area completion %.  That is what sucked about the game.)

But there are like 30 side characters. You can go about learning about them all if you want or you can just stick to like 4 cover characters, like every other RPG out there typically does. And speaking of typical RPG's. Didn't you always find it dumb when some character you had sitting on your bench and you never used all of a sudden pops up in a cutscene. Annoyed me that apparently all 8 of these people are with me but I can only use 4 at a time. RPG makers want to give us choice in characters to use and playstyles, yet due to this makes it seem stupid that only 4 of the 8 are fighting even though they are all apparently there.

I prefer X's method. You can use whoever of the 30 during most the game, those that are not used are back at base doing their own daily schedules. If a cutscene uses said character, it is a requirement to have said character in your party.