I had no idea what was happening but I am extremely excited for this.

 Add me to the list, I was think is this a Monolith game? Then I got thinking, I hope they are stilling making that Fantasy game. The faces on the characters were the biggest thing drawing me to them. But its made sense when I started seeing the names come up.

Biggest surprise of the direct. Does anyone know if this is an exclusive Switch title?

I thought it was a prequel to Xenoblade 2's Torna up until almost the end. 

I also thought of Monolith Soft. The character designs and some of the camera angles felt a lot like Xenoblade.

According to Game Informer it is. 

https://www.gameinformer.com/nintendo-direct/2019/02/13/nintendo-and-platinumgames-announce-new-ip-astral-chain

It's Nier Automata's team behind this the director is even the same guy who was under Taro so they know how to execute an open world action title. Essentially the are two games from PG now one from the Bayo Team (B3) and now the Nier Automata team.

This was the only new announcement from the Direct that interests me.

Doesn't seem like my cup of tea, but it does look like a fairly high quality game so that will be interesting.

My biggest gripe with this game is Anime tones. Why why why.