With Xenoblade Chronicles 3 only a month away, the game starred in its own Nintendo Direct featuring details on the characters, story, world, and more. The 20-minute presentation falls just a few months after the game’s release date was unexpectedly moved up from its initial September release date to the July 29 one confirmed in today’s event. There was plenty of new information in the show, and you can see the title’s latest trailer below.
The game has six main characters, each belonging to one of two warring nations. These include Noah, Eunie, and Lanz, who represent the country of Keves. While Mio, Taion, and Sena belong to Agnus. The trailer explains that members of each nation, including our protagonists, are only given ten years to live, called a term, during which individuals fight those from the opposing nation until they either die or earn the honor of a homecoming ceremony.
However, Xenoblade Chronicle 3’s main characters have become fugitives, meeting each other on a special mission and deciding to band together rather than fight. Their quest to restore the world’s natural order will take them through a fantastic array of landscapes and pit them against difficult foes.
In the trailer, we saw vast grassy fields, endless deserts, and snowcapped peaks. All of these will contain monsters to fight, treasure to discover, and spots to rest. Colonies dot the world, giving players a place to shop, dine, and meet new characters. You’ll also find rest spots, which resemble small camps where the main characters can cook, craft gems to increase their abilities, and talk about anything they learned from wandering the world, which may lead to new quests. The world seems large, but the game helps players traverse it in several ways. Players can trigger quest routes, which will help guide them to the latest objective, and there will also be fast travel which you can use from the game’s very Breath of the Wild-like map.
Of course, our travelers always risk running into threats, whether from vicious clawed creatures or enemy soldiers. You can enter combat simply by running up to a foe with your weapon drawn. The party fights as one, and though you can only control one fighter at a time, you can swap between the characters at any time throughout battles. Characters fall broadly into three categories, Attackers, Defenders, and Healers, but everyone has a unique class with abilities they can share with the group after battling together. To top it off, you can recruit several heroes throughout the world to join as a seventh party member who also has distinct abilities to teach the main fighters. Specific pairs can fuse together in battle, forming an Ouroboros, which will change up the action with powerful new moves. However, the combined shape can only be controlled by one of its members. This will change how the Ouroboros fights, so choose wisely.
Nintendo also revealed during today’s show that the game is getting an expansion pack, which players can pick up for $29.99, and the title will be compatible with Amiibos. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is set to launch on Switch on July 29, so it won’t be long before fans can explore all the details shown off in today’s Direct.