Monolith Soft’s talented developers are currently busy finishing up Xenoblade Chronicles X for its western release in December for Wii U. As they are in the ending stages of this project, its natural that they would begin thinking about what their next big project might be.
There is no question that the Zelda Wii U project has been a huge change of pace for the core Zelda team and Eiji Aonuma, since the game has moved from the standard Zelda formula to a much more open-world affair. This new design has undoubtedly presented the team with plenty of new challenges. Xenoblade director Tetsuya Takahashi and Nintendo SPD’s Genki Yokota recently spoke to Game Informer in an interview and touched on the possibility of their team helping the Zelda team with the Zelda Wii U project.
So with the team’s experience now in the open-world genre, I’m curious if you can offer any tips to the Zelda Wii U team? Is there some knowledge that can be transferred there? I know Monolith helped work on Skyward Sword.
Yokota: So as it turns out, in the development of this game we had a lot of opportunities to prepare reports and feedback on the technology and the different kinds of problems that we encountered. When we’re able to share those documents internally, they’re going to go to all the other teams so they’ll be able to draw from them and I hope that those guys working on that game will be able to benefit as well.Is there any chance that you’ll be supporting that team once again after this project is fully done?
Takahashi: I mean I suppose it’s possible, but we haven’t heard anything. I would want to say that Monolith Soft is always available and we would love to help anytime people ask us.
Should Monolith Soft end up helping with Zelda Wii U when they’ve completed work on Xenoblade Chronicles X, it could be a big help to the Zelda team. It would also need to be done carefully to ensure that such a cooperation would benefit the final game, as opposed to hindering it. Regardless of whether they end up collaborating to help get the game ready for its launch in 2016, I am greatly looking forward to Zelda Wii U. It should easily be one of the best games on Wii U when it finally launches next year.
