Nintendo announced on Monday a Xenoblade Chronicles 3–focused Direct would take place today and as 10 AM rolled around, nearly 20 minutes of information was revealed. Developer Monolith Soft has been hard at work on its latest game and today was a great way to add more excitement for a game social media is ready for.
A teaser trailer begins the Direct and it goes into an overview of what players can expect next month. Pulling inspiration from the Clone Wars from the Star Wars series, we learned the story is pretty dark and surprisingly so. Fans already know that the game is set on Aionios with residents of two at-odds colonies, Keves and Agnus at war. What we didn’t know is that it’s much worse than ever with the two colonies having engineered soldiers who exist for war and war alone. These engineered soldiers live no longer than ten years, a concept artificially placed on these poor souls. Each year is regarded as a ‘term’ with the entirety being dedicated to the cause.
On a fateful encounter, six soldiers (three from Agnus and three from Keves) meet a mysterious figure, putting these six on a path to being fugitives. It’s up to the six of these soldiers to head out into Aionios and learn the truth.
From the trailer shown today, the world of Adonis looks massive and it boasts a lot of wondrous sights that look to be worth checking out. The cast includes Noah, Eunie, Lanz — hailing from Keves, and Mio, Taion, and Sena — hailing from Agnus. The Xenoblade series has always had some of the most impressive worlds and that trend looks to continue, even if the Switch is hitting a graphical bottleneck that ends up hurting stunning games like Xenoblade Chronicles 3.
Your party will also feature Heroes, an AI-driven member of your team who acts as a seventh member. We saw a few of these party members including Ashera, Valdi, Riku, Manana, Fiona, and more. Heroes come with their own classes and your party can use them as they join, these include the Guardian Commander, Incursor and War Medic.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 also features a class system that utilizes three categories: Attackers, Defenders, and Healers. Each character has a class and the trailer demoed Swordfighter —a balanced class among the many that specialize in healing, defence, powerful strikes and more. You can also freely swap the character you want to control in battle and your class changes to match your allies.
Furthermore, party members can link together in a battle to form an Ouroboros, combining them into a fierce new form. The Ouroboros can join Chain attacks with the rest of the party and even use Ouroboros Arts.
Nintendo also revealed an Expansion Pass that should keep players busy over the next year. In Canada, the Expansion Pass is listed at $39.99 with the content being added as early as launch day.
Here’s what you’ll get:
- July 29, 2022
- Helpful Items
- Outfit Color Variants
- Releasing by December 31, 2022
- Challenge Battle
- New Hero Character and Quests
- New Outfits
- Releasing by April 30, 2023
- Challenge Battle
- New Hero Character and Quests
- New Outfits
- Releasing by December 31, 2023
- Brand-New Story Scenario
Support for Shulk’s amiibo is also coming. Tap the Shulk amiibo to change a character’s sword to appear as the Monado, the iconic weapon from the original Xenoblade Chronicles, when using the Swordfighter class.
