Xenoblade Chronicles 3 DLC story scenario will be just as large as Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country

Monolith Soft and Nintendo have shared that the DLC story scenario coming to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 before the end of 2023 will be "as large as Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country".

This was mentioned by Genki Yokota, a co-producer and co-director on Xenoblade Chronicles 3 that was also Nintendo's lead for the project. Over the last few days, Nintendo has been releasing a series of developer interviews leading up to the release of Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Alongside Yokota, Tetsuya Takahashi and Koh Kojima from Monolith Soft were being interviewed about the massive title as well.

In the first part of the 'Ask the Developer' interview feature, much of it revolved around how Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was conceived in the early stages. Kojima mentions that Xenoblade Chronicles 3 "didn't feel like Xenoblade Chronicles at all" at first, since the game's world was "very serious". After a lot of trial and error, he feels that they found a good balance and as a result, they were able to "create this sense of Xenoblade-ness". Another intriguing point of interest is how Takahashi envisions Noah as a philosopher.

The second part primarily focuses on the designs of the main characters and the unique sound design in Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Kojima expresses how difficult it was to develop the design for Noah - going as far to say that it was a "hellish process of trial and error". They shared several concept art of the Xenoblade Chronicles 3 main characters and how they translated into their 3D models with a few side-by-side comparisons. One of the most fascinating things during the game's development process is that Monolith Soft created flutes from scratch for it. By creating entirely new flutes instead of using existing ones, Yasunori Mitsuda mentioned that "you can create a sound that hasn't been heard before." Several pictures of the flutes they made were shared.

Finally, the last part of the 'Ask the Developer' series of interviews for Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is mainly about its scope and vast amount of content. Kojima highlights that he "did the math, and it turns out that the total walkable area in [Xenoblade Chronicles 3] is over five times larger than [Xenoblade Chronicles 2]." As mentioned earlier, Monolith Soft highlighted that the DLC expansion story to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is about as large as Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country, which lasted roughly 15 hours on average. It is the final piece of content included in the Expansion Pass for Xenoblade Chronicles 3. Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country was also released separately as a standalone title physically and digitally, though it remains to be seen if Xenoblade Chronicles 3 will offer the same deal.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3 releases on July 29 for the Nintendo Switch. Our comprehensive glowing review is up as well!