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Monolith Soft discusses the challenges they faced with Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition

Old code presents new troubles
by rawmeatcowboy
09 June 2020
GN Version 5.0

You may think a remaster of a game is pretty straightforward. Slap on a new coat of paint, spruce up a few areas, and call it a day. While that may be true of some titles, it definitely wasn't for Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition. In an interview with USGamer, producer Shigekazu Yamada said the team started with a leg up, but quickly found out they were in for some major work.

"Because we already had the rendering engine for Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and Torna - The Golden Country to use as a basis, we could immediately start creating new assets, and existing data was converted to HD using a semi-automatic conversion process. After that, artists added their particular touches to complete the quality upgrade.

The vast number of complex specifications of Xenoblade Chronicles made this work extremely challenging. Towards the end of the development phase, we kept finding specifications in the source code that not even the original staff members knew about or had since forgotten."

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