By LUDWIG VON KOOPA - And then proceeds to mis-explain to people which kingdom Torna even is.
Normally, RawkHawk2010 is the guy who is supposed to write about Xenoblade Chronicles 2 on this site. (Please ignore the fact that he hasn't done so for even one whole article.) He's the only staff member who cares about the game — he actually obsesses over it. The first thing he asked Witch Princess when she joined was if she cared about the Xenoblade series. She said yes, but I'm pretty sure she only said that to get along with her new coworker instead of being genuine.
Unfortunately, Rawk either still has a very weird sleep schedule (due to Xenoblade Chronicles 2), or Hurricane Michael pwned him where Hurricane Irma could not. In either case, it's up to me to cover what Rawk has identified as a problem for the past month (or more) — Nintendo had not properly explained to people how to acquire Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country. Rawk had once said,
“I think it's the most confusing Nintendo-published release of all time and it deserved a demonstration video way more than Nintendo Switch Online did. Most people are still going to think retail Torna is just a code.”(Nintendo's mini-site dedicated to Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country seems to explain it pretty well, if you ask me, but let's pretend that Rawk has a point here.)
I wonder if this pair of Nintendo-made content satisfies his concern:
Guide legendary heroes through the fall of a Kingdom in #XenobladeChronicles2: Torna ~ The Golden Country, out now for Expansion Pass owners, & 9/21 standalone. Whether you’re new to the game or are a seasoned Driver, there are multiple ways to experience this new story! pic.twitter.com/kDtO5xW8BB— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) September 17, 2018
Well? Pretty clear tweet on your options for experiencing Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country. You don't have to own Xenoblade Chronicles 2 to still experience the DLC as a separate title. (It's unclear to me why you'd want to, though, but it's an interesting option.) That's pretty rare among downloadable content, and that not being the industry standard is a source of confusion for many customers.
As for the video? I don't know how well it covers the game's particulars due to not having first-claw knowledge of the DLC contents, but it goes over some gameplay and story stuff without spoiling things. It discusses acquisition at the end.
According to the video's comments on YouTube (remember, my subject matter expert is either asleep or dead, so I have to resort to that), the DLC is absolutely amazing and the video is good, with one exception:
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| Apparently the Titan on the left is Torna, and the Titan on the right is Gormott. Nintendo mixed them up in their video. |
I suppose getting the game's critical lore wrong in your video meant to get people hyped up about the game's lore is a sad state of affairs. Does it ruin the entire video? I think not, but I'm sure some Torna or Gormott nationalists are horribly offended.
Rawk might have an opinion opposed to mine. We might find out... if we ever hear from him again. Then he can write his own article about it. If that ever happens, then I invite him to use this picture to refer to this article:
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| “Oh! That nasty article! Not nice!” - Punpun |
One more note about playable DLC without the main game — they should do that for Splatoon 2's Octo Expansion. Even Splatoon disser Rawk said he'd be interested in that, and the experiences are different enough where someone who doesn't own the multiplayer-focused Splatoon 2 might be interested in the single-player-story-focused Octo Expansion. Maybe the Torna DLC will start a whole new trend of separately-purchasable story DLC. I don't know why it embarked on that path to begin with, but it's only a good, pro-consumer thing, right?
Update October 13: Nintendo deleted the video with the erroneous kingdom naming and reuploaded it with the correct labeling. You can watch the new video here:
Ludwig isn't sure if this article is more about Rawk or more about Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna ~ The Golden Country. You can let him know your thoughts on that, and anything else that came to your mind after reading this article, in this article's comments section.
Rawk has previously discussed Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for a paragraph and a picture in this article. That doesn't count as writing about the game for a whole article, however.
Making Torna standalone is an interesting idea--provide a smaller Xenoblade experience for people who want to try out the series without committing to a massive game--but I'm not sure how well the story would hold up (in terms of whether the player would understand it) without the larger context of Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
ReplyDeleteTakahashi actually recommends playing XC2 to Chapter 7, stopping, playing Torna, and then resuming XC2 from Chapter 8 onward. But the return would likely be jarring considering some of Torna's enhanced QoL features were never implemented in the main game, and after Chapter 7 the player may be too adrenalized to want to deal with any sidequest gates. (Depends on how actively they've been doing sidequests already, and Torna's are DEFINITELY better than those.)
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