Monolith Soft is on the recruitment drive for a brand new role-playing game, but is it Xenoblade Chronicles 4?
Traditional role-playing games aren’t something Nintendo used to concern itself with but while it doesn’t yet rival the likes of Final Fantasy or Persona, the Xenoblade Chronicles series has become one of their most popular new franchises of the last decade or so.
The series hit new heights with 2022’s Xenoblade Chronicles 3, which scored the franchise’s biggest launch in the UK so far. This was followed by DLC expansion Future Redeemed, which served as a culmination of the entire series.
While it’s unclear if developer Monolith Soft is working on a fourth entry, the studio has recently launched a recruitment drive which teases its future plans.
In a message on the studio’s website, Monolith Soft director Tetsuya Takahashi, who is an executive director on the Xenoblade Chronicles series, confirmed the team is working on a ‘new’ role-playing game, which is ‘taking on many new challenges’ compared to its previous titles.
‘This time, we are recruiting development staff for Monolith Soft’s 1st Production for the first time in a long time,’ the post reads. ‘I can’t go into details here, but the genre is a ‘new RPG’.
‘The new RPG is taking on many new challenges compared to previous Monolith Soft titles. Naturally, the content to be created is becoming more sophisticated, so we need many talented people, which is why we are now looking for people.’
The studio is looking to fill eight positions, ranging from animators, designers, to an assistant director. While Monolith Soft is a relatively small team considering the huge scope of its games (it had 264 employees in December 2022), this wave of hires is described as being necessary due to the ‘current situation in the gaming scene’.
‘The days of using human wave tactics to produce a large amount of material have long since come to an end, and it has become commonplace to provide an efficient production environment,’ the post reads.
It concludes: ‘I know I may have sounded a little formal, but Monolith Soft is not a rigid organisation. At least in the first production, we are a relatively rough and sloppy organisation, which is what makes us unique. Please feel free to come and visit us. Let’s create new works and a new organisation together.’
His comments recall those from president Shuntaro Furukawa recently, when he said that, ‘it is inevitable that game development will become even longer, more complex, and more sophisticated in the future’ – necessitating more people and longer development times.
Although Xenoblade isn’t one of Nintendo’s biggest sellers Monolith Soft has become a very important developer for them, often working as a support studio for open world titles – especially The Legend Of Zelda. So for that reason alone it would make sense to expand the studio.
While it’s unclear if this ‘new’ role-playing game is a new IP or Xenoblade Chronicles 4, Takahashi has previously teased that a potential fourth game in the series would be ‘vastly different’ from what’s come before.
‘Rather than playing on defence, going on the offense; change rather than maintain,’ Takahashi said in August last year. ‘This is a stance that I have continued to hold for 30 years.
‘If there is another Xenoblade, it will likely be something vastly different from what came before. In style and in music, I would like to make my next goal something that will betray everyone’s expectations, in a good way.’
Whether it’s a new Xenoblade game or not, it sounds like Monolith Soft’s next title will be bigger in scope – presumably to capitalise on the power of Nintendo’s next console.
Before Xenoblade Chronicles, Monolith Soft created the related Xenosaga series, along with Baten Kaitos – which recently got a remaster on Switch.
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