The game follows a young man named Shulk, who wields the titular Xenoblade - an energy blade called the Monado - against the Mechon in order to ultimately save the world. Originally titled Monado: Beginning of the World, the game was retitled Xenoblade in January 2010 to honour Tetsuya Takahashi, "who poured his soul into making this and who has been working on the Xeno series".
The game conveys the feeling of freedom to the player, and would not be as focused on cutscenes and story as its sibling games. According to Tetsuya Takahashi, the game employs an open-ended design, allowing much of the world to be explored from the very start. He has described the game world as "overwhelming, like an MMORPG" and compared its size to that of Japan, stating that from "one end to the other," the game's world is "about the size of the Japanese archipelago."
Source: Wikipedia, "Xenoblade", available under the CC-BY-SA License.
