The lack of explanation found, instead, is also overwhelming, but it's far from boring. It's a blessing and a curse, as this is a game with a tremendous amount of content-NPCs, story quests, side quests, and gameplay elements-and explaining everything in too much detail would likely be overwhelming and boring. Players are dropped right into the thick of things, and while tutorial screens appear here and there, most things are unexplained. Xenoblade Chronicles X exists on the opposite end of the pendulum: there's almost no direction at all. The playgrounds were massive, with plenty to see and do, but progress still moved along an easily defined line, with Shulk and company moving from one area to another and there not being much incentive to jump between them, with a few exceptions.
For a game that took place on the abandoned corpses of two titans, Xenoblade Chronicles was somewhat linear.
