Curate, connect, and discover
Thinking about the world for this Xenoblade idea. Initially I was thinking of an island world (either in a normal ocean or sky islands) but that could get too similar to Alrest. Then it hit me, cave world. People live underground in these giant cave systems. You can have funky glowing crystals and wildlife, lakes, lava caves, icy caves, weird magnetism stuff like Pokemon's Chargestone Cave, super dark areas, ruins, mines, there's plenty of variety for these caves. There's also the whole "why the fuck is everyone underground what's going on on the surface". Were they forced to go underground, and if so was it because of some natural disaster or the actions of other people? Is it dangerous on the surface? Do the cave dwellers even know the world above even exists? Lot that can be done here.
Haven't done much on the characters yet since I'd like to get the whole situation with the cave world and the surface first. Will probably have a starting trio like Shulk/Reyn/Fiora and Noah/Lanz/Eunie, trio of childhood friends. Mentor figure is also likely, might have a kid join the group, and of course there's got to be a Nopon in the group but I'm not sure what they'd do. 5-7 is the range for permanent party members in Xenoblade games so I don't want to get too carried away.
Aside from humans and Nopon (they are everywhere), there's probably other new races but I don't have any ideas yet. Another thing is that while the numbered games lean towards British accents with some American and Australian accents thrown in and X has mostly American accents, I'd like to think that the cast of this game would have their own accent(s) to help signify that this is it's own universe. Not sure what accent they'd have, I am unfortunately a dumb American.