Monolith's Takahashi on smaller projects and shooters

In an interview with GameSpot, Monolith Soft's co-founder and president Tetsuya Takahashi was, generally speaking, looking ahead to Xenoblade Chronicles 2, which is heading to Nintendo Switch. During the interview, however, he was asked if he would like to return to working on smaller projects. This is how he replied:

"If it was just a simple yes or no question, I would have to say yes, I would love to do something like that. But Monolith in and of itself has grown to be a big company, so we need big projects to sustain that company, for one. At the same time, if for example the next generation of developers and staff that could really handle a big game on their own [arrives] - if that comes up - then I'm kind of free to do whatever I want. When that time comes, I would love to work on maybe smaller projects."

If he had to work on something other than a huge RPG, which is what the studio is best known for, his favourite genre is surprising, to say the least:

"Actually, my favourite type of games are first-person shooters. Obviously, I like action games and strategy games. I like RPGs as well, but what happens is when I get involved in creating a game, it makes it hard to enjoy that game. For example, right now it's very hard for me to enjoy RPGs because my perspective becomes that of a creator and not a user, in that I would always think, "Well, why is it this way? They could have done this, or this could have been done that way to improve." It's hard to get back into the user perspective. Although I'm interested in it, if I were to make different genres, then I wouldn't be able to enjoy those."

Might we one day see a small-scale FPS from Tetsuya Takahashi?