The rather excellent Xenoblade Chronicles, developed and released by Monolith Soft on the Wii back in 2011, is due for a successor – Xenoblade Chronicles X.

This latest entry in Monolith Soft’s long-running Xeno series is said to not really touch on the story elements of the original game, and instead takes place in a new universe. Despite the new setting, the developer has stated that X picks up and plays with the finer philosophical points presented to the player in the original.

The game starts off with a rather impressive CG cutscene that shows the final battle in a war for Earth. Alien fighters swoop down on the planet as huge ark ships holding people flee, things clearly turn for the worse and the American ark ship crashes on an unknown planet. You play as a survivor of the crash. You’ll immediately be able to explore the world in a similar fashion to the first game, and there seems to be a large emphasis on exploration and discovery which will be the key to finding other survivors who will provide you with useful skills like crafting.

It won’t be released until sometime next year, but after Nintendo’s special E3 edition of Nintendo Direct, the first 30 minutes of the game were demonstrated on the show floor inside the Nintendo Treehouse, with the footage later uploaded and published on the publisher’s Youtube channel. You can watch the video below.