There aren’t many games that are willing to refute the total domination of the open-world style. Starting as a western gaming trope, it has come to dominate even Zelda and Mario, the two most iconic gaming figures out of Japan. Final Fantasy made the switch long ago as well, trying to keep up with western ideas of exploration and freedom in gaming. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 stands alone as an RPG that refutes the necessity of the model.

The Xeno series has always marched to the beat of its own drum. Starting with Xenogears in 1998 and moving into Xenosaga, it has always been a series that commits fully to its own style, whether that is the hyper-future dystopia of Xenosaga, the religious commentary fantasy setting of Xenogears, or the blending of the two found in Xenoblade Chronicles.

Speaking with Game Informer, director Tetsuya Takahashi said that the story-driven approach of the Xeno series, and especially Xenoblade Chronicles 2, doesn’t necessarily lend itself to open world settings. Although the game is expected to pack in as much gameplay as the first game – putting it at roughly the 60+ hour mark without sidequests – it isn’t looking to compete with the hundreds of hours many players put into open-world games. And if Takahashi is hoping to make Xenoblade Chronicles 2 a game all about story, avoiding the open-world is probably the correct decision.

For as much praise as is heaped upon the Skyrims and Fallouts of the world, very little of it is spent talking about how great the story is or how in-depth the characters and allies are. For instance, it’s fairly well-known that a player can go straight to the final boss of Zelda Breath of the Wild without doing any extra content. Companions in Bethesda games are often just rounded down to their value in combat and nothing more. When a game decides to go open-world, it is making a conscious decision to avoid story as much as possible. The gamers drawn to open-world tend to want to just experience the world and make their own stories. Traditional RPGs generally offer sidequests and secrets, but exploring the world is usually tangential to the story focus of the games.

Like the Persona series, Xenoblade is part of a dying breed. Very few games, let alone RPGs, can survive without embracing the open-world model, or at least developers believe they can’t survive. Considering how excited the fans are for this next installment, the decision not to include open-world doesn’t seem like much of a hindrance, but it might stop new customers from picking it up. We will just have to see when it is released on Dec. 1.