One of the best games of last year, and one of the best games currently available on the Nintendo Switch – and owners of that platform know very well that there is no shortage of great games to play on that system – is Xenoblade Chronicles 2, the incredible follow up to the Wii exclusive JRPG that launched late last year.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a massive, full fledged, systems driven open world JRPG that came out just two years after Xenoblade Chronicles X came out on the Wii U- which is an incredibly impressive feat to begin with. But what makes it even more impressive is that apparently, the game was developed with a core staff of just forty developers- only three of them were programmers!

Speaking in an interview with Katsura Hashino:, the director of the Persona series, Monolith’s Tetsuya Takahashi said that between pre-production for Monolith’s upcoming new IP, and the development of Breath of the Wild, for which Monolith was heavily involved, the development studio was left with a shell staff to work on the game.

“Monolith Tokyo has a little less than 100 developers,” Takahashi-san said. “Of that group, between 50% to 60% was helping Nintendo with Zelda (Breath of the Wild). Of the remaining 40 to 50 people, several were part of R&D (Research & Development), and the Xenoblade Chronicles 2 staff was made of the remaining 40-plus members.”

It’s absolutely staggering that they managed this- Xenoblade 2 is a massive game, and it’s a really great game (in spite of some really obvious issues). The fact that it was developed with such minimal staffing demonstrates that Monolith is hugely talented- and that, once they are working on their own game with resources and budget, they could be a force to contend with. Meanwhile, I urge you to play Xenoblade 2– it’s an incredible game. It’s out now, only on Switch.

[Translation via Siliconera]