Xenoblade Chronicles

Yeah given XBX I really suspect the fantasy game will have a halfway twist about the setting actually being Sci-Fi.

Or, Mira.

edited 14th May '18 3:24:36 AM by 32ndfreeze

Turns out that the protagonists of that game are responsible for uploading the consciousness of humanity into the planet's biological computer or something.

Nah what happens is Neo Japan crashed on Mira as well, but waaaay harder and they lost a ton of knowledge and technology (because Mira) and end up with something of a Horizon Zero Dawn type civilization (good luck explaining a way to keep the fact that they’re all Mims a secret).

And then the shocking swerve is the protagonist party crossing paths with a skell or something.

Also I’d like to point out that while MS’s next project seems to be primarily fantasy, there’s nothing saying that it’s the next Xenoblade title.

I really like the idea of Xenoblade sorta turning into Nintendo’s answer to Final Fantasy - a series of big-ass pretty-as-fuck JRPGS that primarily share thematic and gameplay elements, loosely (if at all) connected by lore. Klaus pushing the button on the Catalyst/Zohar, and wherever & whenever the fuck Ontos went (if we go down the Ontos is not Alvis path) already writes a back door for as many universes as they can make until Nintendo can’t afford to make games.

edited 14th May '18 7:05:14 AM by TheAirman

Just as long as I get a giant robot to pilot and fly around in faster than in X.

How ironic that places like Temperantia and Spirit Crucible Elpyss are named after virtues.

At least in the case of Temperantia and Judicium, they've been utterly destroyed by humanity's sins. All that's really left is Leftheria, named after charity. Rex is a pretty charitable person, but I wonder if there's a deeper meaning there. Elpys, meanwhile is hidden away and corresponds to patience, the virtue standing opposite of wrath. Rex needs to go in there to gain the strength to oppose Torna, but at the end he has nothing but patience for Jin and Malos, which directly inspired the Architect to find the good in humanity again after so long.

Anyway, as promised, here's how the sins relate to each nation. Sometimes it's obvious plot details, sometimes it's just minor trivia and sidequests:

• Argentum
  • Obviously this one is easy. It's full of Nopon merchants notorious for being greedy, and their whole government is economic.
  • Bana's the exemplar, being a war profiteer more concerned with his bottom line than the well-being of other nations.
• Gormott
  • Gormott's a bit of an odd one. It's got an excess of food, sure, but none of the people we meet seem particularly gluttonous. That being said, they apparently inspire gluttony in other nations, if Mor Ardain and Uraya's imperialism is anything to go by.
  • Dughall's got a rather portly build and if the scenes set in his abode are anything to go by, he's been using his position as consul to live a rather hedonistic lifestyle of grandeur.
• Uraya
  • This one isn't immediately obvious, but a running theme in all of Uraya's interactions with other nations tends to be "I want what you have!" They want joint custody of Gormott, they want excavation rights in Temperantia so they can dig up their own Judicium weapons, ect.
  • On an intranational level, they're the ones with the most severe social stratification; there's a huge gap between the wealthy elite and the people who have to scrape on by on food distribution. There's elements of gluttony and greed in there, but there's probably some "I don't want others to have what I have" jealousy too.
  • Minor note, but the disparate mercenary bands in the region are rather competitive toward each other as well. Some of the mercs in Fonsa Myma don't speak fondly of Garfont for taking all the jobs, for example.
• Mor Ardain
  • The nation is dying yet they were unwilling to swallow their pride and ask for help; they'd sooner just conquer Gormott and save face than appear weak. Nia calls them out on this in one of her Heart-to-Hearts and explicitly calls it pride.
  • Our Ardainian party member, Morag, is a very prideful individual. It doesn't negatively impact her performance in battle or anything, but look at how many Heart-to-Hearts have her getting stubborn and competitive about things such as Zeke's joke-telling ability or the cooking of a monkfish.
• Indol
  • Oh, Indol. There's a lot to be said about them. They're peacekeepers between the other nations, sure, but they never move to change the status quo. Everything just keeps on going on as soon as the Praetor looks away.
  • Remember that sloth as a sin isn't just physical apathy, it's also moral apathy, despair, and just plain giving up. AKA Praetor "The world is terminally bad so I should just let it rot away over the next few centuries!" Amalthus.
• Tantal
  • Tantal's government isn't immediately obvious, but "lust" encompasses more than just sexual desire. Lust for power also falls under that purview, such as, say, criminals seizing the throne in a mad power grab and keeping that lie going for centuries.
  • As far as sexual lust goes, look at some of the sidequests and NPC's in the area; a woman trying to make a love potion to get a man, a skeevy guy trying to use a woman's emotional distress as an opportunity to make a move, a smut author looking for inspiration, and a woman who was frozen for five years but can only think about how handsome the prince must be now.
  • Speaking of the prince... yeah, he's a bit of a lech.
• Torna
  • Discount Sephiroth and his sidekick "You Little Shit!"-Man say: "DESTROY EVERYTHING."

edited 14th May '18 12:00:13 PM by Anomalocaris20

To say nothing of the envy that Uraya must have that their resident party member is only temporary.

Man, I can understand why they killed him off, but it would've been great if he had stuck around longer before that happened. Would've had way more impact.

Oh yeah, I totally forgot he even existed towards the end. the 4 months gap didn't helped, but yeah that part loses relevance very quickly.

Finally got back around to the plot. Amalthus is like a reaper or something now.

Double post, but finally finished the story. I feel like it really kicked things up a notch in the final chapter. Especially when Rex faced those phantasm versions of his teammates. It was really interesting seeing him have to face his anxiety like that, and I kinda wish that had played a bigger role in his overall arc. Also, those fights didn't really give me as much trouble as I thought they would. I only died like twice, and that was because I didn't have time to organize my blades before the battles started.

So how'd you feel about the final reveals? And did you play the original Xenoblade to give you context?

It probably helps that as of the latest patch the phantom party members scale directly to Rex's level, rather than basing their levels off themselves. Given that Rex falls behind by default, this is usually a bad sign. Don't know if the accessories and extra blade buffs still remain though.

edited 22nd May '18 7:45:24 PM by RainingMetal

Just a heads-up: the full soundtrack is supposed to be on the U.S. iTunes store tomorrow. It's already available on the UK store. I'm definitely getting it.

Didn't know about that change, but it makes way more sense.

edited 22nd May '18 7:59:08 PM by SapphireBlue

@Discar: I haven't played the first one (it's on my to-do list), so unfortunately I didn't get all the context of that, though I'm aware that Klaus' other half is the final boss of that one. In general I thought it was pretty great, although it was a little on the info-dumpy side. The final boss was also a bit easier than I thought it would be. Pneuma pretty much made it a joke, and I activated her before it got a chance to use its One-Hit KO attack.

Also, yeah, I can see where having the levels scale would make it easier, although honestly I think Rex was the same level as everybody else anyway, so I'm not sure how much of a difference it would've made.

Honestly my main question at this point is how the heck are the world's governments going to deal with suddenly having to share a landmass? There's no way that's not going to cause some issues.

I figure they may come back to this setting later on. Maybe like thousands of years later though.

edited 22nd May '18 8:13:44 PM by LordVatek

And it's called "Mira." But no seriously it would not surprise me if they try to tie in the end of X with humanity's attempts at recreating brain cells or whatever. Or maybe X takes place in the past: Mira is the planet where Klaus' experiment and X2 takes place, but years in the past after it was first settled by humans. The core crystals were derived from whatever weird element of Mira allowed humans to maintain their minds after the Lifehold was destroyed. I mean, you can't tell me that there weren't some similarities between the creatures in the Land of Morytha and that thing that Lao turns into at the end of X. The Conduit could easily be a piece of Ganglion technology (note that Klaus seemed to view it as "a gift from on high", and the Ganglion leader seemed to view the Vita in much the same fashion) that he was experimenting with.

I don't think sharing a landmass will be too big an issue, at least not right away.

Remember that the biggest cause of squabbling in the first place was land running out. Now they've got a hugeass continent bigger than all their nations combined, several times over. It'll be a long time before border disputes crop up.

You're much more optimistic about human nature than I am, I guess.

Of course we all know what will really happen: the Nopon will claim it all and try to sell it to the other races.

This troper speaks the truth.

And there's no way in hell that Mira and Alrest are the same planet. Alrest is Earth, full stop. The end of 1 literally involves the party actually running through the Solar System. Alrest!Earth got fucked by Klaus doing Zohar fuckery. X!Earth got fucked by aliens. The circumstances of the battles going around are completely different (namely, 1 & 2 don't feature two alien armadas duking it out in our backyard). There's also the issue of Alrest having stuff like Aion and Siren, whereas in X Skells can't even fly at the start of the game, and they could only slap together what they did have to begin with thanks to Elma.

IMO, Zohar fuckery should be the only potential connection between X and 1 & 2, if an X2 is made and shows a connection. Don't crowd one universe with stuff that doesn't make sense if you stop to think about it. Just roll with the established multiverse and show the Zohar on Mira, with the implication being that Klaus punching the shiny red button is what caused Mira to get all weird in the X universe.

There's some major holes in my theory, but I do wonder if the "Ghosts" at the beginning of X that are fighting the Ganglion over Earth space are the Saviourites mentioned in the Chapter 10 custscene. And the phenomenon that splits the universes and sends the cast of X to Mira is Klaus activating the experiment.

The only issue with that theory is the fact that there's no ships leaving earth in the cutscene and I think Earth blows up in X's opening. Skells/Artifices can likely be explained by it being in space.

Honestly, given how extensively they modified the original kalus cutscene compared to the first game, I wouldn't be surprised if they show us to it a third time except the ganglion and the ghosts are here nuking the planet. I'd rather not tho.

edited 22nd May '18 11:14:03 PM by Yumil

Oh, not optimism about human nature, just considering how long it'll take 'em to spread to each other's borders, is all.

So, after having it downloaded forever on my Switch, I finally got around to playing Xenoblade 2.

I've enjoyed it so far but I can't help but feel like I'm doing something wrong. Are enemies just inherently stupidly durable? I'm in chapter 3 right now and every enemy encounter is starting to feel like a mini-boss fight in itself. I'm not even underleveled; everyone's in the lower twenties and I've been keeping up to date on equipment. Even using the level IV Blade attacks, it feels like I'm barely denting some enemies. Is there something obvious I'm missing here to make random encounters more manageable?

Obviously, make sure you are tackling enemies that are only a couple levels higher than you at most. And Unique Monsters even in that range will always be tougher.

Use Driver Combos, Blade Combos, and Chain Attacks extensively, and those should all become available as you progress through chapter 3. Once I had all these tools available I was finally able to slam jam enemies into oblivion.

When using specials, saving up for level 4 is not necessarily the most effective, and getting a 1>2>3 Blade Combo going with your team can be powerful. Though adding a level 4 into that certainly wouldn't hurt. Going to the special tab in the blade menu can give more details on what to use at which time, like a level 2 area-of-effect attack, or a level 3 full party heal.

And you'll want to keep your blades' core chips up to date, which is usually as simple as buying them from the newest shop you've reached, unless you got better ones from chests or drops. Those can provide some important boosts to attack power, or other effects like block rate for tanks. But don't worry about min-maxing that until the postgame.