History Headscratchers / Xenoblade

* If Egil was aware of [[spoiler:Dickson being Zanza's disciple]] and was able to recognize him at first sight, isn't it incredibly odd that [[spoiler:none of the Machina we meet remember anything strange about him]]? [[spoiler:Egil's father Miqol witnessed the Bionis/Mechonis fight firsthand.]] He clearly knows about [[spoiler:Zanza]]. Why does he say [[spoiler:"I scratch his back and he scratches mine" in regards to Dickson when Zanza is the reason Machina were nearly driven to extinction? Why do all the Machina welcome him into the village with open arms? If Miqol is six thousand years old, and Egil is younger than him, and Machina such as Eiz and Neonik were alive when Zanza attacked Meyneth, why does nobody find the presence of Zanza's disciple extremely suspicious?]]

** Given what happened to Arglas, instant possession, it seems quite possible Egil assumed there was no use talking to them. That Shulk was his actual enemy. He even calls Shulk Zanza in the capital. Honestly given the guys backstory and how big a pain in the ass Shulk and co have been, the fact that he was willing to talk to them at all in the capital is pretty big of him.

* What is Prison Island? It's established the High Entia ancestors didn't build it, only used it, and at the end of the game [[spoiler: Zanza goes there in order to enact his genocide/travel to a realm beyond scheme implying it has a connection to the original experiment.]] To further this (something I forgot about until replaying it) at the entrance there is text no one can translate but is similar to the symbols on the Monado which I assume are Japanese, I know the final symbol means God anyway. So what does this inscription say and what importance does Prison Island have in the overall existence of their world? Is their a corresponding structure in Mechonis that can be picked out?

** [[spoiler:Because he's a god.]]

* How is [[spoiler:Zanza's soul in two places at once? Meyneth said that Zanza's body was trapped in Prison Island and Zanza's soul (the Monado) was confined to Ose Tower in Valak Mountain. However, his "body" belonged to Arglas. What was the point in separating the body and soul if the body is not actually Zanza's? How is Zanza able to remain in Arglas and Shulk at the same time?]]

** Pretty sure NOA severely underestimated how popular the game would turn out to be in North America. And the NA release happened pretty late in the Wii's lifetime. We're very lucky to have gotten it at all.

*** That does explain the existence of the breasts, but doesn't explain the JigglePhysics. My theory is that they are made of a metal with a relatively low melting point mixed with whatever the [[spoiler:Machina]] use for skin. How? Why? Who cares! It's Fanservice!

* So... for all the brouhaha it took to get Xenoblade released in North America, why ''oh WHY'' did it get such a short run? At first I assumed the game was never for sale in our stores because I live in FlyoverCountry (Many of our stores only get one shipment of games every quarter - and we didn't even have ''Amiibos'' until February. This area has several million people living here, ''OI!'') but then I found out it was the same everywhere else - even if For a game that was in such high demand in North America, ''why'' only release a short number of copies? Good thing we're getting a New 3DS version - which I ''hope'' has a longer run. (It'll actually be cheaper than the wii version - plus the system.)

** Yeah, that seems a bit odd. The best explanation I can come up with is [[spoiler: that Vanea had shown Shulk and Co the history of the Mechonis (you know, Zanza attacked Mechonis for no good reason history). I think, just maybe, Egil appreciated that Shulk wouldn't have accepted the whole "Monado is evil" point of view until he saw this history. Were it not for the second encounter with Jade Face between 'history of Mechonis' and 'finally explain all of this', there would be a logical explanation for this plot point.]]

** OP here. While you're right in that they don't meet [[spoiler: Egil again until the fight at the Meyneth statue, my main question is why didn't Egil try to talk to them before that? [[SarcasmMode It's not like, you know, they were storming the Mechonis or anything.]] Overall, Egil's actions after Galahad Fortress seem kind of questionable. He sees an immense power that he (likely) considers to be Meyneth's Monado, and... does nothing? Even if he thought Shulk and co. died from the fall (Likely, since later he shows surprise that they met with the Machina. "Even my own people have turned against me," Or something like that), does he really have no knowledge that the Face Unit he JUST FINISHED MAKING had an encounter with a group of Homs, Nopon, High Entia and Robot Girl? Or that Vanea went to meet them? What was he so focused on? Anyways, rambling aside, I don't get why he didn't just hop in Yaldabaoth, fly down maybe 10 stories and meet with them again. I mean, what better person to talk to about the situation than the wielder of the Monado? (You are right in that after the battle with Egil there was no turning back, but ''still...'')]]

** OP here. While you're right in that they don't meet [[spoiler: Egil again until the fight at the Meyneth statue, my main question is why didn't Egil try to talk to them before that? [[SarcasmMode It's not like, you know, they were storming the Mechonis or anything.]] Overall, Egil's actions after Galahad Fortress seem kind of questionable. He sees an immense power that he (likely) considers to be Meyneth's Monado, and... does nothing? Even if he thought Shulk and co. died from the fall (Likely, since later he shows surprise that they met with the Machina "Even my own people have turned against me." Or something like that), does he really have no knowledge that the Face Unit he JUST FINISHED MAKING had an encounter with a group of Homs, Nopon, High Entia and Robot Girl? Or that Vanea went to meet them? What was he so focused on? Anyways, rambling aside, I don't get why he didn't just hop in Yaldabaoth, fly down maybe 10 stories and meet with them again. I mean, what better person to talk to about the situation than the wielder of the Monado? (You are right in that after the battle with Egil there was no turning back, but ''still...'']])

** If memory serves me correctly, [[spoiler: Egil did not see Shulk after the Fallen Arm until literally right before Mechonis Core, where he did finally explain all this. After that... I think Shulk and Egil's conflict had come too far to just stop.]]

* MAJOR endgame spoilers, but seriously, couldn't SO MUCH have been avoided if [[spoiler: Egil told Shulk and Co. what was going on? Egil offers to do this at one point... by offering to turn them into Face-Mechon and THEN explaining. Why bother doing that when you could just drop in, and say "Hey, let's have a chat about what we're fighting for." Obviously, Shulk was too mad to listen on Valak Mountain or the fortress, but by the time they reached the Fallen Arm and met with Miqol they would've listened. Who knows? Maybe they could've made a decision like, I don't know, chuck the Monado in the ocean? Blow up Prison Island? ([[SonicAdventure2 Which has been done before, mind you]].) PoorCommunicationKills and all that, but I still feel like so much could've been avoided by just telling the party about Zanza.]]

** I don't know what exactly the game said, but wasn't it [[spoiler:Alvis who was one and the same with the Bionis' Monado? I don't know about the Mechonis' Monado, but I think Zanza and Meyneth are on similar standings in regards to their blade.]]

** I don't know what exactly the game said, but wasn't it [[spoiler:Alvis who was one and the same with the Bionis' Monado? I don't know about the Mechonis' Monado, but I think Zanza and Meyneth are on similar standings in regards to their blade.

* About Zanza and the Monado: [[spoiler: it was stated that Zanza and the Bionis Monado are one-and-the-same. However, Meyneth **has** a Monado, rather than **being** the Mechonis Monado. Was something messed up in the translation?]]

* Egil would need a lot of raw materials to build his Mechon army. That's fine; the Mechonis is pretty big, so even if they only mined bits of the Mechonis' interior here and there, that would probably provide enough metal and such for a whole bunch of Mechon. But that doesn't excuse the ''giant freakin' replacement arm'' that Egil was also responsible for building. Seriously, how the heck did he get enough material for a new arm without turning the Mechonis' insides into swiss cheese?

* It's established that [[spoiler:at Ose Tower, Zanza killed Shulk and the only reason Shulk appeared to be alive was because Zanza acted as his life force. Why is Shulk still alive and able to move on his own completely fine after separating from Zanza? If Shulk depended entirely on Zanza to live, shouldn't he have returned to being a corpse the moment Dickson shot him? Did Alvis do something to revive Shulk? I feel like the game addressed legitimate concerns with Fiora's split from Meyneth but didn't really explore the Shulk/Zanza aftereffects that well.]]

*** More or less confirmed by a Heart-to-Heart between Melia and Dunban on the Fallen Arm. One of the options while talking about Mumkhar says that he originally came from a colony that had been destroyed.

**** (Original Poster) [[:spoiler:Fair point. That said, since Vanea was the one who originally put together the Fiora/Meyneth/Face Nemesis combo platter, she would probably have been the one most qualified to put together a stopgap system to keep the one remaining piece (Fiora) from terminally powering down. Also, while Gadolt doesn't survive long enough for this to matter, would all pilots of Face units, separated from their respective mecha, eventually succumb to cardiovascular failure, or is Fiora's problem entirely unique? I seem to recall that even with Meyneth on board, early on you still needed to scavenge parts from a wrecked Mechon (piezoelectrical unit, if memory serves) to prevent a complete system failure of Fiora immediately following your arrival at Junks. Then again, Fiora '''did''' suffer some rather critical... system damage in the process of getting taken in the first place (ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice - not good for one's internal organs), and Linada did express some surprise to find that most of Fiora's innards simply weren't there anymore. So it could well be that her imminent shutdown (and lack of necessity to eat) was more a function of "Metal Face stabbed me with claws as long as I am tall" than "Meyneth isn't providing me limitless free energy". I know that Vanea eventually points out that some modification has to be done to a Homs to make a Face unit work, but maybe Fiora's modifications were a bit more extreme out of necessity, rather than simply to make her invincible to standard Monado damage.]]

**** (Original Poster) [[:spoilerFair point. That said, since Vanea was the one who originally put together the Fiora/Meyneth/Face Nemesis combo platter, she would probably have been the one most qualified to put together a stopgap system to keep the one remaining piece (Fiora) from terminally powering down. Also, while Gadolt doesn't survive long enough for this to matter, would all pilots of Face units, separated from their respective mecha, eventually succumb to cardiovascular failure, or is Fiora's problem entirely unique? I seem to recall that even with Meyneth on board, early on you still needed to scavenge parts from a wrecked Mechon (piezoelectrical unit, if memory serves) to prevent a complete system failure of Fiora immediately following your arrival at Junks. Then again, Fiora '''did''' suffer some rather critical... system damage in the process of getting taken in the first place (ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice - not good for one's internal organs), and Linada did express some surprise to find that most of Fiora's innards simply weren't there anymore. So it could well be that her imminent shutdown (and lack of necessity to eat) was more a function of "Metal Face stabbed me with claws as long as I am tall" than "Meyneth isn't providing me limitless free energy". I know that Vanea eventually points out that some modification has to be done to a Homs to make a Face unit work, but maybe Fiora's modifications were a bit more extreme out of necessity, rather than simply to make her invincible to standard Monado damage.]]

**** (Original Poster) [[:spoilerFair point. That said, since Vanea was the one who originally put together the Fiora/Meyneth/Face Nemesis combo platter, she would probably have been the one most qualified to put together a stopgap system to keep the one remaining piece (Fiora) from terminally powering down. Also, while Gadolt doesn't survive long enough for this to matter, would all pilots of Face units, separated from their respective mecha, eventually succumb to cardiovascular failure, or is Fiora's problem entirely unique? I seem to recall that even with Meyneth on board, early on you still needed to scavenge parts from a wrecked Mechon (piezoelectrical unit, if memory serves) to prevent a complete system failure of Fiora immediately following your arrival at Junks. Then again, Fiora '''did''' suffer some rather critical... system damage in the process of getting taken in the first place (ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice - not good for one's internal organs), and Linada did express some surprise to find that most of Fiora's innards simply weren't there anymore. So it could well be that her imminent shutdown (and lack of necessity to eat) was more a function of "Metal Face stabbed me with claws as long as I am tall" than "Meyneth isn't providing me limitless free energy". I know that Vanea eventually points out that some modification has to be done to a Homs to make a Face unit work, but maybe Fiora's modifications were a bit more extreme out of necessity, rather than simply to make her invincible to standard Monado damage.
**** As far as we know, even though the game doesn't flat out confirm this, the pulsating red lights that only Faced Mechon have (Shulk notes this in the first encounter with Metal Face after they find out the Monado can't damage him) are transparent artificial arteries/veins through which the blood of the pilot flows. This is what makes Zanza's Monado confused about the nature of the "thing" that it's hitting, not being able to distinguish Homs from Mechon, and therefore causes it to deal no damage (until Zanza lifts the restriction). So with that said, we can assume a Faced Mechon's pilot's body is surgically modified to have ports which connect his/her Homs blood vessels with those of the Mechon. When the pilot voluntarily exits the Mechon (for example, Mumkhar on Valak Mountain and Galahad Fortress), some software on the Mechon that manages its circulatory system makes sure to shut those ports and keep enough blood inside the pilot's body so that he/she doesn't faint or die from anemia (lack of blood). However, both Fiora and Gadolt were ejected from their critically damaged Mechon's wreckage, so it's safe to assume that control software wasn't working anymore and that's why they were so weak afterwards: a large portion of their blood was left inside the wreckage of their respective Mechons. This is only speculation, but seems plausible.]]

*** (Original Poster) I can accept that the replicas weren't as powerful as the real deals, but at their base they at least had to have some means of either storing or converting ether energy out of the air to provide the energy blade the weapon used. As to Fiora's architecture, take this into account - on first meeting her, Linada, the machina doctor, mistook this strange robotic woman for one of her people, not realizing that she was a Face unit until the party actually mentions it. While their problems weren't identical (Neonik was dying from being damn near 10000 years old, Fiora is dying because Meyneth isn't powering her heart and lungs anymore), they boiled down to something very similar - their power systems were failing, and a shot of energy from an old Machina unit was enough to repower Neonik for another 20 years. Of course, if Fiora's power really couldn't be restored, it makes the usage of Final Cross REALLY irresponsible post-Mechonis Core, since the whole thing shakes out to "Massive blast of Monado power hits stuff".
**** Sure, but given that no other Machina have Monados powering them, it's quite possible that Fiora's power system is a unique technology and incompatible with other power sources.
**** (Original Poster) Fair point. That said, since Vanea was the one who originally put together the Fiora/Meyneth/Face Nemesis combo platter, she would probably have been the one most qualified to put together a stopgap system to keep the one remaining piece (Fiora) from terminally powering down. Also, while Gadolt doesn't survive long enough for this to matter, would all pilots of Face units, separated from their respective mecha, eventually succumb to cardiovascular failure, or is Fiora's problem entirely unique? I seem to recall that even with Meyneth on board, early on you still needed to scavenge parts from a wrecked Mechon (piezoelectrical unit, if memory serves) to prevent a complete system failure of Fiora immediately following your arrival at Junks. Then again, Fiora '''did''' suffer some rather critical... system damage in the process of getting taken in the first place (ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice - not good for one's internal organs), and Linada did express some surprise to find that most of Fiora's innards simply weren't there anymore. So it could well be that her imminent shutdown (and lack of necessity to eat) was more a function of "Metal Face stabbed me with claws as long as I am tall" than "Meyneth isn't providing me limitless free energy". I know that Vanea eventually points out that some modification has to be done to a Homs to make a Face unit work, but maybe Fiora's modifications were a bit more extreme out of necessity, rather than simply to make her invincible to standard Monado damage.
**** As far as we know, even though the game doesn't flat out confirm this, the pulsating red lights that only Faced Mechon have (Shulk notes this in the first encounter with Metal Face after they find out the Monado can't damage him) are transparent artificial arteries/veins through which the blood of the pilot flows. This is what makes Zanza's Monado confused about the nature of the "thing" that it's hitting, not being able to distinguish Homs from Mechon, and therefore causes it to deal no damage (until Zanza lifts the restriction). So with that said, we can assume a Faced Mechon's pilot's body is surgically modified to have ports which connect his/her Homs blood vessels with those of the Mechon. When the pilot voluntarily exits the Mechon (for example, Mumkhar on Valak Mountain and Galahad Fortress), some software on the Mechon that manages its circulatory system makes sure to shut those ports and keep enough blood inside the pilot's body so that he/she doesn't faint or die from anemia (lack of blood). However, both Fiora and Gadolt were ejected from their critically damaged Mechon's wreckage, so it's safe to assume that control software wasn't working anymore and that's why they were so weak afterwards: a large portion of their blood was left inside the wreckage of their respective Mechons. This is only speculation, but seems plausible.

* After the Mechonis Core, there is a very real concern about Fiora running out of power and dying before the quest's end, as her cardiopulmonary systems were being provided power by Meyneth's Monado. The first thing we see after Junks lands at Colony 6 is Fiora presenting the first Replica Monado to a comatose Shulk. Would it have been so unreasonable to say to Vanea, "Hey, think you could make me one of those? Sorta triangular, about, say, this size?" I know that the problem is solved by the epilogue, but as a quick fix to take some of the stress off of Fiora's, Dunban's, Melia's and... well, everyone else who spotted the issue with her body straight away's mind. Additionally, as the issue at hand would have been her machina body running out of power, couldn't you conceivably have used one of the two potential solutions to extend Neonik's life for Fiora?
** It's possible that none of these would have worked. The Replica Monados might not have been able to supply the same energy that the genuine ones can, and Fiora's condition, and possibly her architecture, are considerably different from Neonik's.

* So in Satorl Marsh, Dickson has a line about how he feels bad about deceiving Shulk and co. Yet as soon as he makes his treachery known, he immediately switches to his true persona of a smug, unrepentant JerkAss of near CardCarryingVillain levels who flat-out gloats about deceiving the heroes, making that line seem rather out of character in hindsight. So... What was the point? Was it just a narrative cheat to make Dickson seem like he might not be that bad despite obviously being up to something? Or an attempt at HiddenDepths that was ultimately left unexplored?
** Chances are any kind of attachment he had to Shulk meant jack to him once Shulk started to go against the plans of his powerful long-standing master. After all, he's only known Shulk for what is essentially a passing second compared to his who knows how many years of immortality.

*** I interpreted this one as "Shulk took the stuff that was Bionis and Mechonis and incorporated that into the new planet". Hence why Colony 9 appears almost identical to how it appeared on Bionis, and perhaps more importantly, allowing the people living on Bionis to keep their homes and scientific materials, which helps with the whole "Explore this vast new universe!" idea.

** Destroyed in previous Mechon attacks presumably.