Xenoblade Chronicles

...so was Nia not aware that every member of Torna was a Flesh Eater like herself?

I don't see why she wouldn't have. I can't recall any scene in the game pointing to it but maybe I will on my second time through.

I get the feeling she wasn't with Torna for very long

ED: Also it's funny that despite the name Mikhail's their only member who's actually from Torna

Edited by asterism on May 13th 2019 at 4:54:26 PM

Jin's also from Torna.

I guess so. Lora's Tornan, but he's a Blade, so idk if he really counts.

...Well, they're ALL Blades except Mik.

Nia knew, I just don't think she knew about how they came to form or join Torna. Ahkos threatens to out her to Rex early on.

One thing that's absolutely fascinating about Xenoblade 2 are the parallels to the first game. After all, the whole story is about a hero losing the love of his life in war against an implacable foe, and then assembling a team from around the world to take down the person behind the attacking force, and later decides to challenge god to free his people from a cycle designed to keep them enslaved.

Jin is what we'd get if Shulk never got Fiora back. Best of all, it's the same god both times. I really think the game needed to double the length of the final chapter to REALLY dig into these connections.

EDIT: Ahkos and Patroka are Tantalese Blades, and were probably Tornan originally. Would've been neat to meet their Torna-era selves during the DLC, just sayin'.

Edited by Watashiwa on May 13th 2019 at 10:16:11 AM

How come Malos look so much like a Tornan?

Aegaeon also looks like he originates from Torna as well.

Yeah nah I'm not seeing it. The human-blade-titan dynamic wasn't supposed to keep them enslaved, the story presents it as a good idea, hence why rex agrees with what the god had envisionned for this world. In fact, the biggest asshole of the story of 2 isn't the god, who's just resigned to his failure, but a random nobody who thinks he speaks in the name of god when he 's the one perverting the cycle in place.

Jin isn't shulk if he didn't get fiora back. He's Eghil. And the entire point of the conflict between Eghil and shulk was that they both suffered losses, but shulk was able to move past his anger while Eghil and Jin didn't until five seconds before their death. Exemplified with how he pleads for Mumkhar's life to Dunban because even if he hates him and mumkhar has zero redeeming qualities, when Shulk's faced with the murderer of his loved one, he still refuses to kill another human in cold blood if he can avoid it.

Also, minor nitpick but by the time rex loses the love of his life, he's already assembled his team of friends from across the world. And unlike fiora, it was very clear she wasn't dead yet.

That's not so much a parrelel to 1 than it's a parralel to half the stories ever made because both are a hero's journey, and both are drawing from the pool of JRPG tropes.

Anyway, mistakenly booted 2 instead of torna tonight so I decided to finish elma's chart. That was unpleasant, but at least that's something off the to-do list.

How are you supposed to clear the poisoned water swimsuit battle btw ? Even with tora and zeke in swimsuits, I die in about ten seconds tops. I'm guessing there's another item that reduces field damage, but I don't know which one.

Edited by Yumil on May 13th 2019 at 8:43:31 PM

In case it wasn't clear, in my entire post I'm comparing Jin to Shulk; Rex never comes up. Jin's a hero, and loses Lora to Amalthus's army, meets Malos, recruits Flesh Eaters, and creates artificial Blades, and his ultimate plan is to kill the Architect explicitly to create a world where Blades control their own destiny. When you look at the game in that light the implications are fascinating.

Thought experiment time! Imagine that for whatever reason, Face Nemesis is never created. What happens at Prison Island? Metal Face kills the Emperor and Arglas and Shulk strikes Metal Face down in turn, before joining the combined forces at Sword Valley and taking the war to Mechonis. In this version of events, does Shulk "get over his losses"?

Hell no, and during his final confrontation with Egil, he rams the Monado through Egil's head, "for the Emperor and Fiora".

Shulk never really deals with his rage and grief, he discovers it's unnecessary. Fiora is alive (for a given value of...) and Shulk's attention and energy focuses entirely on her, and it's only after they reunite that he starts to listen to his better nature.

I compare Shulk and Jin, instead of Egil and Jin, because I think Jin has comrades and at least one friend who understands him. Egil was always alone and pushed everyone away. Jin let people in.

I think Jin comes closer to moving on than you're allowing. Not completely, not perfectly, but his ultimate goal isn't revenge for Lora (though he'll happily gut Amalthus and it's totally for her sake and not on general principle), it's freedom for his people from a tyrannical system set up by a god that's clearly playing favorites.

So yeah I see a lot of parallels between Xenoblade 1 and 2, it's just that we're not playing the would-be deicide's storyline

Jin was born from Torna and its where he'd go to be Titan'd if he lived that long.

It's funny because he wasn't trying to play favorites. The Blades were even his attempt to curb the worst parts of human nature, but in the end the Architects system ended up becoming a slave system with many Blades chained to cruel masters.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on May 14th 2019 at 1:15:33 AM

oh, okay, I didn't read the first part that way. Okay so then I do agree that the parralel work.

However, I'd very much argue that Shulk still gets over his losses even if face nemesis is never created. Surely might get more bloody and he'll probably kill mumkhar, and then he'll realize what he did and the remorse will overtake the anger. Once again, when shulk is faced with killing mumkhar, who is still a loathable person personally responsible for slaughtering his hometown and betraying his people a year ago, he choses to let him live. Mumkhar still doesn't deserve to live because face nemesis exists. But shulk still refuses to kill him.

Once again, his whole rhetoric and talking points from here on aren't just that fiora's alive. Fiora being turned into a mechon is what causes him to stop regarding fighting the mechon as black and white morality, but as a bloody war. But Discorvering that by killing Mumkhar at prison island would also be a catalyst for shulk, only channeled by more grief instead. If he ever kills egil, it's because this timeline's shulk doesn't manage to stop itself form Zanza's influence, not of his own will.

I'd even make the point you could have the complete scene of mumkhar's death go unaltered, and the "even if it's fiora ?" would just be thrown around as a "what if" rather than an actual plot point. Of note is that shulk uses this argument to appeal to Dunban, it's not the primary reason he gives.

Shulk starts listening to his better nature long before reuniting with fiora - Again, he goes the extra mile to save the most despicable person of the story, instead of rushing to face Fiora. He was willing to throw down with one of his best friends to save the Hate Sink. shulk values human life independently of Fiora's recovery as a face mechon, and that's a point the story brings up before that point- just not as prominently.

Depicting him as a compeltley revenge-driven for the first half of the story is a misconception I've never really got how it happened in the first place.

I would agree that Jin's redemption is more developed than Egil, though. Shame his overall character isn't as well written before that point (discounting torna).

Also, the god isn't actually playing favorites, for this one. Again, the story, rex and the arcitect agrees on the intended vision, and the story paints this vision as right. But I would agree that "playing favorites" is certainly how it felt for Jin. But his whole redemption thing stems from rex essentially going "You sure about that, mate ? you sure it's not your personnal grief speaking ? that you're using it as a rationalization so you can live without facing the fact you killed people out of misguided rage ? Because that's not what I understood from this world" and then jin going through the realization that "shit, I think that's actually it."

Edited by Yumil on May 14th 2019 at 10:30:23 AM

But even in that case Unfortunate Implications remain that the Blades exist for humans and not to be their own people. Even Jin doesn't see the problem with the system until Lora dies.

The Driver/Blade dynamic is woefully undercooked in the story, and the fact that it's presented as a good thing that sentient individuals can have their minds and souls warped to match their partner who they're selflessly loyal to in 99% of cases is Happiness in Slavery more than it's "good". Jin's right that it's intrinsically wrong. Rex's counter is regrettably insufficient, AND contradicts what the story tells us about Blades who lose their Drivers even if it's true that the memory erasure isn't completely total

And at the end of the day even Titans exist for humanity's sake. "Would you be happy to drift around the ocean with a human on your back? Is that all I am to be?" Even Rex can't answer that one.

EDIT: Oops, that was a response to the poster above you. Give me a hot minute to go through your post.

Edited by Watashiwa on May 14th 2019 at 1:32:58 AM

Hey I never said 2's story was good. Remember, my hatred for 2's continuated existence grow somehow bigger every day since i replayed X.

but regardless of how well the story carries it's own themes and points, it doesn't change that the point the story is telling is that Jin was wrong about the architect and the world as a whole but was sympathetic because backstory, and Rex was supposed to be the less biased, idealistic guy who saw the situation with more clarity. In that way, Jin is more of a straighter dark counterpart to shulk than just shulk without fiora's recovery.

I think 2's a general failure in storytelling on several fonts and that the human-blades relationship in only one in a long list of fumbles (although my gripes are more with how anything is integrated into the gameplay) so while I get that it's an alternate interpretation you can use to look at the story, I can't really find any interest in it.

edit : oh, makes more sense. Well, at least you won't have to doublepost.

Edited by Yumil on May 14th 2019 at 10:39:35 AM

Hahaha yeah that's always nice.

I think my post there actually answers both your posts so I'll leave it. But I'm also going to add to it!

You're right that Rex is completely correct about the Architect's intentions, but Jin's equally right about what the Architect actually did. I think the problem here is that no one does anything with this information. There's not enough time in the ending for the player to digest the information about the Architect before you see the original sin and it's put aside for more immediately important things.

I really like Xenoblade 2 but I acknowledge it doesn't follow through on its big ideas the way Xenoblade 1 and X do. There are three components to that: Gameplay and Story Segregation (common blades need to go, rare blades only and they're sidequest rewards and what you get is still random except where relevant), character development (Mythra is flashback and Torna only. She's pretty best but she and Pyra cannabalize each other's screentime and relevance), and side content.

I'm not parenthizing the last because I have to break it down a bit further. X especially went crazy on side content, but 1 had important lore and character development in the sidequests. Xenoblade 2 had about two quests like that, which is a shame because they're both really good. The Blade quests were okay but could have been better.

Not as much of an issue but the last chapter's overly stuffed. There should have been more build-up to the artificial Blades, the Torna character's reveals, Amalthus, etc so it could really focus on the superstory.

I can agree with that. World tree (and morytha, too) are the only two bits of the story I really felt invested in and have some fond memories of the cutscenes, so i certainly would have taken an expanded version of that that spanned the entire game to make it less crammed at the end.

And I can agree that the reveal of the architect's will comes too late to have characters make an actual discussion about it.

I kinda feel like making Rex that weird kid that lives in a mini-titan isolated from the rest of the world and only knows argentum was a mistake. like sure, Colony 9 was also a small village in what was essentially the middle of nowhere, but he certainly felt like he had a lot more access to a various array of knowledge and didn't needed to be taught life 101. Or rather, shulk having to learn to wield monado made sense because nobody in the world could teach him to do that. Rex has to learn to be a driver in a world where they're commonplace. Cutting that out in 2 would have left more place for the plot threads that matters.

Edited by Yumil on May 14th 2019 at 12:04:51 PM

So. I rewatched the two scenes that actually somewhat worked for me in the world tree (amalthus's fight and meeting the architect) and, looking back on various things, I really agree with how you worded your statement : the mechanic of blades and drivers is severely undercooked.

I think that Claus's idea was that people like rex would resonate and shape blades in their images, and those blades would then go on to forever carry their legacies and uphold the best of humanity. But this doesn't actually work for the following reasons.

-The game never establishes what exactly the potential to be a driver is. good people like tora cannot, but assholes like praxis and theory's drivers can. It's also not something you can lose from state of mind either. amalthus resonated with blades after jumping off the slope, so it's strictly something you're born with.

What the shit, Claus ?

-The idea that blades would carry the legacies of their original owners doesn't work, because we see in game that simply changing drivers can prompt blade to do a 180 in personality. We have direct, slight examples with Praxis and Theory, and a major, unseen one with Perceval who did an exact 180 compared to his original self. And, more worryingly, even without getting into that, we have a direct showcase of what happened to Haze. Shitheads can resonate with any blade so long as they have the potential, so they can stumble on a "legacy" blade and said blade will become loyal to them.

It's one thing to warp and shape entire personalities of people when they are blank states literally made to go through that process, but while I could lowkey accept that, it stops having the excuses when you can do that to blades that have been imprinted too.

What the shit, Claus ?

-This conception goes directly against what the world thinks of the blades at large. The problem with that is that as such, it runs contrary to the player's perception of them. Sure, it's supposed to pull the twist that the world was wrong, and you can accept it, but as usual with anything in this game, this is undermined by the gameplay where it just doesn't look like any of this would be applicable because I DUNNO, DID THE GUY WHO WROTE THE PLOT PLAYED THE GAME ? DID THE GUY WHO MADE THE GAME READ THE SCRIPT ?

What the shit, Monolithsoft ?

That reveal could a have a lot more punch if the story actually set it up properly before, but they didn't.

Edited by Yumil on May 14th 2019 at 3:14:14 PM

And again, the story is undercut by the unneeded gacha system. Of course.

God damn it Monolith, the gacha added NOTHING to the game!

IIRC, the timeline matches up, so I almost wouldn't be surprised if they really initially intended to monetize the shit out of that gacha and then either the battlefornt controversy made them change their mind, or a higher-up got their head out of their ass and went like "Ok guys i know we're nintendo and we're lowkey trying to stop being the kiddie company but we're not trying to become EA, our public image is worth more money than what you could make out of this gacha, kthxbye" before putting their head back in their ass.

But then again, why do that and not remove the gacha entirely, that's beyond me. I'm not even sure it would have broken anything in the gameplay. So maybe they just really had a spectacularly bad idea.

Edited by Yumil on May 14th 2019 at 3:35:54 PM

The theme of 2 is Sloth

Amalthus's whole thing is sloth, as is Indol's. The Architect was content with sitting back and doing nothing while the world fell to bits, when he was very capable of solving everyone's problems with very little apparent difficulty. In that respect, Jin was right, he was a very crappy god.

Persona 5 deals with sloth as well, and I think it's something that fiction rarely explores, instead characterizing it as laziness or sleepiness, when it's more knowing the right thing to do but not doing it because it's Too Hard. Not for nothing is it considered to be the most serious of the seven after pride.

Edited by asterism on May 14th 2019 at 2:11:18 PM

Weird non-sequitur, but true.

This is like Gen V's "Pokemon battling is totally fine, guys."

I'm under the impression that pokémon gen 5 just never had a satisfying retort to that point, not just they had one but it was poorly handled by the game.

Edited by Yumil on May 14th 2019 at 4:37:47 PM

The franchise's game mechanic has historically been contrary with what it says. You can order your "friends" to blow up and they happily comply.

Unrelated: completed Zenobia's and Wulfie's sidequest.

Wow Pyra's damage output is low even at Rank A. I think freaking Newt is stronger than her. I will have to check if she has any Aux Core.

Edited by RAlexa21th on May 14th 2019 at 8:04:36 AM

The gacha was never about monetization, but about social media penetration and diverse playthroughs. And at least the former seems to have worked out in MS's favor.