Stellar analysis. Loathe as I am to admit it, the City stuff didn’t even occur to me. Maybe that’s just a casualty of how minimally the game meditates on it. I didn’t like the ending either, but for me, the final straw was allowing the worlds to ultimately reunite last minute. I actually don’t mind splitting them apart, because it felt like one of the story’s few genuinely consequential decisions. Forcing Noah and the gang to choose between their ideals and relationships with each other is interesting because in all other respects, Xenoblade 3 seems terrified of exploring unchangeable loss. Don’t like that Ethel is dead? Complete this quest to revive her! Not sure about erasing Ghondor’s entire being? Don’t worry, she believes she’ll be inexplicably reborn as a perfect facsimile! Sad that the worlds ultimately split apart? My, is that Mio’s flute I hear? And then there’s Miyabi, Mwamba… the list goes on. I’m genuinely stunned by the decision to make loss meaningless in a story about war. I love this series and didn’t hate 3, but man did that game stomp all over its narrative stakes.
It’s technically democracy. The majority wins. The Conservatives were considered a minority. So their opinion doesn’t matter when the votes are finished. It’s like passing bills. The majority wins.
About Mwamba, Myabi and Ethel comebacks, it's imo a great point of the game since it shows how the deaths of soldiers are really meaningless and how it's actually our memories that define us (with these three being only empty soul without a place anymore).
The ending of Xenoblade 3 soured a game that was initially a contender for the best in the trilogy to a game I find extremely underwhelming compared to the two before it, but I never could articulate why for reasons other than “the game feels like it’s rushing to an ending after chapter 5 and pretty much the whole thing fell flat emotionally around then too”. The way you articulated all of this suddenly makes it all make sense why this ending completely failed to work for me, and it also just feels nice to see some proper criticism for Xenoblade 3 when it’s probably the most acclaimed in the trilogy (even though I really don’t care for it compared to 1 and 2).
Yep, it really does feel like Xenoblade 3 loses a lot of steam after the big events at the end of chapter 5. I feel like the pandemic must've had some significant impacts on development, because I find it hard to believe that the best thing they could come up with for the Agnus Castle Region was one hallway and a large room, especially compared to the fairly significantly-sized Kevesi Castle.
When your channel gets “discovered” by the algorithm or some other circumstance, your new audience is going to have such a treat with a library of so many compelling videos! I’m so impressed by the depth and organization of your commentary, especially how consistent it is so early into your video making. You really have a knack for this man!
Thank you! I always try to have a specific thesis in mind rather than treat each game as a list of elements to talk about, which does wonders for organizing an essay, haha
okay unsure if I totally agree with all the things but holy shit you finally put into words that little irk I had in my mind ever since it ended. Especially with future redeemed showing two lights seperate the worlds in two then get back together again I just... wondered whatever the point is? It feels like the writers wanted a dramatic farewell despite everything we do going against it. My biggest enjoyment in the game was when I went around saving colonies, helping the lives of people. The potato quest was tedious but I just thought... thats what it takes... it takes real work to make this war ridden world a place to live. And when we got quests like zeon and junpier coming together and learning about farming despite previously being on two sides of war it was the most. It felt impactful these relationships we helped build. Unlike you I didn't particularly feel the game rushed through them I was very satisfied with getting attached to most of these guys but that just made things worse here. It felt like... why did I bother with all that farming? Was it worth spending so much time helping these people with maintaining colonies? After all we just beat the bad guy and all these guys get reborn into their homes as kids so no problemo. This goes into the triple realization for me realizing how deterministic this game is. I got the sense from the start of this but chairitably ignored it for the sake of the game. Its been ages since I played so I might be wrong but I think vandham says human lives should be 80 years or so I just asked myself... "why?". Seriously why? The human life expentancy just keeps growing. Different races in this world should differ in their lifespan. Why is there some "way the world is supposed to be"? And then in future redeemed when A repeats Alvies words from the end of xenoblade 1 about seeing things clear as day. So is that to mean... what alvis saw the peace the characters fought for here... or after this in close past of noah and the crew? Or even further? How long can we expect that all of this, is predeterminedd? Isn't that what the point of the story was to break free of this restraint? That all goes down to the city of course. If they really will just reincarnate as they were in aionios then everything until we catch up generation wise just has to be stuck in destiny. I also felt that this thing with the city was too murky. Xenoblade 3 does it a lot it throws in something with a line or two to justify that they won't die and I have seen so many people defend it that its on the players to pay enough attention. But I don't think so, like you really well express this isn't the problems of players being confused but rather the game dropping something into the world with massive implications and not wanting to follow up because it might accidentally muddle the themes its trying to express. In terms of the story I got the sense that mobius are the endless now so destroying them automatically must end aionios so I didn't particularly think like you about reasons for it to persist. But at the same time I also felt like the world splitting came kind of out of nowhere. Yeeah Nia kinda mentions it but before we get to the ending the characters don't tackle all the implications and that's what makes this ending feel rather weak. It's why when we get to it the best writers can do for the people of the city is say "they'll be fine trust me" and offer no reasoning really. I do still really love the game but I cannot lie... it just would feel better and made a whole lot of sense as the story for the characters to stay in this connected world... which once again future redeemed just kinda... gives and impression they are gonna be back together in like a second passing which ultimately I think makes this farewell less bittersweet and more just... awkward. Like the party running together to the emotional music got me at first but now I just think to myself oh its not a problem they'll just be back almost right after it. And the game sure won't touch the way the city can live at all. I would have felt better if they got to look at all of this, the world once ridden by oppression and war and be able to say that now, they can all march together towards a bright future within it... not just go back like it never happened to try again and then I guess few seconds after getting back together again. This already got way too long but man I can't be the only one who thinks the entire premise of annihilation events happening due to two worlds merging is kinda bs? Like these used to be one universe that got split apart why now when it tries to get back together its rejecting itself? I kinda realize I didn't really brought too much to discussion here besides "I agree" but whatever I have time to type... I guess I just want to say it sure feels like the game fights against itself by making me spend so much time saving and helping people through the lives they can live in this world after we free them and then go "nah we gotta reset everything anyways"
Yup, this sums up my thoughts pretty well. I'm also a little frustrated by the annihilation events, because I don't really understand them either. It feels like the game is working backwards here, like they've already decided that Aionios needs to go, and the annihilation events act as the symbolic manifestations of that argument. But if you don't agree with the game about what Aionios' fate should be -- and I think there's a lot of reasons to be skeptical about that argument -- then the annihilation events are just the game begging the question. I've also seen some xenotubers claim that understanding the ending of this game is a "test of media literacy," and I really can't agree. I think so many people were caught of guard by the ending because they were accurately responding to how unintuitive it felt.
I personally disagree, the game wants the melting pot of cultures to happen, it's just the circumstances of how it happened making it not healthy to be sustained After Origin resets the worlds we can see Noah remembering agnus' melody, symbolizing him remembering Mio and that shows that the worlds still yearn for each other Of course, with future redeemed we know that this view is confirmed, but I think that even before the dlc released we could interpret the ending like this And of course the view that the ending defeats the whole point of the adventure is a mute point, since if the adventure didn't hapoen in the first place, the ending wouldn't happen, letting the characters of Aionios continue living in the endless now
I think my issue with this reading is that it falls into the "the world just isn't ready for change yet," which I don't feel is much better than what I suggest in the video. Change isn't like that. There is never a perfect time, or even an ideal one, for people to come together and make change happen, social or otherwise. The game can say it didn't happen in the best way, sure, but the answer is never to scrap it and start over. The answer is to take stock of what you have in the moment, and try your hardest to make the best of a messy situation. That's the only thing we can do, and that feels like the most emotionally honest answer to me. So when Xenoblade 3 deletes Aionios at the end, it feels like the game is taking the easy way out. I think my fundamental problem with the ending is that I don't really buy the argument that Aionios is the endless now. I mean, it is literally stuck in time, but metaphorically, it very much represents an unstable, uncertain future. And isn't it worth trying to see that uncertainty through to the end, instead of tossing it out with the bathwater? In that sense, I don't really like that Future Redeemed basically confirms the two worlds will merge again. The entire point of the story was to embrace ambiguity and uncertainty, not to embrace it only contingent on if you get a definitive answer later on. We should, on some level, be content with not knowing what will happen to the two worlds. But those are just my thoughts. I appreciate the comment!
Xenoblade 3 is too unhealthy apart of my identity to watch this or any video that doesn't go "OH MY GOD ITS SOO GOOD AND LANZ IS SO HOT HES GONNA MARRY ME". But i will return in 6 years when i see my current self as an embarrassment so i can finally enjoy your analysis. :D
I genuinely have always felt like Xenoblade 3 is the weakest of the trilogy, against so many who say it's the best, and I think you put into words a lot of the issues I have with it. It sucks because I think everyone was expecting something that really brought the themes and characters of the first two games together in a satisfying conclusion, but for me I just see a game with so much missed opportunity.
I would say though 2 is probably most least favorite of the series to actually play, I think it has the most interesting and character rich story. 3 was getting pretty close, but the ending really soured it for me. That recent interview that came out where Takahashi answered a bunch of interview questions was very interesting. So many people seem to want to see what happens after the events of XC3. But the whole idea of 3 is that the future is uncertain, and that we need to press on regardless of that uncertainty. So when so many people want *definitive* answers as to *exactly* what happens at the end of the game, it feels to me like they've missed the point. It's supposed to be ambiguous, and to remove that ambiguity is to completely undermine the core theme of the game.
@@AurumAlex64 Right. But at that point things are just as ambiguous as when X1 and X2 had their own endings. It just feels like all the work you do to help people with sidequests and saving the world pays off in the first two games whereas in 3 none of those things matter in the end, so what's the point? I'm also in the minority who really likes 2 and I feel like having all the different blades actually in the party with their own objectives and skill trees was far more engaging than the heroes in 3. The fact that only 1 hero can be in the party at a time and that they don't really do much other than unlock more classes for the main characters makes them less interesting in my opinion. And even the main party becomes less unique when anyone can be any class. But yeah I know I'm in the minority. I'm not looking for a direct sequel to 3 but I'm hoping for another Xeno-style game eventually with the same depth of characters and story that the first two brought
@@4backpack1 Yeah, I agree with pretty much all of this. I really like 2's combat more than 3's, I think it's the field skills combined with the randomness of the blades that really annoyed me playing 2.
A few months before this game released I remembered id bought Xenoblade X on wii u. My Wii u was broken, so I decided to emulate it. Holy shit that game is gorgeous. Enormous sprawling maps, fun combat with overdrive tricks. You can mess around with mechs after unlocking them. Doing the dash and moon jump is so fun. When blown up to high resolution that game looks goddamn incredible. I highly recommend it. I wasnt even an avid X lover before then, I didnt understand. Playing XC3 right after MADE me understand, because X had basically everything in it that I wanted that wasn't there. .... story is another matter.
I dont remember where, but i remember there being something about Origin's instability. The world technically exists as a data piece in Origin. Should Origin fail, the world fails. The Annihilation Events are showing this deterioration. The City wants the war to end because sometime soon, maybe not a year or eve 100, the world is doomed to end, and THAT fate is what they want to avoid. The whole "save the world for my kids" argument. Always connected this to why occasionally a colonists body doesnt regenerate to go through another cycle (not sending off, sometimes they just dont go back), just the machine breaking down. I may be remembering a small piece of dialogue incorrectly, or even a false head cannon. Curious if im alone on this. This also doesnt excuse not talking more about the potential lost life
This is my recollection too, but my problem is that the game doesn't establish the rules very well. Is resetting Origin and destroying Aionios really the only option? Or can Origin be repaired and maintained indefinitely? The game doesn't really answer this question, instead opting to toss away the world without exploring alternatives. But more fundamental than that, the game should be concerned with the moral question at the heart of that choice: if we assume that Aionios really is doomed, and that Origin will fail, is deleting the people of the City and leaving them to an uncertain fate really the correct option? Should we, as a moral society, potentially kill this entire population "for the greater good"? What does that suggest about us as a people? That our existence can be justified no matter the cost? I think these are legitimately difficult questions to answer, which is why it annoys me that Xenoblade 3 basically just ignores them. Because facing the future is only hard to do when the choices ahead of you are hard.
@@AurumAlex64 I haven't watched your video entirely yet but there is clearly the idea of worlds of X1 and X2 destroying each other in their intersection even when origin is properly rebooted in the ending. They actually don't know if its going to work at all. The fear of that failure is what created moebius and eternal now in the first place, so just removing moebius folk and supporting Aionios until its completely destroyed is not really that different of letting moebius be. Fear of moving into the future and getting hurt. But the events of the game are still very important because Noah and Mio accepting their moebius and ouroboros parts allow origin not just to recreate worlds of x1 and x2 but unify them, returning Earth home and finally redeeming humanity from mistakes of Klaus era, that's how I see it at least.
Xenoblade already did the vignette approach with the main story being just the intro for the larger collection of vignettes and world building. It's called Xenoblade Chronicles X. Except instead of fleshing out colonies, it does that with different alien races. Needless to say, this "mystery box open to interpretation" approach is perfection for lore hunters which is like 5% of the players and it utterly fails the 95% who wanted clear cut themes with resolutions, hence why XCX's story is hated by the majority.
big fan of your points on time travel; theres a class barrier there that a lot of weaker stuff walks into. my favourite solutions are the moffat era of doctor who (where time is in flux always, everyone has the ability to change the future at all times- anyone who tries to change the world, even if its objectively for the better, will inevitably be feared) and the fox-men version of days of future past (when the day comes that the future is impossible to improve, some of us morally must give up their lives if theres a chance to fix it) and man the stuff at the end about franchise slop hits harder year after year. cant wait for minecraft the movie starring jack black (real (fake)). you should 1000% play the danganronpa games if thats sorta theming interests you btw, both the sequels deal with it in super cool interesting ways
LOL, the Minecraft trailer unironically made my respect for Telltale's Story Mode increase tenfold. Like, say what you will about the game, but the fact that they made an entire episode about Minecraft RU-vidrs working together to solve a haunted-house murder mystery, and it wasn't completely embarrassing in the process, *and* an episode about a death- match spleef tournament shows Telltale clearly understood why and *how* people engaged with the game at the time.
Just subscribed. I genuinely appreciate your level of analysis, discussion, and delivery overall, especially with how you even included your script in the description for others to look at. Wonderful aspects of a brilliant, upfront writer. I noticed a similar issue especially in or right before the post-game, the point of why bother? There's was a mission for Colony 11 in Keves that was essentially: these people are siphoning away energy, stop them. That's fine and dandy. I'm not a nihilistic person, I think it's a very dangerous and evil ideology. But this side quest helped explain why I was so dissatisfied with the game despite how wonderful it is: its people and story did not matter. Not as in they were bad; I would argue X3 has the best side quests in the trilogy with excellent characters and stories. But they did not matter because we are going to destroy the world. Why does it matter if some people are taking or stockpiling ether energy, why does it matter if we give names to child soldiers raised to pilot mechs, why does it matter if we befreid and help the people of the City? The world is being erased, and it is, at best, questionable if anyone in either world will know or remember any of the events that took place. The obvious answer is that the player cares, and since it's a game that's all that matters, and our party cares. But the game's narrative is in direct conflict with this idea: we care about solving the problems of this world, the one we are about to blow up. In comparison to X2:Torna, despite a similar fate happing to the inhabitants, the events that take place, even mundane side quests, are crucial and meaningful not just to the player, but to Mythra, to Malos, to Amalthus, to Jin, to the world of X2. Even after the people were gone, the bonds that characters made and events that took place still mattered to the player and the story. But in X3, they don't. The world is being erased and neither world will remember. (Except the super computer Origin that recorded all info about everything that will definitely not be brought back to construct and manufacture an exact replica of the City's inhabitants using the genetic makeup it obtained) What's extra funny is how, if you remember Monica's Ascension Quest, in the end, Jansen (Ouroboros candidate and Monica's husband's brother) basically tells her that he wants to be in a relationship with her when this is all over. Essentially the opposite of wanting the destroy the world. And yet we are supposed to believe the City agreed to the idea of destroying Aionios without much resitance.
Agreed with all of this, it wasn't until playing the last few side quests after beating the game that the problem really came into focus for me: all of this work I had done, all of those connections, just... wouldn't exist anymore; it was definitely demotivating.
Fantastic video, i understand your frustrations and 100% relate with all of them. The reasons for the existence of the weird and poorly thought out plot points is mainly because xenoblade 3, despite being a game about moving on, is an attempt of rehashing xenogears' (the first xeno game) plot, while trying (and failing imo) to make it make sense inside of xenoblade's multi-game canon. Stuff like the neverending war, noah's psychology, the idea of ouroboros vs moebius and many other elements that id rather not spoil were completely taken from that game but with 0 understanding of why they made sense and were interesting in the first place.
Yeah, I'm pretty unfamiliar with Xenogears outside of a few references, so any meaningful connections to that game would go over my head. Luckily, I think Xenoblade 3's themes are pretty clear to parse even without that knowledge
THANK YOU! Finally someone who shares my thoughts. I literally played Xenogears right before the release of Xenoblade 3 and when I finally got to 3, I often felt like „wow, Xenogears kind of did that better“. Didn‘t help that on my replay a few months back, I had also finally played the Xenosaga Trilogy which Xenoblade 3 also takes a lot from (Moebius basically just being the Testaments and a certain other character from Saga) and I felt that Saga once again did it a lot better
@@AurumAlex64 i think xb3 was made with newcomers in mind for better or worse so i definitely agree. I recommend xenogears if youre curious, its one of the videogame experiences that I'll cherish for the rest of my life and it will most likely give you a different perspective behind the entirety of the xeno series because it in many ways is the core of the entire story
I loved XC1 and 2. Playing 3, it just... Never clicked. Everything felt so disconnected. It just feels like random groups who dont know each other even though the story at large acts like they should. Why would the best mechanic the Kevesi has, Valdi, not be a known name to other colonies? Why are the leaders of each colony not known in general? The consuls also just show up to die. They are never an actual threat. Except for J, none of them have a connection to the main cast or do anything threatening to the main cast. The hand of the author is not something i usually see, but the game felt like things happened because they do that in games
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was advertised as the conclusion to the “Klaus Saga,” yet it felt less like a conclusion and more like a pointless side story. Future Redeemed and the subsequent interviews only made matters worse for me, as they raised even more questions instead of providing the answers I had hoped for. This is why I wanted a follow-up sequel to Xenoblade Chronicles 3, regardless of its form, rather than a possible Xenoblade Chronicles 4. I wanted that so-called “conclusion” to actually feel like a conclusion to the saga, as it was advertised to be.
This game is scared cr*pless to actually commit to anything. The ending is such a perfect culmination of it that it feels pointless to discuss the rest of the game. I unironically think the ending choice to let the worlds split would have been more impactful if the player had the choice to say no. It wouldn't be "being Mobius ourselves" like the game claims, you can resume the flow of time and stop living a single moment forever without tearing apart the newly developed friendships and cultures. They could have very well used Origin and related technology to start shielding the world from annihilation events(Remember how the castles never blew up despite intentionally triggering the conditions for it?) and to remove the term limits from people to get rid of those problems too. I just don't get why we have the single flat ending we have now rather than two nuanced ones. And then we get to the actual execution of the world split ending with how the worlds are just reset in their entirety after they do choose to seperate, everything you did and didn't do is completely reset without any mercy. When they split, both sets of characters look into the sunset as though they would persist as they are, but then they are just reset to where they were before with nearly all physical and mental remnants of Aionios deleted. For all intends and purposes, the game only happened to the audience. See Taion, your efforts of making that teabook compatible were useless! And then the worlds combine anyways because lmao, they are now made from compatible matter. At that point, why didn't they simply program Origin to convert the entirety of Aionios into a stable piece of matter to begin with? It would have been more satisfying storywise than to seperate them just to go "sike!" instantly afterwards. Imagine Xenoblade 1 pulled some nonsense similar to this where instead of simply reworking the world into one without gods and the people being left to shape that new world, Shulk instead reset everything to the point when Klaus was about to press the button and this reset version of Klaus simply decided that "no, you are right. this is a bad idea", end of Xenoblade series. It would have been horrendous imo. 0:33 Nimue is very sad, it is clear that her part of the game is very much unfinished. That colony has a few pieces of dialogue that is not fleshed out at all, like 4 small discussions, no sidequests and does not even get registered in the menus as an allied colony. You literally just go there to do Taion's quest, talk to the 4 or 5 people there and duck off forever. In the game files, there were remnants of her having been supposed to be playable, but they simply patched those out rather than patching her in. Unironically, I would have prefered her and content in the colony to be DLC rather than not getting that cut content at all. Masha and Ino are cool, but literally who cares about them over content that SHOULD be in the game? 8:50 The game certainly did consider it. And just said that's entirely alright(I guess Ghondor hates her name so much that she is ready to risk never existing just so she can get a diffrent name IF she is reborn). Infact, if we think about it, almost everyone technically gets wiped out because memories and experiences shape us and good old kid N from the intro is completely diffrent from current Noah, you cannot really say they are the same person in anything besides looks and species. I genuinely really hate this. The queens are entirely justified in wanting their homes and loved ones that they haven't seen in millenia(and that were ripped away from them by powers beyond them) back, but the people of Keves, Agnus, the City and wildlife groups(even if most monster collectives are hostile) just do not deserve that, even if most of these groups unwittingly give their green light. And neither does the player who essencially threw their own time in the toilet feeling for these characters who get thrown into the void. 10:33 The queens already deactivate the flame clocks(How btw? Why do they have that authority?) in the story. 26:18 Queen of Keves and Queen of Agnus are such wasted characters that their inclusion as characters is really questionable. Like, they clearly are not just mechanisms that spout preprogrammed sentences, they are clearly AI who even have a sense of continuity(Queen of Keves remembered her previous fight with the group), but they never amount to literally anything. Heck, QoK wasn't even beaten by the party, she is unceremoniously killed by Crys before his bossfight and is never mentioned again afterwards. I wanted to find these two compelling so bad, but one could argubly write them out of the story and it would not actually make the slightest diffrence.
Yep, I agree with basically all of this. I think what's really frustrating is that they never really specify what they can actually _do_ now that they have control over Origin, so it's unclear why deleting Aionios is the only available option besides letting it decay to Annihilation Events. So basically, what you summed up in your first paragraph.
This video raises many good points, such as the side quests being extremely flawed and should have of been integrated into the main story, however the idea that the annihilation are "gimmicks" is very very wrong from my perspective. I think the annihilation events play a massive role in the games themes. The idea in my opinion is quite simple, Xenoblade 3 is about how we deal with conflict and anxiety of said conflict in the future, Z represents the coping mechanism of people, where they just try to avoid the problem knowing its potential consequences. They avoid strife by attempting to freeze time, imagine someone who sits inside all day probably in their parents home, not working, and not in education living off the graces of some external force. That is the world Z has created time is basically frozen problems do not arise, and as a result he gets to sit in his room all day facing no issues, however time is not actually frozen its still going by eventually you will have to change your situation and reintegrate into the world that you tried to runaway from, eventually you will run out of ways to stay stagnant. These are the annihilation events, Zs world is a fake, an illusion and it will crumble one way or another, you have to get up off your feet and face those problems if not you will be far worse off. You cannot run from time. That was my interpretation of Xenoblade Chronicles 3.
I agree with everything you said in your comment, but I think my issue is that the game muddles its message with the specifics of the metaphor. It happens with this line in your comment: "These are the annihilation events, Zs world is a fake, an illusion and it will crumble one way or another, you have to get up off your feet and face those problems if not you will be far worse off." The game definitely believes this about Aionios. The problem is that I think the game is wrong. Aionios is a real, breathing world in every way that matters, with cultures and stories and histories, and this is no better demonstrated by the people of the City, a population with a real lasting power and real feelings, with hopes and dreams for their future and their kids'. Given the people of the City, I don't really understand why the game thinks Aionios is a fake, illusory world, and the game never really gives a compelling reason as to why we should think this. It just kinda assumes we take that as a given. This leads us to the circular reasoning of the annihilation events. You are correct in suggesting that the events are representative of the unstable nature of Aionios, metaphorically representing how not facing the future is a self-destructive path. But if you were to ask the game "why is Aionios self-destructive by nature?", you'll find no better answer than "because Aionios represents the Endless Now." If you asked how Aionios represents the Endless Now, the game's response would be "through the annihilation events, representing the self-destructive nature of the world." And thus we find ourselves looping, the game not giving us an actual reason why we should believe Aionios is the Endless Now other than, essentially, "because I said so." The fundamental issue is that the Endless Now (and thus the annihilation events), in my opinion, is far better represented by Moebius and Z than it is by the world of Aionios itself. The annihilation events ought to be caused by the destructive and cruel systems which govern the world, and radical change to the system is required to prevent its slow but inevitable destruction. This would be an actual argument for the existence of the events. Except, as the game is now, this is strangely not the case. Even if Moebius is defeated, and the most fair and equitable set of rules for governing Aionios were put in their place, it wouldn't be enough, the annihilation events would continue and the world would still trend towards destruction: Aionios is a doomed project on concept, not execution. Xenoblade 3 argues that a broken system remains forever broken. And so, Xenoblade 3 becomes a game not about facing the future despite uncertainty, but a game about how only the correct people get to have a future in the first place, given that they were born in the right place at the right time. Xenoblade 3 wants to tell a story about the beauty and significance of even a single human life, but then ignores so many of those lives for a metaphor it doesn't ever make a compelling argument for. It strikes me as somewhat hypocritical. Why isn't Aionios worth trying to save?
I love your style of content and I think you method of analyzing works really well for the most part, but I'm about halfway through your video and I have to admit that I really don't agree with your stance on the population of city's fates, the conservatives, and the chance for them all to be born again. The point of this whole plot and discussion in the game is in my opinion about the willingness to take risks for the possible betterment of ourselves and the world. As for as I understand, it's very likely that the two worlds do indeed start the merging process again at the end of the game, just in a somewhat of a different way. The point of mobius is that they fear change, and would rather live out their stagnating, cruel existances than follow through on the risks that the remaking of the worlds poses. Ghondor is willing to risk sacrificing herself specifically for a *chance* of being born. What we're letting go of at the end of the game isn't the concept of ever seeing eachother again, but that when Noah, Mio, etc. meet, things wont be the same. Ghondor clearly implies that the worlds do merge, as otherwise her being born would very likely be impossible, as well as the fact that she comments on the "world" they make as being only a single one, so I don't think its too for fetched to say that the worlds do blend together, just in a different way that might risk certain outcomes or relationships changing. Noah and Mio might never see eachother again, or they might meet but be unable to form the same kind of relationship and bond. Noah and Mio (and N & M) both know the risks that come with ending the reign of mobius - N & M just werent willing to take the risks of letting the world reset and potentially losing each other. And in that regard - about how the main characters could simply fix the world of Aionios if they wanted to, they probably could. But this is the reason the characters say those cheesy lines about "all of us having a little bit of moebius inside of us too" as if they chose to simply save Aionios and let it stagnate even longer for fear of any meaningful change, they likely would've turned out just like moebius. We don't know what moebius were like at the worlds conception, it's very likely that Z, being the fear of the world manifested, likely also figured his way of ruling the world to be a better solution than the possibility of change. In the end, the city people were literally born to be sacrificed, in a way, they were a way to show the main cast what there were missing out on in the real world, and the conservatives themselves end up aligning more with moebius. Also the racial division stuff was pretty weird? Clearly the problem with Aionios wasn't the melting pot culture, but more the literal race wars being perpetrated by the gods of the world. The city is a true melting pot, and shows of the potential of the new world. I'd even argue that Xenoblade 3 makes a point out of the fact that Aionios HAS no culture, as is pointed out by Melia in the post game when she remarks on Eunies High Entia wings - a symbol of a culture that Eunie doesn't even know exists and doesn't know she's a part of. Every single cultural aspect of Xenoblade 1 & 2 are effectively erased in Ainios. But yeah otherwise nice vid
So the the on the annihilation events you is just wrong, the premise pf the game (as explain by nia) is that "should the two worlds intersect, they would cancel each other out and cease to be. So this is what the annihilation events are and this is why the interlink cause them (as it is the union from things from the two wolrds), while origin has sorta frozed the world in time the annihilation still persist because origin isn't even built for that. you can't remove them from the story, if the intersection of the two worlds didn'yt cause anything why even create the origin, the story would have been completely different.
I don't disagree with anything you've said, but I'm trying to understand Nia's quotation on a thematic level. Why did the game choose to make it so that the two worlds intersecting would cancel each other out? As I try to argue in this video, I think the game's insistence on that point undermines the overall theme of needing to move on towards the future in spite of our fears; I fundamentally think the Endless Now is better represented by Mobius than it is the world of Aionios, and that's because I disagree with the notion that Aionios is an "endless now" in any meaningful sense.
@@AurumAlex64 if the world wasn't destin to be destroy why would they have the need to move on? Of the planet would have just merge the fear of the people wouldn't be near on the same level. Aionios is the conseguence of the endless now, maybe it would have been a better place if Noah became the new Z, but is it right to give the power to make the laws of the world to someone? It's not only political power but to rule over everything and anything. Aionios is controlled by origin, a wolrd where the freedom of the people is in the end of whoever has the power over a machine.
What I'm trying to say is that the game has it backwards -- the Endless Now is not Aionios, but Bionis and Alrest; or rather, the Endless Now is the game's emphatic argument that we must destroy Aionios to preserve the characters and settings of the first two Xenoblades instead of protect the new life that has resulted from Aionios' existence. Aionios was not meant to be, but unfortunately, it does exists, and there does exist a responsibility to those new ecosystems and peoples, whether Noah and company like that or not. On what grounds can the game just summarily toss these beings aside, and claim they have less right to life than the peoples of Bionis and Alrest? You say that it is not right for Noah to hold power over the entire world, and I agree. But there is no reason why he could not alter the systems of Aionios such that no one individual could hold that power, similar to what Shulk did at the end of Xenoblade 1. Instead, Noah decides that the people of the City should be hung in limbo, wherein they may or may not ever instantiate themselves in whatever new world results afterwards -- what gives Noah the right to make that decision?
@@AurumAlex64 going back to alrest and bionis is going forward, aionios is a dying worldmade by the fears of the people. (by a machine that wasn't made for merging the worlds). By turning back to bionis and alrest people will be able to build a new aionios, by their own desire this time. On a thematic level aionios is the endless now, not wanting the two worlds to be destroyed so stopping them in place, not knowing if the plan worked and what would be of the future. The annihilation events represents that this choice won't work forever you have to face the future . So you must let the destruction happen accept the unknown and going towards the future that in this case is the the reunion of the two worlds. For the noah part the final cutscene does a decent job showing that isn't only his choice, in that case noah represent the hope of all the people of aionios just like z was the douts and fear. Plus they didn't kill only the people of the city but everyone, but both could be saved as data in origin. And then again the new Noah won't be as our Noah just as he wasn't exactly as N. So everyone died because they choose hope
Subscribed and liked! Been going through some of your videos, starting with the paper jam one, and they offer refreshing perspectives! Though in this case, I’m always glad to see some genuine criticism for Xenoblade 3, because I do not think its characters or story deserve as much praise as they’ve gotten once you look past skin-deep. Making loss meaningless in a war-torn story alone is just… wow. The entire scene at the end of chapter 5 was amazing, but then immediately goes back on any of its impact because it would be sad. So much missed potential. The scene with Juniper was an amazing example. Looking forward to the next game, because I know and I’ve seen them do better. The story does have the issue of being tied to 1 and 2, which means some of the story decisions have to happen because of the trilogy status, but shows the issues with trying to make 3 feel standalone to begin with. Quite a mess.
I remember rewatching that beginning of Chapter 6 and thinking „Wow, that‘s kinda lame“ They really set up this emotional moment, that was foreshadowed the entire Game, only to be like: „Yeah, no consequences because we can‘t just remove a Party member“
It feels like they wanted to do the tragic separation thing between the party members and their relationships and they back-engineered the story to make that happen
I still just don’t understand why they felt the need to make this game sort of stand-alone-ish when it’s the third game in a series that’s fully available on Switch. All the lore that connected 3 to 2 and 1 just gets dumped on you at the end and none of it really satisfied me. What annoyed me the most though, was how the world, compared to 1 and 2, didn’t even play that much of a role at all. I kept waiting for someone in the game to comment on the environments that players recognized from the previous games, but they only ever served as set pieces for the background. (They gave us a little tease with Nia in the end but that wasn’t nearly enough for me). I just feel like they could’ve done sooo much more with connecting the two games and delivering a satisfying story if they hadn’t used characters oblivious to their surroundings as the main cast. I guess I would’ve preferred a Future Redeemed approach where the base game is Rex, Shulk and friends getting to know this world that is half familiar and half new to them. They could’ve explained their parts of the world and as a motivation of it all, tried to figure out why any of this happened at all. Maybe this way, the (in my opinion horrible villain) Moebius could’ve been left out and the big mystery would’ve been to figure out why it happened or sth. Because as the base game is now, to me, it kinda disrespects returning players and teases more than it actually delivers interesting and rewarding lore and story.
I just thought of a better and more, bitter sweet? I think that's the right word, anyways, A bitter-sweet way to have ended it. By making the main cast fight for the right for aionios to exist, while simultaneously knowing that this world is built on unsustainable practices, ones with which malice is baked into the very core of the world, that could have evolved into a compromised ending. Like they need to kickstart the flow of time again, yet there's too much to sacrifice. So it's a hard choice. But they struggle to have their cake and eat it too, until the only option left is to send the data of aionios hurling through origin's databanks, corrupting it and altering the flow of "what should have been" like a virus, even taking place centuries after. Kind of like a slow acting poison for the new world. Having the death of aionios accelerate would also speed this choice up. Reset and poison the future in everybody's favour, or let others live in ignorance and die shortly without any legacy left? Best part about this approach, is that it might be cliché, but it fits the games themes a lot better. I would even go so far as to say that that's what would have been written if they were given a bit more time. 2 more things. 1. Thank god for the "no chain attack/pause menu" cheats that someone made and 2. Sorry. I just really like banter and am just geared as a writer/storyteller by default. Sorry for bringing this up like a year after Edit because i am a dumbass and i forgor. Ive only made it to roughly up until halfway through chapter 6 a few months after launch, so there might be a lot of nuance that i'm missing. Also this could arguably be considered even more of a melting pot than aionios, reinforcing the themes of harmony and the two worlds mixed together, with what's essentially a parasite forcing them to mix together and bond like glue filling the cracks. That would also tie into the main cast's own growth, emphasizing the all too real human greed to keep living, to keep everything as you continue on, & their continuous struggles towards more than whats possible in the immediate now. I think that would be a nice contrast and reflecton on their growth since chapter 1
NGL as much as I get where you are coming from and agree with a few of your points especially for the first part about side quests are structured. I disagree with a lot your interpretation of the ending mostly cus I disagree with two of your interpretations of the themes themselves. I feel like we got something very different out of the games narrative. Honestly the DLC doubling down and being like “yes the worlds are connected in the ending” feels very interesting to me.
Excellently made video! Basically captured several of my misgivings about xenoblade 3 in general. I really only disagreed with two points: 1. Some of your takes relating to time travel. While I do agree that time travel should have moral implications, I feel like it shouldn't be as straight forward as a few individuals onesidedly imposing their wills on the masses. The reason I believe this is because it ignores a really potential moral dilemma (and some others related): If you and you alone had the chance to undo an unfair death or negative circumstance...are you or are you not responsible for that negative happenstances that would occur (if you do undo it) or remain (if you decide not to)? To borrow your "person in a wheelchair" for a bit, I would equate it to a person knowing ahead of time that someone is going to get into a car accident, have the means to prevent it and having to decide if they're going to let it happen or not. The second point is regarding your suggestion at the end. Not the part about letting Aionios keep existing (in fact, i completely agree with it on principle if only because of it truly being Ouroboros imposing their will on everyone else unfairly) but on the part of sacrificing Bionis and Alrest to do it. The reason for this one is because it feels like, despite the positives you outlined for the narrative, it still puts the characters in a similar enoughh position. Especially since the people of Bionis and Alrest are basically in stasis as long as Aionios exists. In other words...Ouroboros being able to make this decision in thia direction feels like they imposed their will on the masses of Bionis and Alrest instead, who also have as much of a right to live as the people of Aionios. Unless...that second point being addressed arguably is what you meant at the end of the video. If so, I retract it.
Thanks for your comment! Responding to your points: 1. I absolutely agree with this point. Where I have a problem is that I think the game is engaging in exactly the behavior you're describing -- it ignores the moral dilemma at the heart of its time travel by ignoring the people of the City. Sure, you could prevent the worlds from merging if you reset Origin, but the game isn't honestly presenting both sides of the story (that is, it glides right past the potential permanent loss of life of the people of the City that might result). Noah and company might be the only ones who can reset Origin, but there's no reason why they couldn't listen to the people of the world they're about to destroy. If the people of the City outright refuse Noah's plan, wouldn't it be incumbent upon Noah to take that feedback to heart before making his final decision? Why is he holding the weight of people who previously existed but can not offer input as greater than those who are speaking to him right now, telling him their beliefs here and now? Him having the knowledge and ability to stop the calamity should not give him carte blanche to do whatever he wants. My fundamental issue is this: imagine if there was a single scene in this game where a random citizen of the City came up to Noah and said: "Please don't do this to us. These are our homes, our families. What right do you have to take our history from us?" I genuinely do not know how Xenoblade 3 could possibly respond to a character like this (they get dangerously close with Na'el in the DLC, to -- in my opinion -- pretty disastrous results); any ending which tears apart Aionios after this scene would seem absolutely monstrous. And that's because, on some level, I think it is. But this conflict with the City is also one of the most interesting parts of the story, and I think it's too bad the game never bothers to consider it with any real depth. 2. You are correct that I address this at the end. Having the team keep Aionios at the end instead of resetting Origin would not remove the moral component of the story; rather, it would replace one moral dilemma with another. However, I think the dilemma of choosing between the people of the City over the people of Alrest and Bionis is much more defensible. This is for one key reason: Noah and company did not choose to place the original peoples of the two worlds into an endless limbo. But this is exactly what they choose to do in the base game as is. In the base game, the party chooses to sacrifice the lives of thousands of people "for the greater good" of both worlds. What I'm suggesting is that this decision betrays the very "greater good" the party is ostensibly fighting for. Perhaps idealistically, shouldn't the moral character of the community we build be more important than the mere fact that that community exists? And what does it suggest when a community is willing to make such a sacrifice "for the greater good?" Nothing good, in my view.
@@AurumAlex64 Honestly, them constantly saying "for the greater good!" is pretty bad for the script anyways. They literally start saying it at a time when they should not even have a concept of what that means, much less what the greater good for the people in play would realistically be(besides defeating Mobius). And really, that a moral dilemma exists regardless of what is chosen is part of why I genuinely think there should have been a player choice after the final boss to lead to two diffrent endings. You sacrifice and save two diffrent sets of people regardless, there is no wrong choice in this because even not choosing automatically defaults to one of these options(keeping Aionios around). And it really is the best way because they could simply set diffrent sets of media in each seperate continuity to give validity to both and win on all fronts. This way, it feels more like Monolith lost on all fronts because we will always side-eye new media taking place after 3 now, because of how they ended up handling it.
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 is a game I hold dear for its gameplay, which ranks among my all-time favorites. However, its story leaves much to be desired. The game was marketed as the conclusion to the “Klaus Saga,” but instead of delivering a satisfying finale, it felt more like a disjointed side story. If I were to summarize my critique, I’d say the story tries too hard to be a sequel to Xenoblade Chronicles 1, a sequel to Xenoblade Chronicles 2, Persona, Kingdom Hearts, and its own unique narrative-all at once-and fails at being any of them. Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 2 already had conclusive and satisfying endings, yet somehow, Xenoblade 3 managed to diminish the impact of those conclusions. The introduction of the villains, particularly Moebius, felt forced and out of place. It seemed as if Monolith Soft became so engrossed in crafting the world of Aionios that they forgot a game of this scale needed compelling antagonists. Moebius came across as an afterthought-villains from an entirely different game that were awkwardly shoehorned into this one just to check a box. My disappointment with the story runs deep because of my long-standing love for the Xenoblade Chronicles franchise. From the moment I first watched a playthrough of the original game, I was captivated, eager to see what Monolith Soft had in store for the future. When Future Connected was released, I was excited, but the experience left me with more questions than answers. Despite my concerns, I remained hopeful that the writing would improve in the next installment. When Xenoblade Chronicles 3 was announced, I felt a mix of excitement and trepidation. I feared that the story might be as lackluster, if not worse, than Future Connected. But I brushed those fears aside, choosing to remain optimistic until the end. The game’s release coincided with that of Bayonetta 3, and I made a conscious effort to avoid spoilers for both titles, eager to enjoy them through a blind playthrough. After playing Bayonetta 3, I was left with a profound sense of disappointment. Hoping to lift my spirits, I turned to Xenoblade Chronicles 3 next. While I praised its gameplay, characters, and standout moments, the story only deepened my sense of disillusionment. My worst fears had come true, leaving me devastated. I found myself clinging to the hope that the DLC might somehow redeem the story with surprising twists and revelations. However, when the DLC was finally released, it only compounded my disappointment. It raised even more questions than the base game and failed to address the issues that had left me frustrated. Subsequent interviews with the developers only added insult to injury, deepening the wound. My greatest fear for the Xenoblade Chronicles franchise is that it may follow the path of Kingdom Hearts-a series I once adored but which has since devolved into something unrecognizable. Ultimately, the story of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 has tainted my love for the franchise, leaving me anxious about what the future holds. As things stand, my best hope is that Xenoblade 4 remains entirely disconnected from anything related to Xenoblade 3-no connections, no shared lore-so I can confidently label it as non-canon.
i know nothing about xenoblade besides a few considerations of playing it back when i still thoroughly enjoyed being a nintendo fan. despite this, this video was very in depth on this ending i have zero clue about to the point that i found myself agreeing that the ending was silly and that the side quests were more interesting, though this is entirely through the lens of not actually playing the game myself lol. i was also interested in the looping having repeats. also, not a fan of time travel mechanics or time loops conceptually as a whole and i admire this video mentioning how time travel is unethical in multiple ways that i feel people dont think about enough in stories like this. great video, presumably great points, still an enjoyable watch with no context. on to the next
Yeah, it's a shame too, because the story of this game's actually pretty great right up until the last few moments. I get what they were going for, but... man. Glad you enjoyed the video, though!
I agree that the ending is not too good, but I think I disagree with the early-mid part of this video. Although Origin resets, it doesn't mean that the worlds will be separate. Origins' purpose was to merge the worlds that Klaus inadvertantly split. And they do merge. They aren't separating everyone forever. They split the inhabitants of Aionios into their respective world, and then they recombine the world. Origins' entire purpose was to facilitate this recombination. It seems like, from your argument near the beginning, that you are saying Aionios is wrong because of the rules that govern it, and not because it exists. However, it is wrong because it exists. It's wrong because Aionios was not meant to exist in the first place. Origin was supposed to only combine the worlds to stop the instability and safely merge them into one. Z is the manifestation of the fear of this process. That fear is borne of the consciousnesses that exist within origin, and when he (they) take control of Origin, they decide to pause that process. In pausing the process, they are exerting their will on the entirety of Bionis and Alrest in the most horrific way possible. Aionios is literally an abberation which shouldn't exist, a pocket dimension that exists between the two worlds and irrespective of time. In that regard, the decision everyone comes to is correct. The sin the game performs is not properly explaining those circumstances and rushing everyone towards the end, as you said. The city people are also not properly given a reason exist in the newly combined world. However, they definitely still exist. Saying they should preserve Aionios instead of the original worlds condemns all the still existing characters of Origin (the entire population of Bionis and Alrest) to permanent stasis. There seem to be a lot of gaps in the understanding of what Aionios and Origin are in your arguments, but I think your core message about the thematic implications is spot on and causes some narrative dissonance.
"It seems like, from your argument near the beginning, that you are saying Aionios is wrong because of the rules that govern it, and not because it exists. However, it is wrong because it exists. It's wrong because Aionios was not meant to exist in the first place." Right, I 100% agree that this is what the game is saying. But in this video, I'm trying to argue that this is a very weak argument against Aionios (given what Aionios actually is and how we can understand it metaphorically), and I think it works counter to the themes of the game in a very detrimental way. You say in your comment: "In that regard, the decision everyone comes to is correct." This is precisely the position I am criticizing the game (and DQ11, incidentally) for taking. In my opinion, the best stories are ones which are actually able to embody their own themes. In XC3's case, the game wants to tell us that the only path forward is to work towards the future in spite of our fear of it. That's all fine and good. But we have to ask ourselves a very important question: why _do_ we fear the future anyways? I think we fear the future not merely _because_ it is uncertain, but because that uncertainly means that -- sometimes -- bad outcomes happen. Sometimes our friends gets in a car crash and die on impact. Sometimes our family gets terminal cancer, and there's nothing we can do about it. It sucks, it's awful, but it happens. And when it does, we have a choice: we can either shut ourselves out from the world in fear of more bad things happening, or we can try and continue to live our lives. But the uncertainty is required here -- there must be the possibility of the bad outcome occurring, otherwise there would be no reason to fear the future. XC3 cannot play honestly with its own theme. Notice how in your comment, you eliminate the ambiguity of the ending: we apparently *know* the worlds will recombine again, and we *know* the people of the City will continue to exist somehow (despite Ghondor explicitly stating they only have a "chance" to be reborn). This isn't a misunderstanding on your part: the game heavily points towards these outcomes being the case. But there's a sense in which the game needs to make these assurances because the alternative is simply too awful. The game does not want to consider the possibility that the worlds don't recombine, or that the people of the City don't come back. But if XC3 truly embodied its own themes, it would have to allow for these possibilities, because these bad outcomes are precisely the reason the characters fear the future in the first place. As it is now, XC3 is engaging in precisely the same behavior it is trying to critique, retreating back to comforting ground because it doesn't want to actually deal with the implications of its premise.
@@AurumAlex64 I know the video is analyzing the thematic core of the game, I even said in my original comment that I think your point is spot on from that standpoint for this game in isolation. However, I think that the game very explicitly calls out what will happen and even shows it, without removing any uncertainty about the outcome or damaging the thematic resolution the game is concerned with. At the end of Future Redeemed, the worlds are shown coalescing, which is what I was referring to when I said it was not ambiguous. Just because origin recombines the world, doesnt mean that its a happy outcome. People are not just afraid of origin failing, but they are also afraid of the world origin will create. I dont think your take away about the worlds separating is correct. The game is not "separating" the worlds. The worlds are still separate during XBC3. Before XBC3, the annihilation events were occuring in Alrest and on Bionis, those events occuring are what prompted them to build Origin. Origin is made to recombine the worlds. Aionios exists outside of the two worlds. Restarting origin only puts the people back in their core crystals until the process is complete, after which the separated people will once again be together. In the video you suggest an ending where Alreast and Bionis are sacrificed for the sake of Aionios. Let me ask, how is this better than the ending, thematically? Alrest and Bionis have a much larger population of people than Aionios, a population which is currently in stasis within Origin. If Origin is not restarted, those people will remain in a stasis forever. Is it right to decide their future? Is it right to forsake one set of people for another? This is the moral conundrum you have specifically tried to avoid, but in your proposed ending it is even more pronounced. In your video, you mention how the game handles the fate of the people of the City by saying they will exist again. Let me ask, is that a happy outcome? Does them existing in the recombined worlds inherently mean that the fears and unknowns of restarting origin are avoided? I dont think so. The game is saying "what will be, will be, and let come what may". It could be that the people are not "born" in the new world, but they are forced to exist in a hellish reality due to way Origin will persist them. This is a question for Xenoblade 4, 5, and so on. I dont think you can fairly say that its XBC3s job to answer this question. Just as you said in your comment, people have fears for a reason, and they have a choice: To advance, or to stagnate. Xenoblade 3 chooses to advance and rejects the idea of stagnation. The other conclusions you draw from this are based on things that the game is not concerned with, but that future entries are likely to be concerned with at least in part. You're looking at the game as a standalone entry, when the thematic core of this game has not yet been resolved. As Noah says, you have to just walk on, regardless of what may happen. The game doesnt posit whether or not the choices here will have good or bad consequences. It only posits that it cannot be stagnant.
@@tearzofthefallen6586 So, I think we disagree with the "separating" the world part. My understanding is that Origin essentially took a "snapshot" of the two worlds before they tried to combine, and the plan was that Origin was supposed to reboot the worlds back to that "snapshot" after the annihilation was complete, almost like rolling back software to a previous update. But that "snapshot" is specifically when the two worlds are separated, which is why Nia says in her Hero Quest that the worlds "will be strangers once again... [p]erfectly ignorant" after Origin reboots. Whether or not the worlds recombine, I believe, was never directly stated -- it was one of the elements that was supposed to be ambiguous. My issue is that it is clearly not ambiguous. When XC3 shows us Noah hearing the flute in the ending, or Ghondor saying there's a chance to be reborn, or when Future Redeemed shows us a recombined world, I don't think this evidence is supposed to interpreted ambivalently. I think the game is very blatantly trying to point us in the direction of the happiest ending possible. The worlds _will_ combine again, Noah and Mio _will_ reconnect and fall in love, and the people of the City _will_ come back and live fulfilling lives, no questions asked. It is possible that future Xenoblades will clarify if there are any negative consequences, but I would put the chances of this occurring at roughly 1%. I don't think this is the kind of franchise that would allow for such an ending where the people of the City *don't* reappear. Quite frankly, the ideal scenario is that future Xenoblade titles just never reference the ending of 3 at all, and leave what happened completely up in the air, true ambiguity. This is why I'm quite happy to critique XC3 for hedging the questionable parts of its ending -- I do not think it's incumbent upon future titles to clarify this game's ending at all. As for sacrificing Alrest and Bionis, there are two big reasons I prefer this direction: 1. I think for Noah and company to sacrifice the people of the City to save the two worlds betrays the point of saving the two worlds in the first place. No one in Aionios asked people to be held in stasis so that the City could exist, but Noah _would_ be asking the people of the City to be held in limbo for the peoples of Aionios and Bionis to exist. Quite simply, I do not think the City people have any moral obligation to do this, and I think it's wrong for Noah to enforce this upon them, something he wouldn't have to do if the decision was the other way around. If the people of the City must be (deliberately, not accidentally) sacrificed, I believe the peoples of Alrest and Bionis morally forfeit their right to exist. There's a really great game called "Nine Sols" that came out 2 months ago that deals with largely this same dilemma, and I pretty much agree with its position. 2. I think the metatext is _way_ more intuitive. I don't really buy the argument that "moving on with the future" lies with the worlds we already know the setting, politics, environments, and peoples of. I think it lies in the setting we don't know, with new peoples, cultures, and politics. That world is Aionios, and I reject that game's argument that Aionios is merely an assemblage of old, used-up parts. It is its own thing. And I like the idea of a game directly stating to its audience -- "see those characters from the first two Xenoblade games? The Shulks and the Rexs? You're never going to see them again after this, because this world doesn't belong to those people anymore. It belongs to the new life born on Aionois." This forces the audience into essentially the same predicament as N: do we strive to hold on to our favorite characters for eternity, or are we going to be willing to let them rest? When I say a game should embody its themes, instilling this kind of question in its players is exactly what I mean. I think this point comes across so much better if we have to get rid of Bionis and Alrest.
@@AurumAlex64 It's honestly too late for that. One cannot make ambiguous what is already set in stone. We know that the worlds are combined at the very least. There is no putting that cat in the bag anymore, one cannot put things back into the air.
Xenoblade 3 had the opposite effect of 2. The ending of two changed that game from one I really liked to one of my favorite games of all time. 3 changed from a contender for one of my favorite games to a game I feel meh about now. I disagree with this video that the worlds reverting should have been changed to continuing on in Aionios. But I do think that some things needed to be altered to make it work. Personally I think accepting aionios thematically isn't cut and dry the better representation of moving on from the past of 1+2 for Monolith soft. It's quite literally a frankensteining of the two game worlds together, so the argument could be made that them choosing to continue in that world actually would represent a unwillingness to move on. I think choosing to let the world reset could have been a very powerful choice, but in order for it to be that something would have to be done about... 1. the world. I think the endless now would have to be strictly tied to the structure of the world and not be somethign that could be undone without erasing aionios. 2. The stuff with the city would have had to be addressed. It's the toughest part, but I think it could have been done if it had been given more proper weight. 3. it had not been implied that the characters would be united again. I think a game with a message and tone as heavy as the ending implies needed to commit more and create a feeling the characters actually sacrificed something important to them. 4. Emphasis really needed to be placed on the in escapability of the endless now. Having the flame clocks break so easily with zero consequence makes it feel like there was another option. (One Idea I've had that if we tie the loop of life and death to the world, the flame clocks could work like a structure to that. Breaking them could cause the world to fall apart and that would trigger more and more annihilation events. This would lead towards a more tangible realization that you either have to choose between continuing the cycle OR destroying the world and resetting things) Which would be really heavy, but exactly as it should be.
I think time loop stories like Majora's Mask and (especially) Outer Wilds are pretty good examples. Generally, I think time travel stories wherein the characters choose to time travel (rather than accidentally stumble into it) are where the most problems tend to arise. And that's because the characters are forced to consider the morality of their actions in a way that otherwise wouldn't need to happen if the time travel was forced upon them.
I’ve been meaning to try and get into this series for a while. I got Xenoblade Chronicles X on my Wii U a little while ago. I should really play that eventually
Loved this video!!!! For me, the main issue I had with the XC3's ending was that I had somehow missed any and all signs and hints that the worlds were going to be separated after they collided OTL So I was going along my merry way thinking that the worlds were simply combining wrong and would combine correctly once we beat Z, and then became really confused as everyone started saying their goodbyes in that clearing afterwards. And after the euphoria of the surprise XC2 character cameos faded I was just kind of mad because what did i spend all those hours running around doing almost all the sidequests helping people and forging connections between them for, you know? All that potato farming, wasted :( Thanks for validating my dislike for the way this game ended, haha, and then adding more really good reasons for doing so on top of it! I will be sending this video to my brother immediately (XC1 is his favorite and he was similarly disappointed with XC3's endgame). (Also I was writing this comment as I watched the video and I love that you mentioned disliking DQ11's third act for the same reasons because I also disliked DQ11's third act for the same reasons!!! Same hat!!!)
Bro even plot aside, the 7 character teams are annoying, the AI for party members sucks, the world is bland hallways like a rat maze and theres very little treasure to discover so exploration feels like a waste. Many jobs are straight up copy pastes of each other and outside the Super Form things all the characters are the same. I had this game's number from the beginning, I kept waiting to unlock the one feature that would finally make the game click and start being fun and it never came. Just replay XC1 definitive edition instead
Ironically I think there's still an awkward unintended race metaphor if you keep the City, because all of its residents are regular homs/humans. There's no machina, no entia, no gormotti, no indoline etc. If this is what the future looks like for the rest of the colonies, which is likely because the City stemmed from the intermingling of former Kevesi and Agnians, then there's still a massive loss of racial diversity, and the implication that the remaining homs/humans are superior through natural selection. Anyway, has your opinion changed with future redeemed?
Yeah, I'm not really sure why all the people of the City look like humans. It seems like they should look more diverse than that, but maybe I've missed something where they explain the reason. As for Future Redeemed, I don't think it really changed my mind about the ending. For a second, I thought they might actually address it, because Alpha's entire goal stems from only wanting to save the people of the City, the new life of Aionios. But in the end, I thought Alpha kind of fell flat as a villain; the game gives his argument no credence whatsoever, and he feels more like a computer program gone rogue than someone with an actual perspective. I thought Na'el in particular was a truly tragic character, and she has some of my favorite scenes in the DLC. She definitely becomes increasingly isolationist, and perhaps a bit naïve, but there's something a little bit cruel in the game suggesting that Na'el is gullible to believe in Alpha's promise of a better life for the people in the City. Because, fundamentally, Matthew is asking Na'el to fight a battle in which she is to be forcibly displaced from her home, her history erased, and her existence left hanging in the air as an open question. I think it's totally valid for Na'el to deny that as the only worthwhile future for her, for her to think that grossly unfair. But the game just doesn't really want to engage with the uncomfortable tangles of the base game's ending, so Alpha and Na'el must inevitably be closed-minded and ultimately stuck in the past. Liked the expansion overall, though :)
@@AurumAlex64 Yeah, I see that. Even though they reversed some of themes in FR (base game being about letting go of the past and dlc about the folly of completely discarding it) they ended up with the same problems, and it's the same characters who suffer for it. Anyway, I really appreciate that you replied to a comment on a video this old. More RU-vidrs ought to do that. Also this was a really good video essay, how on earth is your channel not bigger?
Thanks! The entire reason I wanted to make this channel was to discuss games with other people, so I try my best to respond to comments. In fact, Xenoblade 3's ending was the very thing that finally pushed me to start making video essays, so I'm excited in particular whenever someone comments on this video. I'm honestly glad the reception seems to be mostly positive here, because it seems like the ending of this game is pretty precious to a lot of the Xenoblade fanbase, but maybe I just read the room wrong.
@@AurumAlex64 You're welcome! I'll be honest, I hadn't noticed much of the problems with the ending when I first played, and I do disagree with some of your points about time travel, but a good analysis is a good analysis.
@@AurumAlex64“and he feels more like a computer program“ That‘s because he literally is. Alpha is the machine part of Ontos while A is the more human side, Alvis, which we saw in the first Xenoblade
Deterministic is something what I'd call Xeno series in my opinion barring some examples. Let me preface in that Xenoblade is one of my favorite RPG series. But its themes is something that the more I delve into it, the less I like it.. I have similar critique of "Should've been better" of XC2 as well. This video really resonated with me. The implicit setting is why I have problems with Xenoblade 2. My problem lies with the system of blades. Blade's life is tied entirely to their driver. Blade's core are treated as property in the game even in scenes where the game tries to assert slavery is wrong. Given that almost all important characters in XC 2 is a driver. And the accumulation of data for blades is crucial for the world running. Xc2 unintentionally has a built caste system where non-drivers are simply worth less. Also how the game treats the sentience of blades is simply insulting sometimes for them to be designed and act as stereotypical amalgamations of human fetishes and gags. People often excuse this by saying that the blades aren't humans therefore its okay. But the uniqueness of their lifestyle and the differences between drivers and blades often gets bulldozed into "deep down we're all the same." Drivers and blades aren't the same, and inequality of this world stems from that fact. If someone's life force is tied to you when awakened. Their looks and personality deeply impacted by you. Awakening a blade is imprinting on a new life. If drivers and blades truly are a system of harmony that the game claims, awakening a blade includes the responsibility to take care of them for life. Iterations of the same blade would have been treated as different people. Yet dialogue of people reminiscing to a blade that they know has no prior memories still acknowledges them as if they are the same, and encouraged to continue relationships that the blade have in their previous life. Instead the world at large was given a shield of ignorance away from this responsibility (because of the evil church) and artificially creating such life is treated haphazardly as a maid gag. How do we view a blade's consent to their driver if their life is literally tied to their driver? How do crimes and records carry on with different reincarnation of a blade? How do we seperate crimes of a driver from a blade? All of which is not represented in any systematic fashion, but instead presented as character quirks and the answer is if the driver is Rex they wouldn't have this problem! What resulted from the game's unwillingness to build a world that accounts for the uniqueness of blades is that blades are treated as outsiders and alien in a world that completely depends on them. For the history of the entire world of Xc2 there's only one single nation that has a culture of blades and humans living in harmony while all other nations are just using the blades as weapons really lacks imagination for the potential of blades. Blades are determined to be objectified by the Architect so much so that a group of rogue blades like Torna are seen as a radical terrorist group. Their best fate is to live happily alongside their driver and not as their own entity that may develop different hopes and dreams. The only ones who could live independently of their drivers are overwhelmingly represented as victims of experimentation who have no control of their fate. Honestly, I love the corniness of XC2, and most of their characters. In a game that emphasized in the importance of life and breaking the cycles of abuse. It does not recognize that the "natural order" itself enables abuses and treat some life as property and regenerating live stock.
What I find interesting is that an RPG that came out the same year as Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has a similar plot point in how there's a systematic treatment of certain people to be owned by people that are seen as superior, only the people owning them are actually treated as the villains of the game (to the party instead of society as a whole). The game I'm talking about is Tales of Berseria btw, the people who are the equivalent of Blades in the game are called Malakhim and them being forced into the will of their Driver equivalent is similar to the point the Malakhim literally are the reason those people have their ability to fight Daemons in the first place
I agree with most of what was said at the start. The Colonies feel disconnected from the world since none of them care about the war.Shouldn't they be much more deeply indoctrinated? I was also especially frustrated about city's ethical dilemma being completely ignored (until future redeemed somewhat). But I can't help but think that segment about destroying the city being an allegory against race-mixing & multiculturalism is absurd. You admit yourself that you don't think that's what the game was going for, so I wonder why even bring it up. I don't think a single soul interpreted it that way and it seems like a strawman. I might be mistaken, but I've seen that there's a mistranslation where Crys says that people in the city aren't recorded in origin. But in Japanese he says they weren't ORIGINALLY in origin. This seems to imply that they are in the data now, and are guaranteed to be reborn after the reset. That makes your point about Origin contradicting the first game's themes even more valid. It seems to me like the annihilation events were just meant to show how dire things get when the elites are willing to cling to power even if it destroys the world. That message wouldn't come across without the fog, and I don't think it's meant to be any deeper than that. As to why Aionios must be destroyed, you answered your own question: It signifies the destruction of a broken system. It doesn't need to be anything more than that. I also wish Noah and Matthew had the Logos Core instead of the Pneuma Core to signify these themes better. Noah is the voice of reason destroying the world made by fear and negative emotions. Aionios is "not supposed" to be the way it is because the systems have forced it into a state of disrepair. The reason that people in Aionios keep coming back exactly the same is because its a reference to the philosophy of Nietzsche. He had an idea called Eternal Recurrence, where he said all people are reborn infinitely many times and each life is identical to the previous. He asks that if a demon tells you that this is the way things work, would you be happy or sad at this information? You should try to lead a life that's worth reliving infinitely many times. But moebius and corrupt societies force you into a life you would never want to repeat. And that's the biggest reason Moebius has to go. I'm also not sure what you mean by saying that destroying Aionis to fix the world goes against the theme of moving forward. The goal of separating the worlds is to recombine them properly without Moebius. Both worlds will have elements of the old but one will be much more sustainable, so I'm not sure what the issue is here. I'd also like to hear if Future redeemed changed your perspective on some of these points. (I enjoyed it more than the main game but I think it left a lot to be desired in terms of fixing issues in the main game's story).
I know this video is old now, but I'm gonna write out my thoughts as I watch the video through. I'm not the biggest Xenoblade 3 fan, but I think it's still broadly misunderstood here. This is gonna be a long one, but I wanna get my thoughts out. 10:58 I think you misunderstand what exactly Aionios is. You can't magically take control of Origin and still keep Aionios running, not without constantly sacrificing lives. Aionios isn't a world, it isn't like Bionis or Alrest. It's a frozen moment of time that only exists because of Moebius, and Moebius was born from the collective fear of humans. The way of the world was not just "made by Moebius" just cause they wanted everyone to suffer, it's because it's the ONLY way to sustain this frozen world. It's a rule in place so that Aionios can exist. Remember that Moebius Z isn't a bad guy, or even a person for that matter. He just represents the evil selfish side of humanity that would rather live forever in Origin (eternally harvesting young lives), than face even the slightest chance of death. When you smash a flame clock, the soldiers don't "get to live out the rest of their days". They still only have their remaining terms, they're still apart of the system, it just means they don't die when their clock is empty (They don't need to take life). When they are reborn, they will have to kill again to sustain Aionios. The ONLY way they will ever be free is if Origin reboots. You need life energy (flame) to keep Aionios. Origin still manages to get enough life energy since 1: We never actually learn how many colony's there are 2: They can keep making and remaking colonys with dead soldiers in the cycle 3: Moebius harvests heaping tons of life energy whenever a colony reaches gold rank. 12:14 By removing annihilation events you remove the entire point of the story. Origins job was to record Bionis and Alrests data respectfully before they collided, then reboot the worlds aftherwards. People feared for their lives and their future during the collision, and so Moebius was born. Origin, controlled by the will of humanity (Moebius) created Aionios to forever house the souls of the previous world. If Origin didn't exist nothing would exist, just space. Since Aionios isn't "real" and is just a bunch of random land thrown together purely to sustain it, it's unstable. It's imperfect. It's forced together. It's falling apart. The world isn't supposed to be anything anymore, but it's forced to be Aionios. Because of its imperfection, the "nothing" that Aionios is supposed to be IS the annihilation events. They aren't just random implosions, they're holes in the fake mask that is Aionios. Nothing can really "exist naturally" until everything is rebooted. You say there is "No narrative reason for Aionios to go", but thats simply not true. The Klaus incident separated the universe into two, and now they want to collide. Thats the entire point of the game. When they did collide, everything was supposed to be erradicated and cease to be. Aionios was never supposed to be, and I don't get why you're so enthusiastic about the place. I know I'm repeating myself, but again: There is nothing good about Aionios and nobody wants to live there. If Aionios continued like you "think" it should, this would be the outcome: The main party (except for Noah and Mio, they're Moebius) would live the rest of their terms in peace. Once their time is up, they would go back into the cycle. Now even if someone else controlled Origin, it STILL requires life to sustain Aionios. So we have three options here: 1. Reboot the old worlds in Origin (The actual in-game ending) 2. Continue the slaughter of thousands to sustain Aionios just to keep the city alive (The city was founded to STOP the slaughter) 3.(Your idea) Keep Aionios running in peace and have the soldiers be free. The only problem with this option is that once Origin runs out of life energy due to the lack of fighting/killing, Aionios and everything will cease to be. About your point on the city. Yes, it is a melting pot of cultures from all over the series. But thats not the reason the city exists... You say Aionios ending ruins the point of the city, but the entire point of the city was to return life back to how it's supposed to be. And while some houses in the city don't want to fight Moebius, that makes them just LIKE Moebius. Because again, Moebius is a part of humanity. A selfish part, but a real way people think. That's why the conservatives in the city are looked down on. Because it's selfish. They want to live their safe (for now) lives. They would rather selfishly live out their lives while thousands of others suffer every day because of Moebius. I don't get why people don't realize they're the same as the people of Bionis/Alrest and Moebius. They don't want to die, but their too scared to walk to the future. (Origin is the safe place "coping mechanism" so the people of the old world can live and ignore the worlds colliding. And to the city conservatives, the City is the safe place "coping mechanism" to ignore the endless war outside) It's all just an illusion of safety. But no the melting pot doesn't dissipate, it acchieved it's goal. The City was mean't to be the hope of the world, and it was. Everything else was a bonus. Of course it was also a safe haven for people to live their lives, but that wasn't its primary goal. Now Aionios is dead, and Bionis/Alrest (Bionest?) gets to create it's own melting pot. I will admit I'm interested in how the City folk will be born in Bionest, but we can't know anything about that until the next Xeno game. Again, I know Future Redeemed wasn't out yet. Just talking about this video. About Monica and Ghondor in Origin. Their bloodline was dedicated to the eradication of Moebius. I don't understand why you think its awkward for them to be there. Again, freeing the world and fighting Moebius was the entire point of the city to begin with. To this very day, I still have some problems with this ending myself. One thing I agree on is (as of now) Xenoblade 3 was less than a second stretched out over countless years. We don't know if Noah or Mio, or anyone for that matter knows anything about Aionios. If they don't, the only thing that validates this game in the grand scheme of things is the City people. How they are born or dealt with plotwise in the next game matters so much. I do like your point on the passage of fate, and I believe it's going to continue to be important to the series forever. Characters being similar or staying nearly the same across lifespans is weird, but makes sense if we take the passage of fate into consideration. Again, Moebius (And thus Aionios) is the shackle. Nobody wants to live in Aionios because they can't without Moebius and endless killing. Xenoblade 1: Zanza is the Bionis, the Bionis is Zanza. Kill Zanza and wish for no gods? No Bionis. Shulk with help from Alvis makes New Bionis. Xenoblade 2 (A little more complicated): Klaus is Zanza, Klaus controls Conduit, Conduit maintains world tree/Alrest. Zanza dies, Klaus dies, Conduit dissapears, Alrest is destroyed. Klaus reboots Alrest using data from World Tree, Elysium/New Alrest is born. Xenoblade 3: Moebius is Aionios, Aionios is Moebius. Kill Moebius and end the cycle? No Aionios. Origin reboots world with data inside (Now with city folk installed) The only difference is Bionis and Alrest weren't frozen in time. They still needed to be recreated, but they were made into real worlds. Think of how unstable Bionis was after Zanzas defeat. It was unstable, it was falling apart. If Alvis had not rebuilt it it would cease to be. Aionios is unstable just like Bionis and Alrest were before they were remade. The difference this time is there is no Alvis, no Architect, just Origin. People are scared because they know whats coming, as it's literally about to crash down on all of them. Now we take Aionios: A fake, frozen, cruel world that already has existing people from New Bionis and New Alrest in it ready to be rebooted. There is no time travel in this game. Time never goes back, it only stops and resumes. Again, Aionios isn't real. Everything that happened in Aionios was not real, it was like a trail humanity had to take, and it took place in an instant. Melia mentions that the lives and experiences were real, but thats it. The point of the game was that eventually, everyone must take a step to the future and stop fearing whats to come. Even when facing the end of the world, everyone knows any world would be better than Aionios. I can't wait to see how the worlds of Bionis, Alrest, and the new life born in Aionios come together. One thing you absolutely nailed on the head was the presentation of Main and Side content. The fact you can skip the side content was a horrible idea. People praise this game for having the best side content, but thats because it doesn't feel like side content. It SHOULDN'T be side content. And the fact that it is makes the main content feel dry and undeveloped by the end. TLDR: Aionios is depends on life energy, it can't run without it. Moebius didn't make this rule up just to be mean, its the only way Aionios can exist. Aionios cannot exist peacefully without killing, and if they tried everything would cease to be. A very well made video, but you don't seem to understand what the game is trying to say. There is a ton more I want to say about this video but this comment is long enough. All in all I enjoy discussing about games and I'd be interested in a follow up video of some kind. Would you mind if I made my own video about this video? Thank you for reading. If you got all the way through... Heres a cookie: 🍪
Thanks for the comment! I'd encourage you to read through some of the responses I've left on other comments here, because I've spoken to a few of these points already, but I'll quickly talk about some of my main disagreements here. You say that the problem with my proposed solution is that if no more people are harvested, Aionios will simply cease to be, and everything will vanish in the end. But the thing is, I don't actually consider this a problem. I think the implications of resetting Origin are so awful that -- should the character choose to do so -- they would in fact morally _forfeit_ their right to exist. The big difference between what Shulk did at the end of XC1 and what Noah does at the end of XC3 is that Shulk did not hang an entire population of people in limbo as a result of his creation of New Bionis. We should not take XC3 trying to assure us that the people of the City will be reborn at face value. A critical aspect of this ending is its ambiguity. If XC3 played honestly with its themes, it _must_ allow for the possibility that the people of the City are not re-instantiated. But if this possibility exists, what does it say about the kind of community we're trying to build if we're willing to sacrifice an entire group of people "for the greater good"? It's easy to say the conservatives of the City are just as bad as Moebius, but this seems extremely cruel to me; none of these people have homes or family or history to return to after Origin resets. XC3 is asking the people of the City to erase their entire cultural heritage for no other reason than to service the desires of the previous generations. Na'el in Future Redeemed is treated as if she's been swindled by a con artist (Alpha) for daring to believe the people of the City deserve a better future than that, which I just think is astonishingly unsympathetic. Any moral society, in my opinion, would scoff at the idea of such a thing, and if there's anything selfish about this situation, I would argue it's from Noah's side, not the City's. XC3 would suggest to us that survival in and of itself is a worthy enough goal, whatever the cost, but I don't think that's true -- the moral foundation of that survival is just as important. But to be honest, I think this entire dilemma is a red herring -- I don't think the game actually sufficiently proves that Aionios _has_ to run on harvesting in this way. The rules and mechanics governing Origin are extremely vague in game, and the game could easily turn around and say that there is a way to keep Origin running in a safe, ethical manner that allows for the prolonged continuation of Aionios. In fact, my entire argument for this video is essentially that this change in the narrative would make the themes of XC3 vastly more clear and intuitive. When the game connects the fear of the future with the world of Aionios itself, and not _just_ Moebius, we get a lot of weird problems that simply don't need to exist. Moebius are clearly an analogue for the rich elite class, and Aionios is supposed to be the system that operates to their benefit at the expense of the rank and file. But when the solution to the problem is resetting Origin in the way the game does, XC3 is giving us a very reactionary solution to the problem: that the answer isn't to dismantle the system and make something new of it, it's to return to some imagined halcyon past when the elite weren't in control and everyone was happy. You say that there's no time travel involved in this game, and while that's technically true, I'd say it's a distinction without a difference: what Origin does at the end is time travel in all the way that matters. I unironically think the themes of the game would be way, way better if Moebius _did_ make these rules up "just to be mean," as you say. Simply put, I see little reason to take the game at face value when it continually insists that Aionios is wrong and that it isn't what life is "supposed to be." The Annihilation Events aren't compelling evidence that there's a problem with Aionios, because -- as you point out -- the Annihilation Events exist only because the narrative has _already_ decided that there's a problem with Aionios existing. It's circular reasoning. I truly do not understand why XC3 thinks the world they show us in the game is some mistake that no one wants to exist in. And this is all before we get to the bizarrely anti-transhumanist perspective of XC3 when it starts implying that those born from "natural" conception is the way we're "supposed to be." One could almost imagine Monica trying to argue that the denizens of the White Whale from XCX and the Blades from XC2 are subhuman because they're both born "unnaturally," being mimeosomes and core crystals, respectively.
