I bought Xenoblade Chronicles X when it came out on Wii U and ended up never playing it for depressing reasons we don't need to get into. Last year-ish I played about 20-30 hours of it on an emulator (using a ton of cheats) and got like, 50% into the game? Now I'm playing the Definitive Edition on Switch because I'm a fucking shill, I guess.

Xenoblade has always been a weird one, not just in the context of Nintendo's catalog but in its own JRPG design sensibilities. Nobody quite does open worlds the same way Monolith Soft does. Even when others try to hit the same scale like FF7 Rebirth, they end up closer to a scare-quotes "conventional" Ubisoft-style open world. The way I see it - and I assume this is just like, common thought, I don't think it's a particularly noted observation - Xenoblade has always been closer to a single-player MMO than a "regular" JRPG.

X only makes this more obvious with its entire conceit. You're recruited as a member of BLADE, protecting the remnants of humanity on a hostile alien world. Early on, Vandham has a lengthy explanation on the eight different BLADE divisions and the different genres of quest they're each meant to do. Random NPCs have little markers to show which division they're from and everything. The Skell exam has extreme prestige-class-quest vibes. It really sells the feeling that you're part of a larger organization with operatives across the entire level spectrum.

The party in any given RPG is usually a roving band that feels somewhat disconnected from the rest of the world, so it's refreshing to see how all your recruitable members still slot into the Affinity Chart and hang out with people who aren't you. I love how NLA slowly grows in population and builds out more infrastructure as time passes. Armory Alley and the BLADE Barracks have the same vibe as the Tower in Destiny: a hub you return to after every mission to unpack your loot, see what's new to craft, and change up your squad. It's all a bundle of tropes that you don't see often in JRPGs (and no, I'm not going to play FF14).

It's you against the world on Mira. There actually are level 30 giant wolves that will maul you on sight right outside the gates, and they're a pain in the ass to sneak past every time. Is it not your responsibility to exterminate them, for the sake of the citizens of New Los Angeles? Elma gives you a whole speech at the start about how humans are the invaders on Mira and we need to learn how to simultaneously co-exist with the indigens while also proactively protecting the remnants of humanity... but being a video game, your only verbs regarding indigens are "kill" and "loot".

I think there is room for some interesting nuance around the whole "fighting for survival on a hostile world" scenario. It just also completely falls apart for me when you have characters literally saying, "well if we need to make bigger guns to protect ourselves, might as well make some money off of it, baby!" B.LADE agents apparently work on commission or something, seeing as how many of them complain they need to take more missions to get paid. It's particularly dissonant considering where the Xenoblade series is now compared to when X originally came out ten years ago.

2022's XB3 was - grading on a curve - pretty anticapitalist. The entire thematic thrust of the plot was about being caught in a world of endless conflict competing over resources that are only necessary due to social constructs created by those in power. Society is fundamentally immoral and cruel not because that's how the world is, but because it's advantageous for the elite to pit everyone against each other indefinitely. It's a structural problem. Therefore, the structure must be torn down and rebuilt for the good of all.

Meanwhile, X's New Los Angeles is content to pattern itself off fucking Beverly Hills and downright giddy to recreate stratified capitalism on Mira with zero self-reflection. How beautiful can a multi-species coalition of cooperation be when it's centered almost entirely around who has the most successful arms manufacturer? Even when it's trying, the game's ultimately hollow gestures are so half-hearted they sometimes loop back around to hilarious. The first time you meet intelligent life on Mira, paraphrased:

Elma: Are you native to this planet? We come in peace, wish for co-existence with the native peoples, and apologize for the inconvenience.
Xeno: We are NOT native to this planet and explicitly want to wreak genocide upon humans for reasons we will not explain for approximately 150 hours.
Elma: Team, diplomacy has failed. Murder these fuckers.

I'm in a constant tug-of-war between thinking "what an ambitious game packed with interesting concepts" and "what a half-baked morass of cobbled together ideas"; all the more so since this was a damn Wii U game. My understanding is the decision to add multiplayer caused huge development problems and forced them to cut something like half the game and it really shows. The main story (as of writing this sentence, I've reached what was originally the postgame and have not started any of the new core missions) is massively frontloaded and backloaded. You take multiple fucking phase breaks during the final boss purely so they can stop and explain some of the story to you because there was nowhere else to put the exposition. Comical.

With this in mind, many of the best narrative bits are cordoned off in the Sidequest Dimension where they need not be beholden to the supposed urgency of the main plot. Some of them hit the exact same tenor as a good Yakuza / RGG substory. There's just something charming about gormless NPCs making canned animations while spouting increasingly absurd dialogue, like the devs are cooking up whatever dumb shit they can think of with a limited set of tools. The absurd, dissonant charm of Hiroyuki Sawano's soundtrack playing over these quests also cannot be denied. I didn't know I needed "Heartfelt Substory Music -Sawano Ver.-" in my life until I played this game.

Honestly it's fucking absurd how much thematic heft is contained in sidequests. If I'm reading the story mission prerequisites correcntly, at least three (3) entire alien species and all of their related sidequests (literally dozens) are totally optional if you're shotgunning the critical path. I joked earlier about the game's devil-may-care approach towards getting along with the local peoples, but these sidequests are where you actually do get some of that cooperation and coalition building that the ideal of NLA is meant to represent. I'm reminded of exploring hub zones in Mass Effect, talking to whatever random alien you meet to learn more about their culture and how they contribute to collective galactic society.

And as long as I'm bringing up western RPGs: the way Xenoblade X's sidequests interconnect and follow-up on each other blows most CRPGs out of the water (and I would know). The saga of the Biahno Water Purification Plant is grade-A sci-fi bullshit, running the entire tonal spectrum from comedy to horror across like ten totally different quests, and you might never see half of them because maybe you didn't bother to meet the Orphe or Zaruboggan. Completely ridiculous. I love it.

The New Post-Game Story Stuff

(SPOILERS I MEAN IT)
(ALSO SPOILERS FOR THE XB3 FUTURE REDEEMED DLC)

This was probably the big selling point of Definitive Edition (after "rescued from the Wii U"), and as of this sentence I'm coming in hot off wrapping up the new Chapter 13. It's, uh... it's... fine...?

Well. It ain't no Future Redeemed, I tell you what.

I know what I said about cool MMO vibes earlier, but let me be clear: I think the base game as a whole suffers from the choice to have a silent, customizable protagonist. The thing that lets CRPGs get away with custom characters is the focus on "choice and consequence", where the game is constantly recognizing your choices and showing your impact on the world. In the format of a JRPG with a linear, character-driven story, the narrative possibility space shrinks tremendously because you cannot meaningfully affect the plot. It is comically blatant how Elma, Lin, and Lao are the only party members who actually matter out of like twenty dudes.

But you also do play like, 100-150 hours as gormless goober Rook. While the game doesn't really track it beyond two Affinity Quests apiece, you've built a rapport with these characters (in your mind) through the sheer amount time you've spent flying around slaughtering indigenous life with them. Cutscenes be damned, you were right there with them and probably put down the final boss yourself with your busted multiclass build. That ain't nothing! Some might argue that's more tangible and real connection than the scripted heart-to-heart chats in town.

So it's just a bit frustrating when Alois Bernholt suddenly appears and your entire team coos and fawns over how he's the Coolest Dude Ever and how they all missed him and loved him and deeply mourned his disappearance et cetera et cetera. Only the fourth wall stops them from turning straight to the camera and saying, "finally, the real main character is here!"

The game starts actively taking the piss at your expense, too. Any dialogue options involving Al become, essentially:

Option A: Bask in the awe of meeting the greatest hero to ever live
Option B: Glower in envy like a petulant baby

What're you gonna do, pick the option that actively shits on you and makes you act like a loser? Or let the game force you to fall in line and pretend that Al is in fact your better in every way? His mandatory Affinity Quest is about how you're not quite good as him. Hell, I'm downright surprised they didn't actively force him into the main party for the whole chapter.

Is this selfish of me? Entitled, even? Yeah, probably, but they decided to center the game around a custom protagonist. It just doesn't feel great when the new guy steals your thunder to such an extent. Meanwhile he's Class Rank 3 like every new party member, his Super Special Plot Skell is literally an order of magnitude weaker than my Overdrive-chaining Lv60 Lailah model, and he yells at the staff at the pizza place. What an asshole.

Anyway. Rant over.

JRPGs still ain't quite beating the allegations about Final Dungeons; Volitaris would have been terrible if I wasn't so comically overleveled. The Ghosts are cool, and it just makes sense to follow up on the other alien faction that blew up Earth. As a villain, Void feels a bit perfunctory (he gives me major Sovereign from Mass Effect vibes), but I suppose you need to kill a god at the end for X to become a Xeno proper.

In my old Future Redeemed post from the Cohost days, I basically interpreted the DLC as a glimpse into the mindset of Monolith Soft, if not necessarily Takahashi himself. Alpha wanted a clean break from the past, a fresh new world IP. Z wanted the Endless Now, continuing with the current status quo Xenoblade series with no need to acknowledge the past nor an uncertain future. The protagonists wanted to move forward whilst accepting the sins of the past, building upon them to forge a new future that would hopefully not make the same mistakes. Hence the infamous Radio Scene and my assumption that the studio's next game would be Xeno-something, but not Xenoblade 4.

With that in mind, a remaster is kind of shaky, like, ideologically. I joked on Bluesky (referring to Neilnail's second Affinity Quest):

doin a new quest in xenoblade x and they basically look directly at the camera and say "we here at monolith soft need not be beholden to our past and in fact should ignore or destroy it if it's for the good of our future" which is a very funny sentiment to have in a re-release of an old game

— Iro (@irothtin.bsky.social) March 30, 2025 at 9:35 PM

Did Alpha win out? Isn't re-releasing X simply remaining in the Endless Now?? Who knows??? It could have just as easily been referring to the unused concepts in the X artbook. People sure built up the Black Knight in their minds and it turned out to not really be anything at all because guess what? They obviously repurposed the design for the Moebius in 3! It's fine!!

Anyway, with that in mind, we can look at Chapter 13. I actually quite like the quests where you travel the world to get people on board for the White Whale 2. They feel fucking grim. I just got 100% on my Primordia FrontierNav and you're telling me it was basically a fucking waste of time? Like, as far as I can tell, they don't even salvage the remains of the Lifehold for the ship.

But it's also nice to see everyone coming together to avoid utter annihilation. I did all those sidequests and now we're all bros! I'm not sure any of those species other than the Orphe will be able to maintain genetic diversity after the fact, but it's the principle of the matter. We did build a coalition. We are going to survive. It's just that everything we suffered and struggled to build on Mira is about to be obliterated from reality.

Thinking about this from a proverbial Monolith Soft point of view, well. Not just Mira will be destroyed, but the entire universe which Mira exists in ("it's something about this planet", indeed). Who knows how many dev hours went into building all of these systems, creating this whole mythology, and now we've got to ditch it all and make something new? But the White Whale 2 takes what it can. As many people as possible, as much genetic information as possible. Do it again somewhere else. Make another game.

Look, I'm not saying Takahashi shot Monolith Soft in the foot by formally tying together the various Xeno metaseries, but it is a bit funny to see X walk it back by including a multiverse scenario. New game? New dimension! We have no obligation whatsoever to actually acknowledge -gears or -saga or even -blade in whatever comes next. Which, hey! Sounds good! I'd be cool with that! And sure, we can include the Conduit/Zohar as a treat. Why the fuck not.

With a lens less focused on our precious video games, we are in a pandemic-ridden world with needlessly powerful children tearing it apart for their own stupid whims and insecurities. It feels as though thriving is impossible and all we can do is struggle and survive. But survival has inherent meaning. It is not an act of defiance, but of love for life itself. The alternative is nonexistence.

As always, I'm looking forward to whatever Monolith Soft puts out next. Maybe I'll even get to play it when the Switch 2 finally comes to the USA in 2028.

#games #rpg