MEN OF THE SEA

2022 08 10

CONTENT WARNING

this post will have pretty substantial spoilers for disc one of xenogears, basically all of xenoblade 3.

xenoblade 3 is JUST like xenogears and xenoblade x, and for different reasons.

and this is BIG THING!!

xenogears is a game about religion, child trauma, fascism, and science fiction. everything comes second to its story, and it actually has like, no side quests at all! it goes for a deep and complex narrative above all else. It was the first xeno game.

the first xenoblade was originally not designed to be a xeno game at all! so, it was different.

it still had science fiction themes and religious themes, and these were secondary themes in comparison to gears. instead, blade's themes were primarily about revenge and comparing the similarities between the big bads and the good team.

blade also focused significantly more on its gameplay, particularly combat system, and effectively revolutionised the genre in the process. it also chooses to present its story in more abstract and lighthearted ways, and using thematic based writing.

its sequel, xenoblade 2, was also significantly less grande in its story, and also focused a lot on non narrative things. It was also rushed as all hell, and it shows, though, which gives it some fundamental things to compare similarly to gears.

blade 2 was, however, actually designed as a xeno game! and its themes and writing style reflect that. it was a little less lighthearted, focused on intimate character writing instead of thematic writing, and had a more large scale story concept to it. being a blade game, it still is more fun to play, easier to parse, and a lot less huge than gears, but this is expected, and it did end up having a direct sequel too, letting it be bigger in its story.

xenoblade x is a bit separate from the other two, and is probably the most xeno of all the blade games, maybe. grande story concept with science fiction as a staple, loads of mental health and psychology, and some religion. the way it presents its story is a lot less effective than basically all other xeno games, but, at least in theory, it is just like the others!

x goes fully into its gameplay as a focus, and it has some of the most engaging and fun gameplay in the series. xenoblade 2 was, a pretty disapointing game to play after X, since it felt like they didn't keep any of the things that made X fun to play.

xenoblade 3 is the most recent xeno game, and, takes a lot from both gears and X.

it is actually absurd.

gears similarities

xenoblade 3, being a sequel, gets to expand on the world of the other main blade games, and it also, thankfully, was not a rushed mess like gears or blade 2 (at least not opaquely). it goes more in to developing its main characters and utilises them directly to communicate its themes and what it is going for, and,

well lets rip the plaster off the game has a gigantic number of identical plot points to gears.

gears is a video game that is set between two warring nations, Aveh and Kislev. you find the war is being orchestrated by a higher nation that no one knows about, in order to feed that larger nation, both literally and for labour and military and science, and becomes a relationship drama with alarmingly high stakes.

yeah xenogears has cannabilism, y'all.

xenoblade 3 is a video game set between two warring nations, Agnus and Keves. you find the war is being orchestrated by a higher power organisation that no one knows about, in order to feed them, and almost literally, in addition to for scientific gain, and to stop the world from collapsing? after we learn of this orchestra, it becomes a relationship drama with alarmingly high stakes.

it isn't just the concept, either! much of what is important in the story is the same in gears, and happens in the same order.

in gears, you need to climb up babel tower to find a hidden rebel nation against the higher power, and then they help you launch an attack on them. They also upgrade your sandship lol

in blade 3, you need to climb up swordmarch to find a hidden rebel nation against the higher power, and then they help you launch an attack on them (after teaching you about them and themselves). They also give you a boat and then upgrade it lol

we really really liked the relationship drama in blade 3, we think it works a lot more organically than gears.

the absolute coolest part about this is that the games approach the same things very differently, often with different perspectives, and generally, the thing that you focus on in one game is not what you focus on in the other.

like, getting a boat upgrade in gears is a minor event, whereas it is crucially important in blade 3. Climbing the tower in gears is significantly more time consuming and elaborate than the single elavator ride up to the top of swordmarch.

Imagine a world where the lift in gears actually got the party to the top of the tower without issue. Aveh would still be a monarchy! and it would be a signifcantly better game because there would be less filler and less gear combat!!!! Definitely the right choice on 3's end to have the lift take you to the top in one go.

although, this isn't neccesarily all good. gears gets to have a more expansive story that is more intricate by really giving these things time. it makes the game interesting from a story perspective, whereas 3 is more focused on a single main goal (destroying the world), with everything else second. gears tries to take on so much at once and we think in a lot of ways it actually works pretty well, and it lets it have the intricate narrative that it wanted.

a major difference between the two stories is that blade 3 uses more indirect means to explain things to gears. Like, the main character isn't overtly plural like in gears, even though the protagonist and antagonist are very much the same people with the same experiences, and the person in Noah's cloud space seems like a littlespace version of himself. Honestly a little strange that this is one of the notable differences, in that fei being plural was an important part of gears' story, but in 3, they just focus completely on the fact that the main protagonist took a very different path in another life. Like, very strange given that plurality and child trauma in gears is one of most important ways it communicates its themes, and in xenoblade 2 one of the main characters was plural, so it is unusual that blade 3 didn't take the same route as either gears or blade 2.

in general, the party is surpirsingly different from gears, and we don't know if that is a good thing. Fei and elly are definitely equivalent to Noah and Mio, and they even have strong design similarities, but everyone else, not so much.

definitely no bartholomew character in this game, doesn't seem like a citan (although both fei and taion have some of mr. uzuki energy), no emeralda or maria, no rico, like, hm. Definitely the most important character differences are in bart and citan, because bart is awesome and citan is important to the story. Gears has much worse character writing than blade 3 so all the other characters other than these two and fei and elly are just used to express something horrible, especially billy and rico, who haven't, who haven't had good lives lets say.

we think the way that gears directly explicitly makes it clear that Solarians eats other people is signifcantly more effective at communicating that they use other people as objects for personal gain, is a lot more impactful than how Moebius can easily be compared to eating people. in gears, people from aveh and Kislev are slaughtered and their body is used, among other things, as a food source for Solaris. In blade 3, Moebius uses the life force generated from people from agnus and keves being killed. we think blade 3's Moebius is a lot less introspective and lot less impactful in this regard. we think that subtext does work out a lot better than how gears does things! but in this case, we think gears is more effective.

one of the final major differences between blade 3 and gears, is that blade 3 has a much smaller scope, and this established early on.

HOW IT FAILS AT BEING A SEQUEL LOL

xenoblade 3 (spoilers) is a game set in world about to be put to ruin from the collision of the universes of blade 1 and blade 2.

it has been put in stasis by Moebius, in order to live in the "now" for eternity, before the destruction. Moebius was apparently created from the collective will of people, and their fear. for comparison, this would be an entire several hour self reflection in gears.

they pull this off kinda badly! like, in this case, the climax has no real character moments or emotional stuff, because the leader of Moebius isn't a person with a personality or thoughts of their own. Just a manifestation of fear incarnate. In addition, the main party is constantly asked to think about their goals, and often they are asked benevolently by people who trust them, and the game completely speeds past this.

the main characters do not second guess themselves or really consider if what they are doing is right, they just keep moving on. not a single bit of doubt! and the game kinda takes a very pro capital L Libertarian stance to get by this, which, is a bit of deus ex machina, because, Libertarianism isn't a real ideology with any consistency, just whatever someone interprets as freedom. Liberty doesn't work because what that is can be interpretted completely differently very very easily, and it also loses out on the characters learning about themselves, and taking others seriously.

We think a lot about if the game had the guts to make the big bad, Z, Zeke from Xenoblade 2. Moebius usually have their names be their first name's initial, so we originally hoping it would be Zeke in place of Z!

Zeke is a pretty mindful person, and thinks a lot and takes things seriously. their stances on things are very well thought out and he has good reason to have them. SO, if Zeke was the big bad, the game would probably make the party member take Zeke seriously, because Zeke is the kind of character who would have thought about this decision a lot, and considered it the best option for everyone.

zeke is also a character in a position of authority and power.

it would also allow for interesting character interactions, because not only is Zeke a real character, but they are a GOOD character.

we'd get to talk to Zeke and really learn their perspective, and have the main characters reflect from that. the send off to N would probably be stronger, too, because they could participate as well! imagine if Noah seriously took time to think about why they believe it would be best. we just desperately wanted the game's finale to have some more mental health and psychology stuff. We wanted to see noah actually understand the weight and have self doubt this late into the story! imagine if Nia got to actually be herself and started yelling at Zeke after learning it is him.

we're okay with Noah's goals and don't fundamentally disagree with them, but, but we just wanted some more of that brain shit we got in the act right before this, and we wanted it to feel like Noah really understood the destructive weight of their actions.

the only reason it doesn't work is because the game is set in the distant future from 1 and 2, but literally nothing in the plot relies on this, so it could be changed to a shorter time period, just a generation or so, and Zeke should still be around because they are a blade eater ("blade eater" being an explanation for why Zeke can live so long is probably VERY funny if you don't have context heheheh).

aside from Z not being a character, we think that, we think that blade 3 needed a better explanation for how the world works. so much is left unexplained (or if it is, in deep, deep subtext), and is sorta disatisfying to get all the way to the big reveal and to have it have nothing to it. Blade 3 doesn't even explain how Nia became a queen, in the first place. The game also kinda footguns by making the stakes really low with the constant rebirth and not giving the destructive finale the weight it needs.

it sure does seem like the reason why so little is explained is because the game really, really wanted to be self contained. this means not requiring knowledge from 1 or 2, and not spoiling these games either. This kinda sucks, because so much of why the world is the way it is is as a direct result of things that happened in between the those games and blade 3. and when it does take from those games, it feels, strange. Nia gets her heart impaled and her blood literally covers everything around her. of course, she lives, because her body relies on a self generating core crystal a couple centimetres to the left, but this is ONLY explained in xenoblade2, so it feels like deus ex machina. Melia is in the game. She doesn't get to be herself once. she is just gives you exposition and is otherwise a non character. and she has definitely grown a lot from xenoblade 1! but, she doesn't get any development

we actually love this scene because nia gets to be herself for a bit before realising that she has royal company but we also don't think it's good. also the blood doesn't actually render in the scene but the characters say there's lots of blood and so another anecdotal critique is the game misuses where blood is shown. it only uses it in one important point, when Noah's knuckles are bloodied; all other times blood is rendered it is not used to communicate anything, which makes its sparring use frusterating! the majority of its uses are in minor scenes and it doesn't really do anything in them (we would prefer if they didn't use it as sparing in general, but in the case they did, we wish it was in more important scenes instead of minor ones). it definitely should've used it both more, and in more important places.

like, here are some things the game doesn't really talk about.

how the hell does moebius work? why do soliders reaching their tenth term make it so they aren't reborn? is their data taken out of origin? why/how??? if this is the case then wouldn't that mean they would slowly continously lose the ability to live, and if so why don't they seem aware?

how did alcamoth and nia establish communication in the first place? why does keves and agnus have distinct colour schemes and dress codes from each other, that have nothing to do with their cultures? how do the queens' data collection work and why does melia have access to it? why was alcamoth redesigned so signifcantly? how did everyone else even get up to alcamoth to form a castle town?????? why is nia a monarch??? how and why and when were keves and agnus as nations formed? how does moebius accelerate the development process for data in origin? how much does moebius do in order to keep everyone playing along with it? surely a lot, but the game doesn't really go into that.

why is origin physically in aionis? isn't everything around it a recreation? was shania put into origin and that is how they contribute to moebius eternal? where does this take place? there is so so much that goes unexplained in the game and so so so much of it is history.

xenoblade 3 does not get a history lesson about the world like 1 and 2 get, so it effectively is self contained. and this is pretty detrimental, because we think a history lesson was neccesary to fully understand what is going on and why everything is like this.

x similarities

the main similarities to X come from gameplay. 3 takes a lot from xenoblade x's gameplay, and a lot of this is very good.

they are the only two xenoblades to have classes, and arts are much more similar to 1 and X arts then 2's homogenous arts. the way you build classes is very very similar to X! the game also seems to focus on more real time combat, instead of chain attacks.

at least we hope! chain attacks are definitely the worst aspect about the combat system in 3. they are even more pace breaking and unfun than 2's, and they don't even give you the satisfaction of melting the healthbar!

we don't have a lot to say accessibly in blog post format because we really really need to be deep into 3 gameplay and be actively thinking about to say much about it, same for X. it is really big!! know for now that the gameplay being like X is a VERY good sign, even if we can't articulate these similarities. we have a shuffle playlist of music playing and as we began writing this paragraph 亡KEI却KOKU心 began playing. fucking love X so much. special interest!

we are excited to have organised thoughts like for X and slowly sort them into more pages under xeno directory! we know that to talk accessibly about gameplay we need to do in lots of small and focused documents, and that is exciting!

in general, our only concrete thoughts about the game at the moment are about its story. we don't have concrete thoughts for things like its music or gameplay or other stuff!

so far, the gameplay stuff and side stuff in the game is really incredible for our brain to engage with 🥰

we wish you could have less characters in a battle at once, for especially testing. it helps you focus so much more! also good for challenges.

things we like

we really, really love the middle part of the game, from getting to swordmarch to right before meeting nia. we also think long hair mio is gorgeous! wish you could wear the elly outfit??? so strange you can't. we really love a ton of the characters in all of the game too. Joran, N and M, sena, zeon, and a lot lot more. the characters are probably our favourite xeno game cast overall, at least the main characters. Riku and Manana are autistic as hell we love them.

fiona DEFINITELY has some mental illness we just don't know WHAT it is. currently colony mu is one of our favourites.

we thinking the acting and writing is really incredible and feels like a big step even from just xenoblade 2, which previously had our favourite cast! we haven't played any saga game! the characters feel so good and real. reality! real. the character designs are also really good! and it appears a lot of the character designs were done by the development studio directly this time, so that means that xeno games will probably continue to have good character designs!

main character designer was still Saito, like in 2, which, whatever, at least their art is a lot better here, even if it will forever make us uncomfortable. luckily, we don't need to look at the character drawings, only the in game models and animations, which all look a lot better than saito's art!

it is interesting that the in game illustrations for the characters do seem pretty signifcantly different from their appearance in game. and their poses all seem out of character, too. like, fiona and juniper's in game illustrations come to mind, although we're still happy how the 3D modelers interpreted the art.