I've always had a fascination for the first few games, a fascination that is mostly grounded in their world building and design. And one that was always in spite of many of the other aspects those games featured. One of those aspects were the central themes of both games' story, which always felt underdeveloped and over-simplified to the point of being a caricature. Well, they've finally been cooked! Not, like, perfectly, but well enough!
Because what the first two games put at the end of their stories, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 places at its beginning, as a starting point. In that sense, it really is the thematic culmination of the series. It's also takes itself quite serious, leaving out (or rather: not doing) a lot of the adolescent weirdness Xenoblade Chronicles 2 featured. I was (positively) shook to find an all-gender-bathouse-scene with the main cast that never once sexualized the situation, instead opting to just be chill about it. On the topic of the main cast: I love them. The time Xenoblade Chronicles 3 spends with characterization is plentiful, and it is well-crafted and joyous to experience. Having such a big cast is always challenge, and this is one of the most confident displays of handling it I've seen. The hero quests even expand upon it - and they, too, are handled really well and, especially suprising for me, really polished!
The biggest gripe I have with the story is its overreliance on appealing to a biologistic and essentialist conception of the "way things should be" - something that I think stands in opposition to the "creating freedom of choice for everyone"-ideal repeated again and again throughout its story. It doesn't help that "the way things should be" is, well, firmly placed inside a strictly heteronormative world view. While playing, I've often felt like this games' story wouldn't work without support from the heterosexual matrix. That is true for the absolute majority of the entertaiment landscape, but I actually felt it in this game - The heterosexual matrix weaves the story together in a way that is more explicit than I have ever seen in any other medium.
When talking about the rest of my experience outside the story, I have to return to the topic of world design I mentioned at the beginning of this review. It's still really great, the experience of travelling through Aionios comes together quite effortlessly and the gigantic map is somehow still quite intricately crafted! The road trip feeling of the first half is great and stopped at just the right point for me, being replaced by a more focused story-centric approach that made the game hard to put down in the latter half. This is also the point the combat clicked for me. The many ways you can customize and arrange your party are incredibly overwhelming at first, but they really are worth exploring! I just wish that there was some way to really customize what the AI does, because it often actively worked against what I was trying to do - which is as much the games' problem as it is mine. But that problem was present in the first two games as well, so it might be a series stable at this point!
I'm really curious to see the DLC for the game, because it seems to be what I expected the game itself to be. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 really isn't a crossover of the first two games, it's moreso the first real continuation of them. And I really liked that. And now that I'm done, I can finally get enough sleep again - this game is really addictive, actually.
Because what the first two games put at the end of their stories, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 places at its beginning, as a starting point. In that sense, it really is the thematic culmination of the series. It's also takes itself quite serious, leaving out (or rather: not doing) a lot of the adolescent weirdness Xenoblade Chronicles 2 featured. I was (positively) shook to find an all-gender-bathouse-scene with the main cast that never once sexualized the situation, instead opting to just be chill about it. On the topic of the main cast: I love them. The time Xenoblade Chronicles 3 spends with characterization is plentiful, and it is well-crafted and joyous to experience. Having such a big cast is always challenge, and this is one of the most confident displays of handling it I've seen. The hero quests even expand upon it - and they, too, are handled really well and, especially suprising for me, really polished!
The biggest gripe I have with the story is its overreliance on appealing to a biologistic and essentialist conception of the "way things should be" - something that I think stands in opposition to the "creating freedom of choice for everyone"-ideal repeated again and again throughout its story. It doesn't help that "the way things should be" is, well, firmly placed inside a strictly heteronormative world view. While playing, I've often felt like this games' story wouldn't work without support from the heterosexual matrix. That is true for the absolute majority of the entertaiment landscape, but I actually felt it in this game - The heterosexual matrix weaves the story together in a way that is more explicit than I have ever seen in any other medium.
When talking about the rest of my experience outside the story, I have to return to the topic of world design I mentioned at the beginning of this review. It's still really great, the experience of travelling through Aionios comes together quite effortlessly and the gigantic map is somehow still quite intricately crafted! The road trip feeling of the first half is great and stopped at just the right point for me, being replaced by a more focused story-centric approach that made the game hard to put down in the latter half. This is also the point the combat clicked for me. The many ways you can customize and arrange your party are incredibly overwhelming at first, but they really are worth exploring! I just wish that there was some way to really customize what the AI does, because it often actively worked against what I was trying to do - which is as much the games' problem as it is mine. But that problem was present in the first two games as well, so it might be a series stable at this point!
I'm really curious to see the DLC for the game, because it seems to be what I expected the game itself to be. Xenoblade Chronicles 3 really isn't a crossover of the first two games, it's moreso the first real continuation of them. And I really liked that. And now that I'm done, I can finally get enough sleep again - this game is really addictive, actually.
4 Comments
Thank you for your feedback, I'm not used to kind comments on this website, so I'm really thankful for it! As to your question:
It begins for me with the ouroboros pairings of the protagonists being strictly male/female, with a corresponding gendered appearance depending on who is in charge. This isn't true for the Moebius, which only emphasized my point - those pairings outside of heteronormative ideals are reserved for the antagonists. I found the boss fight against O&P an especially egregious example - the design is bi-gendered, which is seen by the game and the protagonists as perverse and unnatural, "beastly" and not worth off-seeing. Which again opposes the strictly one-gendered designs of the main characters ouroboros forms.
[Heavy spoilers follow]
Additionally, the way the protagonists are first introduced to the life "how it should be" in the city is through the core family and childbirth. That segment of the game spends a lot of time with characters asking about the meaning "mother" and "parent" and "child" - the workings of the core family are really integral here. I feel like that this part aims mostly at creating a sense of how "unnatural" this world is in the player, making one of the key motivations for "changing the future" the prospect of core family units. The relationship between N&M is another example for this - it being one of the absolute core components of the story and them also having a child in one of their past iterations.
Having said that, I also do think that the exploration of romantic relationships done through N&M is quite thoughtful and deliberately non-tropey, and for me, one of the strongest points of the narrative. So, in that case, it isn't really a criticism but moreso an example of heterosexualty being absolutely integral to the games entire identity - which really limits what it can say regarding "freedom of choice for everyone", and at that point we're back to my criticism.
Please share your thoughts as well, if you want!
It begins for me with the ouroboros pairings of the protagonists being strictly male/female, with a corresponding gendered appearance depending on who is in charge. This isn't true for the Moebius, which only emphasized my point - those pairings outside of heteronormative ideals are reserved for the antagonists. I found the boss fight against O&P an especially egregious example - the design is bi-gendered, which is seen by the game and the protagonists as perverse and unnatural, "beastly" and not worth off-seeing. Which again opposes the strictly one-gendered designs of the main characters ouroboros forms.
[Heavy spoilers follow]
Additionally, the way the protagonists are first introduced to the life "how it should be" in the city is through the core family and childbirth. That segment of the game spends a lot of time with characters asking about the meaning "mother" and "parent" and "child" - the workings of the core family are really integral here. I feel like that this part aims mostly at creating a sense of how "unnatural" this world is in the player, making one of the key motivations for "changing the future" the prospect of core family units. The relationship between N&M is another example for this - it being one of the absolute core components of the story and them also having a child in one of their past iterations.
Having said that, I also do think that the exploration of romantic relationships done through N&M is quite thoughtful and deliberately non-tropey, and for me, one of the strongest points of the narrative. So, in that case, it isn't really a criticism but moreso an example of heterosexualty being absolutely integral to the games entire identity - which really limits what it can say regarding "freedom of choice for everyone", and at that point we're back to my criticism.
Please share your thoughts as well, if you want!
I'm glad that my comment made you happy! I can only imagine how difficult it can be talking about topics such as heteronormativity in a space that isn't solely populated by LGBT people. I genuinely commend you for being brave enough to do so.
You seriously put my thoughts into words, though. I hadn't fully stopped to consider why exactly it was that the scenes in the City made me so uncomfortable (it honestly felt like a borderline fetish with the numerous times they brought up having children), but now I realize that it was exactly those values that it was unconsciously inflicting. Why should it be the standard, normal life for people to grow up, get married, and have children? There are plenty of other ways to show that the world of Aionios is unnatural without the emphasis on a nuclear family (especially when Monica and Ghondor themselves are not one).
I also agree that it was uncomfortable to see the Ouroboros be so gendered, especially when battling non-gendered Moebius. Some of the designs seem to be previous Xeno references to me (Weltall, KOS-MOS, and Crescens are what I picked up on) but even then the... boobs were really unnecessary. The main romance in the narrative though, like you said, was surprisingly pleasant. I have come to expect myself to eye-roll at most main hetero pairings in video games, but Noah and Mio were on the better side, all things considered.
I'm not sure if you offered for me to share my thoughts on your reply (which I hope that I sufficiently have!) or on the game as a whole, but if you're interested in the latter I did write a review here: https://www.backloggd.com/u/conduit/review/478930/ :)
You seriously put my thoughts into words, though. I hadn't fully stopped to consider why exactly it was that the scenes in the City made me so uncomfortable (it honestly felt like a borderline fetish with the numerous times they brought up having children), but now I realize that it was exactly those values that it was unconsciously inflicting. Why should it be the standard, normal life for people to grow up, get married, and have children? There are plenty of other ways to show that the world of Aionios is unnatural without the emphasis on a nuclear family (especially when Monica and Ghondor themselves are not one).
I also agree that it was uncomfortable to see the Ouroboros be so gendered, especially when battling non-gendered Moebius. Some of the designs seem to be previous Xeno references to me (Weltall, KOS-MOS, and Crescens are what I picked up on) but even then the... boobs were really unnecessary. The main romance in the narrative though, like you said, was surprisingly pleasant. I have come to expect myself to eye-roll at most main hetero pairings in video games, but Noah and Mio were on the better side, all things considered.
I'm not sure if you offered for me to share my thoughts on your reply (which I hope that I sufficiently have!) or on the game as a whole, but if you're interested in the latter I did write a review here: https://www.backloggd.com/u/conduit/review/478930/ :)
Thank your for your lengthy answer and your review (which I found very interesting, so I'll respond to it in its own comment section!) I hope we'll meet again in the comment sections when the DLC finally drops!
conduit
1 year ago