Did you guys forget Xeno 2? You couldn't fly to the top of the world tree because it was protected by Ophion. Anyone who tried to get near it was destroyed by a robotic snake. As soon as Rex and crew take it down there is literally a giant battle right near it.
And yes I do buy it because core crystal technology can remake anything. Origin is filled with them. And whether you like Tora or not, the dude replicated tech from a literal god on his own.
And it's not like Xeno 1 world isn't filled with smart people and a giant metal robot filled with tech they couldn't salvage. Not to mention an entire population of robot people. We know that Shulk can rebuild a god sword. Alcomoth is a floating city built by High Entia. Tech is fairly advanced. Now imagine if an entire separate universe started sharing their info with you.
Anyway, not asking you to suddenly buy that two worlds can make origin. But what I am saying is that it's not this super unplausible thing you guys are making it out to be.
Sorry for the late reply. You're right about Ophion - I forgot. I'm not sure if that thing was able to fly up to Elysium but anyway, you're probably right. It was still just an example. What I meant to say is, as technologically advanced as both worlds were, neither was close enough to being able to replicate the Conduit in the short term – from what I (and several others) could gather.
The game is doing the same exact same thing in terms of plot. People from a prior form of the world created something that leads to the current state of reality. For the purposes of storytelling they are the same exact plot device.
The only difference is you subjectively believe that they couldn't have done it. Which is just a rejection of the facts the game gives you. And you base this on your belief that they simply couldn't build something like this by drawing on your analysis from the prior two games. But suspension of belief is essential to any form of storytelling. I can easily say that in Xeno 1 I refuse to believe that scientists from "our earth" could build a device that could recreate the universe. And I can base this analysis on the state of the world IRL because that's what's supposed to be represented. I think Takahashi was even aware of this, which is why the conduit comes in as a big ol retcon in Xeno 2. The conduit in Xeno 2 is used more so to explain why Klaus survived and has god like power in Xeno 2 than it does to explain the original universe creating event. It’s essentially just a cop out from having to give too much details on Klaus because we can just say “eh it’s the conduit” and leave it at that.
I get why you would think it's not plausible for the Xeno 1 and 2 worlds to create Origin. My response to this is that the game also doesn't give us any reason to not believe it. We are not given any context of how the worlds of Xeno 1 and 2 developed in terms of technology. So the belief that they couldn't get Origin created is based on your own assumptions. But in game, we are not given any reason to doubt they built it, because at the end of the day Origin actually exists. It was built. As you said, you have to believe they could do it.
On that note, if someone started Xeno 3 and didn't play Xeno 1 and Xeno 2, they would be in the same exact scenario someone who played Xeno 1 and Xeno 2 would be. The game says this person (or in the case of Xeno 3 a prior civilization) did something that led to the current state of the world. They have to believe it.
I wonder if people would be more "accepting" if they hadn't given any context at all to who built origin. If this was a generic non Xenoblade game and this explanation came up I seriously doubt people would be pushing so hard against it. I also can't help but wonder if they had explicitly said it was Shulk who made origin that people would have been more accepting of it as an explanation. Too many of the criticisms of Origin just come off as Xeno 2/Tora hate.
I appreciated your previous posts even though I didn't broadly agree with them, but this one... I don't even know where to begin! Hehehe!
First, sure, suspension of belief is necessary in fiction, and especially so in magic/sci-fi fiction. But it should never become a free pass that overrides basic logic or other in-universe arguments. Otherwise anything can go.
"But in game, we are not given any reason to doubt they built it, because at the end of the day Origin actually exists." Is this for real? So are we never able to doubt anything that any fictional universe throws our way simply because authors decided that's how it is? This is a "begging the question" type of fallacy, and is not very conducive to a healthy debate. Of course this is what happens in the game, and that is precisely what many of us find unrealistic in-universe.
XC1 doesn't depict our Earth as it is. I guess that's why you used quotation marks. It's sort of an alternate universe version of it where the Conduit existed and it enhanced technological advancements which in turn allowed for the development of a supercomputer which used it as its power source. We don't know much about that universe, so we don't have much reason to doubt the feasibility of it all. Basically it's the starting point/premise of the whole saga. You can't extend this to subsequent plotpoints, which are instead conditioned by the former ones.
In connection with that, sure, things might make sense for someone whose first Xenoblade is XC3 and who interprets this story in isolation. But you can't remove all existing context to be able to equate this plotpoint with another one which had no such (or rather, much less) context. I mean no offence, but this reminds of the running meme from sales threads, "context is just another way of making excuses". The truth is the stories of XC1 and XC2 do exist, and to be able to tie those with the basic premise of XC3, it takes a huge leap of imagination/handwaving prior context. The lack of details doesn't help – surely you can agree at least on this. By the way, perhaps inadvertently you illustrated why some people are saying that this story would possibly work better if it wasn't connected to both previous games.
Finally, I'm very surprised by your last sentence when most people questioning parts of this game's story are instead wishing it resembled more XC2 in pacing, exposition, climax, etc.
I'm glad the overarching plot is working fine for many long-term fans, though. I wish I was on that boat too. Hopefully the DLC will take me there.
While everyone debates as to whether the ending/end boss was any good or not…
I will say right now that everything else that had been leading to them confronting Mobeus before Origin had been superb. I also think most of the story and world building, not to mention impact, has been tucked away in the sidequests. In fact, I think it’s best to approch this game in the same vein as Mass Effect: It’s easy to breeze through the entire main story ina span of a few hours, but to do so would be missing the point.
I personally liked how they delivered Zeon’s sidequest of trying to turn Colony 9 from a nomadic warfaring outfit to an agrarian one: It wasn’t as simple as the whole Colony learning to grow spuds. You had to realize that the folks at Colony 9 didn’t have a single clue about even basic planting, so it never occurs to them to bury their planted crops until Colony Tau interviens. (I also enjoy it when another Hero ends up in another’s side-story.)
But the thing that really sticks with me is how in this side-quest, you get to really see the struggle that Colony 9 faces just trying to adopt to this new lifestyle: some chain of command mutinies, plant diseases, monsters wrecking their plantation…It’s not sunshine and roses as you’d assume from something like Xenoblade Chronicles 2’s side-quest.
Indeed. Side-stories in this game are excellent.
Gotta say, a lot of the response I’ve seen towards the photo with Rex and co. has been borderline (or even outright) polyphobic, which is super uncool. Not trying to single out the latest comments about it in this thread ‘cause I’ve seen worse here, not just in this thread but in the other XC3 thread too, not to mention elsewhere on the internet. But it’s just sad—and as a polyamorous person myself, kinda hurtful—to see people respond to one of the rare instances of polyamory in video games (presented in a positive/neutral and serious way, not just as a joke or fanservice) with “what the fuck” or calling it “gross” or whatever.
Like, it’s totally valid to have issues with how it’s presented or not like it for specific reasons or whatever, but if that’s the case then explain that, because otherwise when you say stuff like “I want it erased from my mind and eyes” it just comes across as at the mere thought of Rex having multiple partners and choosing to have kids with them being disgusting to you, which…I shouldn’t have to point out how awful that sounds. Absolutely nothing wrong with healthy and consensual polyamorous relationships, and it’s really fucking depressing how polyamory is still so heavily stigmatized.
Thank you for sharing your views. I guess we are all more or less conditioned by what society imposes as normal, to the point where often we don't stop and think if that has anything to do with being right or wrong. If it helps, in my particular case my problem with the picture is the body language. These four people aren't depicted under the same conditions, as you would expect from a healthy polyamorous relationship. Instead, the male is standing behind with his arms extended over the female characters, as if they belonged to him, while they are all sitting well-mannered and holding the babies, in a blatant showcase of traditional gender stereotypes. I think most would agree this could've been depicted in a far more tasteful manner. I have to say, on the one hand it seems like developers did this just to spite the haters, and if that's true I can't help but love the motivation behind it. On the other hand I hate that they couldn't come up with a more respectful (to the characters) way of doing it.
I like that this story has given so much to think about. With XC2 there was a similar depth, best parts probably being the whole concept of Klaus and the Jin/Malos relationship. Rex’s characterisation I also really appreciated.
But XC3 has done it totally differently. I love that the main ‘world-shattering revelation’ in the story is simply the nature of birth, death and ageing. The symbols of the mobius strip, ouroboros ring, then merged in the yin/yang in Noah and Mio’s eyes at the end, also opens up tons of interpretation—plus the shape of Aionios itself matching Lacanian tori of demand and desire complete with Origin as the absent cause in the centre. It really feels like the themes of the series are being expressed in a hyper-focused, deliberately symbolic way.
There’s so much to talk about there that I think I’ll have to write an essay on it when I’m not on my phone, but I just wanted to add some comments on the Origin and intersection thing.
What does it actually mean for Aionios to be a world of stopped time? Obviously, stopping time isn’t possible. You can only do it with magic. I was wondering if it was some kind of relativistic thing, like they were in a simulation inside Origin, but I don’t think that’s right either.
I think part of the confusion is in how exactly two universes merge. They represent it visually as two planets crashing into each-other but obviously that’s not the extent of it—the merge is clearly not occurring in the third dimension. Since the two halves of Origin need to meet, my assumption is that Origin is positioned at the point of contact between universes, the first location the extradimensional intersection appears in 3D space. Makes sense it would initiate on both Earths, since that’s where they split in the first place.
The ‘cancelling-out’ of the universes seems to be intended as an antimatter-matter thing. The annihilation effect occurs in real life after all. I haven’t read up on the physics for a while, but iirc there’s a principle of reversibility that means that annihilation can be reversed. In annihilation, a particle and an antiparticle collide and produce two photons—two photons can correspondingly collide to produce a particle and its antiparticle. In light of that, I’ve been assuming that the origin metal is some kind of substance that has neutral charge and therefore isn’t affected by annihilation. Photons are an example of those neutral particles, which is why Nia says they communicated through “light.”
So I figure the way Origin is meant to function is first to store the human memories in neutral “words of light”. When the universes collide, all matter except Origin is converted into light due to conservation of energy. What Origin needs to do is to create an impulse that applies the principal of reversibility—if the direction of the photons gets flipped, they should just all bounce back into each other and recreate the universe as it was. Maybe the consciousness is a separate thing and that’s what the core crystals in Origin are for, or maybe the process needs a bit more guidance. Still, I don’t think it’s a conduit-level device. It doesn’t need unlimited energy or anything—it just exploits the conservation of energy and principle of reversibility.
Aionios comes from the collision of the universes. The hole in the centre seems to be caused by a huge annihilation event, perhaps the first one. The landmasses overlap and have been annihilated in places. Since time can’t be stopped, it’s just been slowed down. This also explains why annihilation events continue occurring, and the black fog (which interferes with communication much like atmospheric disturbances that would occur with antimatter reactions). One of my thoughts was, maybe Origin is like a neutron star or black hole, and the intense gravity has relativistically slowed down time from the human perspective? Now I think instead that perhaps the citizens of Aionios are made of light. It’s a bit of an unhinged sci-fi concept, but it kinda works. Aionios people evaporate into light upon death, and it lines up with the collective-unconscious stuff with the Iris and Blades, as well as how interlinking seems to work. This also explains how they are created directly from Origin—and also why emotions manifest into motes during off-seeing. It’s a halfway point between for the simulation theory: the people are simulated, but Aionios itself isn’t.
Time doesn’t pass from the perspective of things made of light. Therefore, Aionios can seem to be nearly frozen while in fact still being within a single second, and thousands of years can pass from the perspective of the inhabitants.
Mixing Lacan with the physics stuff for a second (which I realise is certainly stretching the interpretation): desire travels around the doughnut-shaped torus endlessly. I think this is the same for Z’s world—a cycle that continues around the torus at light speed would make it seem like no time is passing at all. If there is a way to stop that loop, it’s in the empty centre of the circle, which is what is ultimately responsible for the desire that never gets fulfilled. If the journey at light speed around the loop stops, relativity instantly stops applying and the annihilation is complete, which presumably allows Origin to activate.
I’d love to hear what anyone has to say about this kind of interpretation, which is a bit of a stretch. By coincidence my academic interests are niche theological shit, psychoanalysis, critical theory and a little bit of philosophy, and I’ve always enjoyed sci-fi and high school level physics so Xeno games and XC3 in particular feel like they’re made for me.
PS. On the ‘made of light’ thing, I just recalled the way the main character art is highlighted with the first six colours of the rainbow—violet, the seventh and final colour, is probably Origin right?
Oh wow, thank you so much for sharing this. I don't have the knowledge to weigh in, but I found this fascinating to read. I just wish developers would have included some additional explanations in the game if these or similar concepts did inspire the story.
