• Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.
  • Do you have audio editing experience and want to help out with the Famiboards Discussion Club Podcast? If so, we're looking for help and would love to have you on the team! Just let us know in the Podcast Thread if you are interested!

StarTopic Xeno Series Community |ST|

So I was going through Xenogears again because clearly I have nothing better to do and it struck me how the conversation that the party has with the Elements in their confrontation in disc 2 wouldn't feel out of place in Xenoblade 3.

It's not even hard to imagine the conversations the party in XB3 have with C and Z essentially being an expanded version of it.

It's more than magic meme rectangles and ether connecting these games. As you go through them you can feel similar recurring themes and core ideas pulsating in them.
 
Renmazuo said:
So I was going through Xenogears again because clearly I have nothing better to do and it struck me how the conversation that the party has with the Elements in their confrontation in disc 2 wouldn't feel out of place in Xenoblade 3.

It's not even hard to imagine the conversations the party in XB3 have with C and Z essentially being an expanded version of it.

It's more than magic meme rectangles and ether connecting these games. As you go through them you can feel similar recurring themes and core ideas pulsating in them.
Click to expand...
Even when Xenoblade 1 was supposed to be a standalone new project it had a ton of common points with Takahashi's original dream story. The idea of destiny and the divine, godly machines, science undergirding the fantastic elements, the main couple being reincarnations of people who are kinda still alive, and the late twists about what's really going on with the world all call back to Xenogears. Even a bunch of NPC archetypes come back, like Xord actually referencing Hammer, Kallian being Karellan, and Dunban being Citan.

Shoulder said:
Hey now. There are DOZENS of us!
Click to expand...
If Switch 2 doesn't announce a X port within the first two Directs I'm giving up and restarting my save.
 
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has sort of an affinity system where certain dialogue options affect your party's relationship with Cloud. It only affects certain story scenes and doesn't affect actual gameplay mechanics. But it made me think of Xenoblade 1's affinity system which is one of my favorites in any RPG. No, it doesn't have any barring on the story but it's tied to the skill tree system. Not only does each character have their own skills trees but they can access skills from other party members. But the only way to obtain those is to increase the affinity between characters. It incentivizes you to play with different party combinations and seek out the heart to hearts. You also need Affinity Coins which you can get from defeating unique monsters. The systems create a nice feedback loop where doing one thing will benefit you in another. And all of it is mostly optional. The additional skills won't dramatically change gameplay but they give slight bonuses for those willing to spend the time to get them but they are not absolutely necessary.

They changed the affinity system in the other games and I get, it would be pretty crazy to have shared skill trees to dozens of blades or classes so they focus the affinity systems on parts of the games but I still think Xeno 1 had the best one.
 
chocolate_supra said:
holy hell how did I never pick up on these? 😶
Click to expand...
Because the original Xenoblade had the one overt reference (Vangarre) and doesn't play the rest straight. Like, the Nopon are an entire species of Chu-Chus, but you don't think about that because Riki's busy being a deadbeat dad and the rest are running the Bionis's organized crime scene or making booze with their holy water. Meanwhile the High Entia are Solaris but as a nation and individually learn from their mistakes and try to correct them before everything goes to hell and of course they're actually spare parts for their god.

What's so interesting about it is that everything we know about Xenoblade 1's development says that it wasn't meant to be the start of a new saga, much less another shot at concepts from Xenogears Perfect Works. Takahashi and Monolithsoft just did it because he likes thinking about these concepts and reused them for his new game, then made the connections ever more explicit with each new Xenoblade.
 
Elementary said:
Because the original Xenoblade had the one overt reference (Vangarre) and doesn't play the rest straight. Like, the Nopon are an entire species of Chu-Chus, but you don't think about that because Riki's busy being a deadbeat dad and the rest are running the Bionis's organized crime scene or making booze with their holy water. Meanwhile the High Entia are Solaris but as a nation and individually learn from their mistakes and try to correct them before everything goes to hell and of course they're actually spare parts for their god.

What's so interesting about it is that everything we know about Xenoblade 1's development says that it wasn't meant to be the start of a new saga, much less another shot at concepts from Xenogears Perfect Works. Takahashi and Monolithsoft just did it because he likes thinking about these concepts and reused them for his new game, then made the connections ever more explicit with each new Xenoblade.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I loved it. It's a bit grindy, and between skills, arts, crafting and allocating gems and equipment, you can easily spend hours optimizing your party each time, but I love myself a highly customizable RPG. One complaint I have is that it isn't so easy to see the effects of the customization since they don't make that big of a difference and battles are too chaotic, but it was still a hell of a lot of fun to mess with it.

The skill trees are also very cleverly designed. For example, Fiora has skills that turn all her double attacks into critical hits and then one that increases the damage of critical hits, but she does not have access to Duban's and Reyn's skills that increase the frequency of double attacks. However, Shulk has access to both hers and their skills, so Fiora's tree is designed with a possible combo for Shulk in mind as well. Other example is that Riki has access to both Reyn's HP boost skills, but other party members have only one. This kind of design shows that these devs just get it.
 
HockeyBird said:
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth has sort of an affinity system where certain dialogue options affect your party's relationship with Cloud. It only affects certain story scenes and doesn't affect actual gameplay mechanics. But it made me think of Xenoblade 1's affinity system which is one of my favorites in any RPG. No, it doesn't have any barring on the story but it's tied to the skill tree system. Not only does each character have their own skills trees but they can access skills from other party members. But the only way to obtain those is to increase the affinity between characters. It incentivizes you to play with different party combinations and seek out the heart to hearts. You also need Affinity Coins which you can get from defeating unique monsters. The systems create a nice feedback loop where doing one thing will benefit you in another. And all of it is mostly optional. The additional skills won't dramatically change gameplay but they give slight bonuses for those willing to spend the time to get them but they are not absolutely necessary.

They changed the affinity system in the other games and I get, it would be pretty crazy to have shared skill trees to dozens of blades or classes so they focus the affinity systems on parts of the games but I still think Xeno 1 had the best one.
Click to expand...
Speaking of feedback loops, I hope they keep a similar system to what we got in Future Redeemed. FIrst time I've been encouraged to actually fight every new enemy because I was rewarded for it. Also meant you were more motiavted to seek out hidden spots on the map because even if the contents of a chest are useless by that point, at least the act of opening the chest benefits you.

Actually, the bigger thing they need to keep is the bestiary with info on what enemies drop. Why has it taken the series so long to add one?
 
0
Leo said:
The skill trees are also very cleverly designed. For example, Fiora has skills that turn all her double attacks into critical hits and then one that increases the damage of critical hits, but she does not have access to Duban's and Reyn's skills that increase the frequency of double attacks. However, Shulk has access to both hers and their skills, so Fiora's tree is designed with a possible combo for Shulk in mind as well. Other example is that Riki has access to both Reyn's HP boost skills, but other party members have only one. This kind of design shows that these devs just get it.
Click to expand...
There are a bunch of reasons I think Xenoblade 1 is the best Xenoblade, and the skill system is one of them. Not only are characters completely unique to actually play, but their skills and arts reflect who they are. Like, the skills are named for their basic personality traits, and then for their fourth skill tree you see their defining negative trait come out. Melia's shyness, Dunban's hard-headedness, Reyn's impulsiveness, etc. Then at the end of the game you get their final skill tree which represents their ultimate virtue. It's such a great detail. Their combat arts are fun too; Shulk's a weedy little scientist so his skills are all about staying out of the enemy's line of sight and getting sneaky hits in, until he accesses the Monado and drops the mother of all big hits. Then there's stuff like how Reyn picks up some status debuffing arts around level 30, which is shortly after Dunban joins the main party, so it seems like he's learning from Dunban.

I really wish that the later Xenoblade games had more like this. Both 2 and 3's main games I feel go a bit too far on the customizability, to the detriment of the actual experience. It doesn't feel as special to focus on playing Morag or Zeke vs Rex with his gamebreaker blades. (Tora, amusingly, doesn't have that problem.) It's probably part of the reason I like playing the expansions a bit more than the base games.
 
Elementary said:
At the time, Shulk is explicitly a god, he simply uses his godhead to create a world where he won't be.

The Bionis actually collapses because that universe ran out of ether, Zanza and Meyneth had nothing to do with it. Otherwise Mechonis would have collapsed without Zanza killing it.

I'd like to see that bit of NPC dialogue, I don't remember that one. Either way, salt doesn't work like that, it equalizes in a system.
Click to expand...
Not really, all evidence implies things stayed the way they were, just without Zanza and Meyneths influence. But, I suppose that's something we'll have to leave as a disagreement.

Here is the NPC dialogue -

u1lNixO.jpg

eOx4ppK.jpg
 
If anyone likes getting lost in video game timelines like I do, I've updated the Xenoblade timeline I tinker around with in MS Paint while bored at work with the info we now have from Future Redeemed. (I've posted an earlier version of this a few times here.)

GI2HFSz.png

The dream for me would be some sort of official timeline for Xenoblade in the style of the Xenogears "Perfect Works" timeline:

0464d3c70f4e87853fc9d4cf23f7e1f8.jpg

I'm sure an official Xenoblade timeline from Monolith's art direction would be so cool. I don't know if it will ever happen though. I think with Xenoblade the devs are fine with the fans themselves gathering the intentionally placed connections. So, in many ways, it's up to the fans.
 
I’ve been playing through the Xenoblade series to fill out my backlog. I beat Xenoblade 2 back in January, and I just beat Torna yesterday. I will never mentally recover from this, even though I pretty much knew how it would end 🥲
 
Does anyone know what places I should keep an eye on to see information and translations from the artbook when it releases next week?
 
Semajer said:
Does anyone know what places I should keep an eye on to see information and translations from the artbook when it releases next week?
Click to expand...
People will be translating likely on Twitter/Discord, Luxin will probably do a video on the translations/information in the artbook as well.
 
So pages of the artbook have started to leak from someone who got an early copy and it confirms one of the most discussed theories.

N's black Sword of the End is indeed Logos

8YyReze.jpeg


I am very, very glad this got confirmed because it was my read on it as well but the lack of decisive confirmation and a couple of European translations (although it's not even the first time that certain translations make faulty assumptions in Xenoblade) put it in doubt.
 
Renmazuo said:
So pages of the artbook have started to leak from someone who got an early copy and it confirms one of the most discussed theories.

N's black Sword of the End is indeed Logos

8YyReze.jpeg


I am very, very glad this got confirmed because it was my read on it as well but the lack of final confirmation and a couple of European translations (although it's not even the first time that certain translations make faulty assumptions) put it in doubt.
Click to expand...
Takahashi: N's sword is Malos
Me: ahhh yesyes makes sense

Takahashi: and Matthew's fists are Pneuma
Me: oooh there's two of them, of course yesyes

Takahashi: and Lucky Seven is Fiora
Me: . . . what
 
Renmazuo said:
So pages of the artbook have started to leak from someone who got an early copy and it confirms one of the most discussed theories.

N's black Sword of the End is indeed Logos

8YyReze.jpeg


I am very, very glad this got confirmed because it was my read on it as well but the lack of decisive confirmation and a couple of European translations (although it's not even the first time that certain translations make faulty assumptions in Xenoblade) put it in doubt.
Click to expand...
“As for why Malos is here, I’m sorry, but I can’t answer that yet.” 👀
 
chocolate_supra said:
Takahashi: N's sword is Malos
Me: ahhh yesyes makes sense

Takahashi: and Matthew's fists are Pneuma
Me: oooh there's two of them, of course yesyes

Takahashi: and Lucky Seven is Fiora
Me: . . . what
Click to expand...
What makes it funnier is that Noah's Origin Blade destroyed N's sword.

Fiora just fucking killed Malos for good. I love this series.
 
Here's a link to some leaked pages:

微博

随时随地发现新鲜事！微博带你欣赏世界上每一个精彩瞬间，了解每一个幕后故事。分享你想表达的，让全世界都能听到你的心声！
m.weibo.cn m.weibo.cn
 
That landsknecht Noah design intrigues me, would he still get a katana as a weapon?
 
0
Okay. I'm kinda laughing hysterically over the sword reveals, but that last thing is stupid. I like and am amused deeply by it, but it's real dumb.

EDIT: Wait doesn't Noah pitch Lucky 7 into the abyss at the end of the game? Wow screw him then.
 
Last edited:
Zeal543 said:
That mio is top tier but I prefer the final designs for everyone else except maybe sena I can't see her that well
Click to expand...
That is a fantastic outfit Mio's got but I'd also add that Eunie's coat in that concept is boss as fuck
 
I have to say though, the more tidbits I read the more I feel like the people who were hoping for a clean story/setting break for next game are kinda screwed, because it does seem like they are going to continue to explore stuff they have already set up, lots of "I can't answer that yet" from Takahashi.

This is what I already expected especially after Future Redeemed but I know there were a lot of people hoping for it.
 
Renmazuo said:
I have to say though, the more tidbits I read the more I feel like the people who were hoping for a clean story/setting break for next game are kinda screwed, because it does seem like they are going to continue to explore stuff they have already set up, lots of "I can't answer that yet" from Takahashi.

This is what I already expected especially after Future Redeemed but I know there were a lot of people hoping for it.
Click to expand...
Idk how people could have expected a clean break, especially after Future Redeemed, as you said.
The "Klaus Saga" is over, but we still have the new(old?) Earth and its inhabitants.
 
Renmazuo said:
I have to say though, the more tidbits I read the more I feel like the people who were hoping for a clean story/setting break for next game are kinda screwed, because it does seem like they are going to continue to explore stuff they have already set up, lots of "I can't answer that yet" from Takahashi.

This is what I already expected especially after Future Redeemed but I know there were a lot of people hoping for it.
Click to expand...
I still struggle to see how the next game deals with some of this stuff, I can maybe see a Future Connected-esque story for XC2 Definitive on the next console that deals with Origin/Malos but even then idk if they'd do that.

I don't think the next game will be on the new Earth at the end as it'd still be dealing with the characters of 1 and 2 and I can't see them doing that again.
 
Neverx said:
I still struggle to see how the next game deals with some of this stuff, I can maybe see a Future Connected-esque story for XC2 Definitive on the next console that deals with Origin/Malos but even then idk if they'd do that.

I don't think the next game will be on the new Earth at the end as it'd still be dealing with the characters of 1 and 2 and I can't see them doing that again.
Click to expand...
It can absolutely do what 3 did and keep some of the old characters as small roles no matter how major.

Or just have the game set in the far future and only have Melia and Nia as cameos again.

Or just set it on the other side of the world, away from the main cast.
 
Catching up on the artbook stuff, very intrigued that Takahashi seems to be hinting at possibly more Malos stuff to dive into in the future

I'm guessing there hasn't been anything dropped specifically about ye olde lore radio yet
 
0
Semi Lazy Gamer said:
It can absolutely do what 3 did and keep some of the old characters as small roles no matter how major.

Or just have the game set in the far future and only have Melia and Nia as cameos again.

Or just set it on the other side of the world, away from the main cast.
Click to expand...
I could see Malos/Pyra Mythra acting like the original vision of KOS-MOS and chaos with the Saga series. I have a hard time seeing Xenoblade 4 being on the merged world right after 3 though.
 
Neverx said:
I still struggle to see how the next game deals with some of this stuff, I can maybe see a Future Connected-esque story for XC2 Definitive on the next console that deals with Origin/Malos but even then idk if they'd do that.

I don't think the next game will be on the new Earth at the end as it'd still be dealing with the characters of 1 and 2 and I can't see them doing that again.
Click to expand...
A part of me hopes for a canon Xeno Warriors game that covers the events surrounding the activation of Origin. It would answer most pending questions and allow for a 'clean slate' (sort of) for the next main game.

But Takahashi has probably cooked something else entirely, and I will eat it and enjoy it.
 
Arynio said:
A part of me hopes for a canon Xeno Warriors game that covers the events surrounding the activation of Origin. It would answer most pending questions and allow for a 'clean slate' (sort of) for the next main game.

But Takahashi has probably cooked something else entirely, and I will eat it and enjoy it.
Click to expand...
I think either way the next console jump and this being the end of the Trilogy will lead to XC4 being fairly standalone with XC5 or the DLC tying things together.
 
Neverx said:
I could see Malos/Pyra Mythra acting like the original vision of KOS-MOS and chaos with the Saga series. I have a hard time seeing Xenoblade 4 being on the merged world right after 3 though.
Click to expand...
I could see it being about 30 to 40 years afterwards at minimum. Let some of the normal years characters die out and let 3's cast age.
 
Do people still cope with the Malos/Logos stuff?.
It's all lay down on the games do people didn't play them or what.
All of the information needed and foreshadowing it's on 2 and clear as a (core :p) crystal there.
Hell Malos explained most of it so haha funny irony.
So that's why i rolled my eyes every time someone call bullshit on the Sword of the end is Malos/Logos theory stuff
 
0
It would be nice a Xenoblade X2 that would be the continuation of Xenoblade X and that would connect with the end of 3. The ending of Xenoblade X2 would be sending someone (the protagonist of Xenoblade X2) in a capsule to the new Earth to ask for help. The one in the capsule would warn them of the danger and that the "aliens" would also come to their world sooner or later.
 
0
Regarding the admin of Origin: Regarding the world of Aionios, or rather the way Origin works, there is a proper [reason] for it. “In actuality, there’s this and that reason, and that’s why this world is constructed as such.” That kind of thing. Now that, I can’t say it yet. Yeah… Yeah, now is not the timing for that. So for now, it’s fine to think of it as basically a virtual world. That wouldn’t be wrong. To put it simply, the administrator of that [world] could do anything. And in the main story of Xenoblade 3, that was Z. That’s the story, yes.
Click to expand...
So there are further answers regarding how Origin works and why…but Takahashi says that he can’t reveal those details yet. This is extremely interesting, since it pretty much confirms that Origin is going to be very relevant to another game in the future… And, of course, my mind immediately jumps to Mira, which has a lot of similarities with Origin/Aionios, and is also something we don’t have many answers for yet… Hmmm…
 
Xenoblade 3, it’s what has continued in the Xenoblade series, from ‘1’ to ‘2’, and then to ‘3’. The story of Xenoblade (1-2-3) is, at the end of the day, really a story about a man named Klaus, who became the catalyst [for the story]. That was one story that had always been there, and so in that sense, the end of that can be said to be a “culmination.” However, er… how do I say this? During the creation [of games], I’m personally already thinking about what comes next, so it’s more of a passing point, not a culmination. When you phrase it as a “culmination,” it gives an impression of giving it your all, etc., but in that sense, it’s slightly different. Because I’ve personally already moved on to the next step. Looking at it from a different vantage point, considering the know-how that Monolith Soft has gained, the growth of each individual person, and including how it’s (Note: the games) being created, and how we worked hard on it, in that sense I suppose it is a “culmination."

The original idea was for there to be an entire town on each of the Ferronis’, but this was changed out of consideration for time, budget, and manpower.
 
pachamelon said:
The original idea was for there to be an entire town on each of the Ferronis’, but this was changed out of consideration for time, budget, and manpower.
Click to expand...
Yeah this is kinda the impression I got when reading about the game pre-release. Doesn't surprise me that it was their initial idea. Like the Ferronis' coulda almost been like XB2's titans, except walking around Aionios instead of just floating in the clouds. Woulda been rad!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


Back
Top Bottom