Procheno
I exist sometimes
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You mean Blademarch
-
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!
Pre-Release Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Pre-release Discussion Thread (Spoilers from leaks/early copies NOT allowed)
- Thread starter Momo
- Start date
- Status
EtherPenguin
Koopa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Sounds like Mio's got an AOE break art
Referring to her talent art that's AOE Pierce + Blowdown
Bit of a lackluster description "He does Taion things but in a bigger form"
The weapons that people with clocks can summon out of thin-air are called Blades. They're sort of like thoughtforms that are unique to people. Then ouroboros can copy others' Blades by looking into their thoughts and memories
D
Deleted member 2551
Guest
I think I saw a tweet this morning in japanese saying the embargo for the previews is on July 13.
Multiverse
Moblin
I’m pretty sure their weapons are called BLADES. They all can summon them at will.
D
Deleted member 2551
Guest
The Rent a Girlfriend cuck meme keeps on delivering
Multiverse
Moblin
The Direct showed a bit but there are still tons of stuff we don’t know.
Like this clock mechanic. Each colonies has a clock attached to them.
Like this clock mechanic. Each colonies has a clock attached to them.
Last edited:
BradenAndEggs
Like Like
The art for the expansion pass has Noah's sword alongside the Aegis and Monado so maybe it gets a power-up (like Xenoblade swords always do), but they are set enough with Noah's sword design to use it in marketing.
No, I actually agree with you here. For starters his guns have orange ether lines that don't match with either nation. The latest character chart doesn't list him with either nation while it lists every other formally intoduced hero. His clothes while black look tattered. A deserter maybe?
The observation of the covered eye is interesting. If the purpose is covering the clock eye then that would suggest Gray is related to Keves somehow and Vandham to Agnus, which makes some sense.
By the way, know who is the only other character to have orange ether lines?
Last edited:
Vantell
Does several things in the gaming industry
Ah yes, then I understand it may be a tad hard. Other option is playing on casual/easy, but yeah. I was also thinking of replaying some of them. But I finished DE like a year ago or something. XC2 a long time ago.... maybe I try to go back to that in New Game+That would be great if I could swing it! I’m a victim of circumstance lol. I originally played XC1 on Wii, which I no longer own. Then I bought the DE when it came out and now have a save around Sword Valley…but it’s been so long I should probably start over if I really want to make sense of things.
I played XC2 on a Switch Lite I no longer own, and I didn’t pay for NSO at the time so there’s no cloud save!
I also never played Future Connected…or Torna…maybe I should find the best seven-hour recap of the series I can find and just go that route
I don't think Noah's sword is anything special. unless he himself is supposed to be a reincarnation of the Trinity or some shit
The complexity and depth of this battle system is insane. In XB2 you had access to 9 arts and 3 specials. Each character in XB3 has 6 arts, a talent art, and an Ouroboros form that has 3 arts and a talent art. You can freely swap between all 6 characters during a battle, meaning you have access to 66 arts. When you add in fusion arts, passive skills, AOE effects, buffs/debuff, diverging driver combos paths, and the faster movement/dashing/dodging, the builds and options seem limitless.
I'm really curious how Monolith has balanced the game around this complexity. You could break the previous games pretty badly and they were nowhere near this complex.
I'm really curious how Monolith has balanced the game around this complexity. You could break the previous games pretty badly and they were nowhere near this complex.
Crusters
Koopa
- Pronouns
- He/him
The other games were balanced quite well towards the average/easy side, for normal gameplay, and even advanced challenging gameplay, until broken.
I don't see this game being less breakable than any of the others the others. It will be well balanced for normal play, probably towards the average/easy side, and then minmaxers will become as gods.
dad klaus fucked up the real world, one computer cpu made xc1, the other two cpus had a sibling spat. dad klaus fused the worlds together in the end
Zedlars
Tektite
They are in a computer simulation then? Whaaaaaaaa???
Apopheniac
Monolith Soft action game truther
- Pronouns
- he/him/his
On the one hand, the remodel seems a little overdone. On the other hand, the original Alcamoth map was ass, so there's nowhere to go but up for this version.I think that might be Alcamoth that went through a bit of remodeling done by the Queen.
In these shots we see the same blue hologram things that are in Alcamoth in XC1.
And then in XC3.
This the room where the children are grown in pods.
And the main party seems to end up attacking there at some point. Maybe fairly early on? Maybe this is the big halfway point of the game?
The enemies fought near where it's parked are Lv. 37, so the party might visit Alcamoth right before Swordmarch (similar to XC1). Though there seem to be multiple fights there, so there's probably going to be at least one revisit.
Thanks for putting this together! I was not looking forward to doing this myself.
XC1 could have been interpreted that way after 2's revelation. but with the merger of 1 and 2's worlds, it is more likely some alternate dimension shit. Klaus fucked a hole into reality and the repaired it at the end of XC2. but that repair job fucked another hole into the fabric and caused the fog beasts. how that ties into XC3 is unknown
EtherPenguin
Koopa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yea I'm really curious how these colony clocks are going to work mechanically. What's really weird is the Japanese website show a screenshot where the colony's clock is replaced with an affinity meter that looks like 1's town affinity or 2's dev levels:The Direct showed a bit but there are still tons of stuff we don’t know.
Like this clock mechanic. Each colonies has a clock attached to them.
The UK website mentions something about liberating colonies so maybe that changes the clock to the affinity meter.
There really is so much we still don't know. We haven't seen too much of passive skills and how many you can equip, how many accessory slots, where gems are slotted on to, any form of weapon upgrading like 2's core chips, the whole TP system with the chain attacks, the flute symbol on the map implying some game mechanic for offseers, or how and where to get nopon coins and ether cylinders. We haven't even seen heart-to-hearts yet. This is probably too optimistic but I'm still holding out hope for some treehouses after next week's rumored general direct.
- Pronouns
- he/him
The clock mechanic kinda reminds me of that thing you see in Ubisoft-y open worlds (AC Odyssey comes to mind) where different factions vie for control over an area and you can help one or the other.
Then again if the clock runs out apparently everyone in the colony just dies so you're probably trying to keep it balanced instead.
Then again if the clock runs out apparently everyone in the colony just dies so you're probably trying to keep it balanced instead.
Crusters
Koopa
- Pronouns
- He/him
Haha funsies.
Irrc, the AI's did not exist upon Klaus's original whoopsie. They were created, and then tested, for thousands of years to be an abstract layer between user and hardware, to ensure bad commands or a missing semi colon wouldn't accidentally dismantle a country or something into raw atoms again.
Future connected took place well after Klaus as a physical being would have ceased to exist and the reality machine was without enough power for it's high level functions that relied on it, like world merging.... And it appeared the world's were not merged.
On top of that, trans dimensional capabilities did not appear to be a function or design feature of the reality machine Klaus built, but an unknown curious function of what they assumed to just be a power source, the conduit.... Which was poked and prodded and experimented on to learn more about said curiosity, although those things are only referenced in passing, from Alvis once, and Klaus once, in a manner that came from someone who knew what they were talking about, talking to someone they knew had no way of understanding. (Shulk and Rex, being the respective 'dum dums' )
As far as I can tell, upon original activation, the conduit created the alternate dimension, and a large chunk of freshly atomized raw resources from earth, and nanomachines/ether was sucked into it, the conduits trans dimensional capabilities, maintained the link from the xb1 dimension, to the earth/alrest dimension, enabling access to the reality machine from the xb1 dimension.
An unknown amount of time later, half, or a portion of Klaus's psyche, and his assistants psyche, were able to send viable commands to the reality machine, to reconstitute themselves physically. By this time, the safeguard AI's for the Trinity processor cores were online, as Zanza was familiar with what Alvis was. So it should have been at least a thousand years or however long it took to test the AI's and bring them online. However, with the nature of the conduit.... Time as we perceive it may not mean much. It likely experiences time.... Synchronously rather than sequentially and one way, like we do.
There were experiments done on the conduits little understood trans dimensional nature. This is the only hard info we have on this from an in game source (that I'm aware of).
Klaus as the architect is aware of Zanza and Shulk and co. He is receiving the data from the xb1 dimension. As such he undoubtedly has been aware of the entirety of the history of the xb1 universe. He likely had much more data on it than even Zanza. He may have even been able to share or deny information gathered by the Trinity processor with Zanza. I suspect he denied information about Alrest, and likely even himself with Zanza. Alvis I suspect had the same exact information, he is the ai of one of the cpu cores that processes it all. Alvis, although he is more.... Computery than the other cores AI's, we know is capable of withholding information, and even lying about it, in a fashion. He lied to Shulk and co a lot, and withheld information from Zanza.
My take is the creation of the Bionis and the Mechonis spurred the trans dimensional expiriments, one of which, resulted in Alvis being lost to, or 'lost' to, the xb1 dimension, where he provided I/O for the freshly minted 'gods' to the source of their 'godliness', in the form of monados.
This effectively makes the wielder of the monado, a, well, Driver between the reality machine/Alvis, and the output hardware (nanomachines/ether) that would be working on the physical reality of that universe.
It seems unlikely Klaus would have been able to merge the world's, because of the existence of future connected not being a merged world.
Perhaps it was the power of the conduit that maintained seperation of the dimensions, and without it, the xb1 worlds stolen earth dimension matter/energy ended up snapping back to whence it came in violent fashion as the pocket dimension collapsed?
On top of that. What is Alvis's nature now? While he definitely manipulated users to meet his ends, he always seemed to have to.... Do so within some manner of confines. He never really did anything concerning his function with the reality machine without a direct command or under order from a user, even though he often prompted the user, and was.... Liberal with his interpretation of the user commands.
But the last command made by a user was to create a world with no need for gods. Which he did, in his own fashion of course. But with the gods clearly being the users.... Is Alvis a completely free agent now?
I've talked about this here before but the original "passage of fate" line was in the original Japanese 因果の流れ ("inga no nagare", lit. "flow of causality/fate")
You might have noticed that our villains talk about a mysterious 'flow' a lot, and indeed in the original Japanese they use the same word: 流れ ('nagare', flow). Considering D's line in the second trailer they are probably talking about the same thing.
I suspect the original translation of 因果の流れ as "passage of fate" has caused now a bit of a headache for the localizers this time. 'Flow' and 'passage' obviously mean different things so you can't always replace one for the other. For example in this mysterious line from the beginning of the trailer you can't just replace flow with passage because the sentence would make no sense otherwise:
This means a significant allusion to Xenoblade 1 is lost in translation whener the flow is mentioned, and they could only keep it in very specific instances (like D's line in the second trailer).
What I'm trying to say is, keep in mind that whenever the villains talk about this flow, they are probably referring to the "passage of fate" concept from Xenoblade 1.
You might have noticed that our villains talk about a mysterious 'flow' a lot, and indeed in the original Japanese they use the same word: 流れ ('nagare', flow). Considering D's line in the second trailer they are probably talking about the same thing.
I suspect the original translation of 因果の流れ as "passage of fate" has caused now a bit of a headache for the localizers this time. 'Flow' and 'passage' obviously mean different things so you can't always replace one for the other. For example in this mysterious line from the beginning of the trailer you can't just replace flow with passage because the sentence would make no sense otherwise:
This means a significant allusion to Xenoblade 1 is lost in translation whener the flow is mentioned, and they could only keep it in very specific instances (like D's line in the second trailer).
What I'm trying to say is, keep in mind that whenever the villains talk about this flow, they are probably referring to the "passage of fate" concept from Xenoblade 1.
- Pronouns
- he/him
It's a wild ride, this flow of translation
Crusters
Koopa
- Pronouns
- He/him
This is concerning.
Causality, is a really really really big deal in xb1. (So much so that the characters talk about it, about their right to determine their own causality practically NON STOP.)
Specifically the battle between the Monadology's pre determinism, and self determinism of real living beings like humans (which Zanza says is the right of God's and gods alone).
This is made literal in xb1, where a man literally uses technology that can manipulate matter and energy on the atomic level, to turn reality into a programmable cutscene, where he used technology, to achieve predeterminism, and programmed thousands of years of scripts living beings were forced to follow against their will and beyond their senses. This predeterminism was not divine, but technologically based, and as such suffered from technological based errors, which was a super important plot point.
He called this program he scripted the 'Pre established Harmony of Events.' a direct 100% name drop to the Monadology, and it's predeterminism concept, The pre established harmony.
Mind–body problem - Wikipedia
In passing, he shortened it to things like the passage of fate.
This would be a very very very very bad thing to muck up and lose in translation.
Even with it kept in tact in translation with xb1, it is such a nuanced subject and so subtly woven throughout xb1, that many many people mistook the much louder and bombastic story the in game character Zanza actually wrote himself as the story of Xenoblade.
Blurring that distinction even a little.......
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- He/Him
My guess is that Alvis is the mastermind behind the scenes in XC3. I don't have any in-depth knowledge on the Xeno-series outside of the main two Xenoblade titles, but here is my thoughts. After Klaus' experiment he became inextricably linked to the Conduit, but since half of him was sent to an alternate universe the Conduit created a space-time transition event to transport Ontos where the other half of Klaus was to act as a liaison. However after so many millennia in the XC1 universe Ontos/Alvis desired to return to his primary function in the original universe which couldn't happen unless Zanza agreed to it which he wouldn't since it would require merging with Klaus and losing his sense of self.
So Alvis began a sequence of events that would result in him transferring "Driver"-ship of him from Zanza to Shulk. After that he gave Shulk the choices of either taking Zanza's place as a new god which would keep him trapped in the XC1 universe, letting the XC1 universe fade away with the death of Zanza, or creating a new, unknown future by allowing the XC1 universe to merge with the original and letting the chips fall where they may which was the choice Shulk decided on.
Once that was done Alvis returned to the original universe only to find his fellow cores either destroyed (Logos) or missing (Pneuma) and his connection to the Conduit severed. So once the two universes merged Alvis began the events of XC3 in order to bring the Conduit back and return to his original purpose.
So Alvis began a sequence of events that would result in him transferring "Driver"-ship of him from Zanza to Shulk. After that he gave Shulk the choices of either taking Zanza's place as a new god which would keep him trapped in the XC1 universe, letting the XC1 universe fade away with the death of Zanza, or creating a new, unknown future by allowing the XC1 universe to merge with the original and letting the chips fall where they may which was the choice Shulk decided on.
Once that was done Alvis returned to the original universe only to find his fellow cores either destroyed (Logos) or missing (Pneuma) and his connection to the Conduit severed. So once the two universes merged Alvis began the events of XC3 in order to bring the Conduit back and return to his original purpose.
Crusters
Koopa
- Pronouns
- He/him
I definitely feel like Alvis and the conduit have big part to play behind the scenes.
Alvis does describe his beef with Zanza, albeit in a roundabout way.
The xb1 universe was literally ending. Alvis always said the universe has little time left, this is why he wanted Shulk to create a new one. Because the old one literally could not function for much longer. Typically, this is called heat death, when there is no longer enough of a heat differential between matter and atoms for entropy to happen.
It's implied this is zanzas fault. He not a very good universe manager.
Taking into account what Zanza does, it would appear his attempts to use the machine to hoard the matter and energy of the universe to selfishly recycle it for his life force, accelerated the heat death of the universe.
Alvis took issue with this. And saw an opportunity to replace Zanza, with Shulk.
It was Alvis who caused the conduit to disappear. It was his interpretation of shulks command to create a world with no need for gods. No power source for the reality machine, no 'gods' can use it.
I don't think the conduit was destroyed, it was shown as, well, it's gone now, as opposed to being destroyed. I don't think the reality machine possesses the power to destroy the conduit, which powers it. My guess is he used it's trans dimensional powers to blip it into some other dimension, or maybe it just decided to do that itself, and he went with it. Causing the source of our problems.
And I definitely suspect him bringing it back, will be needed to solve them.
I haven't played Gears or Saga either, which I feel is a prerequisite for theorizing about this game, but my idea is that someone besides Klaus was planning some fucked up shit using the Conduit, but when Klaus beat them to the punch they were flung to another dimension. They somehow managed to return, only to find the Conduit gone and the world ruined. So they somehow collapsed the pocket dimension of XB1 and put the two worlds into conflict as a cover for using some Matrix-esque system to power their experiment using people/clones in the absence of the Conduit.
Crusters
Koopa
- Pronouns
- He/him
Plenty of aspects used in gears and saga have already been reused and repurposed for blade. But in different ways and under the filter of different themes. As such using a direct allusion between shared aspects/concepts is dicey. If you really want to go that route, you should go to the source material they are all drawn from for the clean original form of what inspired the concepts and events in xenogames.
There is a wealth of material to identify from, and theorize about, looking to the franchise responsible for monolithsofts namesake and logo, the space Odyssey franchise.
A Xenobeing party in the know..... Well yeah.... It's definitely a thing in there......
(Er, not pictured here, these are earth primates)
Last edited:
Apopheniac
Monolith Soft action game truther
- Pronouns
- he/him/his
What's interesting is that the censored character's class seems to be locked on the class change screen. If they're optional, the hero select clip should have been able to exclude them without having to censor them. It may be that at least some classes have to be unlocked by doing a quest, either story-related or an optional one tied to the hero.
ika
Moblin
On one cutscene they mention “blade” as the weapon/class they’re using…
Procheno
I exist sometimes
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah but it's clearly not a theme or core idea like any of the other games. It's just a thing that exists compared to XBC1 + 2 where you knew exactly how and why the game is called "Xenoblade". The Monado, the Aegis sword/blade concept that makes up the entirety of the world of XBC2, then here there's nothing communicated. I'm curious what it's going to be because we all know Takahashi is going to make the "Blade" (however its represented in this game) in Xenoblade 3 very critical.
Maybe we'll have to wait until the game comes out. Xenoblade has never ben this truly vague about what the central "Blade" element is. They barely acknowledge that "blade" concept as anything more important than anything else in the world. The marketing certainly doesn't convey the connection as the special "thing" that ties into the "Blade" name in "Xenoblade"
EtherPenguin
Koopa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
What I think is happening is that the class menu only shows heroes you've already got and the lock just means you haven't built up the affinity to use that class yet. So the clip of the class menu would be taken from a file with the character in between Fiona and Alexandria is in the party but Noah hasn't built affinity with them yet while the clip of the hero select menu was taken from a different file where they didn't have that character at all.
That would actually tie in really well with that mechanic where you see Keves and Agnus soldiers fighting out in the world with a crossed swords icon.
Just wanted to say you shouldn't feel that way. Takahashi likes recycling story ideas and it's useful for speculation but don't let anyone try and gatekeep you with this kind of stuff. Gears and saga are great and I'd recommend them but it's perfectly valid to view and discuss Xenoblade as its own thing.
I suspect "liberation" is just doing some quest that detaches people from their limited life span and allow the colonies to run without needing to recycle people juice
- Pronouns
- he/him
Well the Censored Hero is definitely not optional, they're the first Hero we get. The only possible thing going against that idea is the fact that Riku and Manana are listed below them when we know they're with the party from the start, but I believe that can be explained away by them not being Heroes from the start
Which brings me back to the Vandham theory, where I just noticed something else. Vandham is the only character, I believe, that we've seen with two names. What if "Guernica" isn't his first name at all but rather a title like "Peerless", "Ashenpelt", etc. ?
Crusters
Koopa
- Pronouns
- He/him
Guernica is a famous anti war painting by Picasso.
One of the prominent features, aside from the agony of death and the screaming...... is the Broken sword in the dead center bottom of the painting.....
Huh.
Last edited:
- Pronouns
- he/him
Yeah, I'm aware, which admittedly would make it a weird title, unless the word has been adapted in Aionios to mean "anti-war person" (since that's Vandham's shtick here it seems)Guernica is a famous anti war painting by Picasso.
One of the prominent features, aside from the agony of death and the screaming...... is the Broken sword in the dead center bottom of the painting.....
Huh.
Crusters
Koopa
- Pronouns
- He/him
One of his shticks. He also has an impeccably perfect pompadour, and pouty lips that effortlessly convey decades of pain, suffering, and grieving over loved ones lost with but a single glance.
- Pronouns
- he/him
Your answer will depend on which Xenoblade fan you ask, probably. I'd personally say XCDE is nowhere near as good as this looks, but I'd be in a pretty small minority there. Most fans of the series are of the opinion that it's a great game or a masterpiece, and even I'll concede that it's a very good game (just inferior in almost every way to its sequel)
EtherPenguin
Koopa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It depends on what particularly is catching your eye about 3, but I'd highly recommend it. It's my personal favorite game so I'm a little biased. The world isn't quite as expansive or open as what 3 is looking to be. The environments are broken up into smaller open zones a little more like Final Fantasy 12 (though not THAT restrictive). The story is well-loved and it has an endearing cast of characters.
Gameplay wise it's considered the "simplest" or at least easiest to understand. It doesn't have the class system or deep customization system we're seeing with 3 and you only have 3 characters in battle instead of 7. But I always thought it felt like a 3D version of Chrono Trigger. You have seven total characters each with their own weapon and role in combat, you pick three to take into combat, and there's a focus on lining up your attacks' AOEs. It also has more traditional towns.
Crusters
Koopa
- Pronouns
- He/him
I'm tending to agree with you, but not because of any shortcomings XBCDE has, even as a game from 2010 in the year 2022 (it was way ahead of it's time, it's visual functional design, still is compared to 90% of the gaming landscape, a notable chunk of that 10%, of course, being other monolithsoft game worlds that came out after it).
But because xb3, being quite frank, is looking fucking incredible.
ika
Moblin
We don’t know that for sure yet. It seems intertwined with the clocks in their eyes and by extension all clocks on Ferronises and the main premise of the Aionios conflict. Noah’s sword is very weird with the sword inside sword design, the transformation,… all the weapons on Keves evolved from Shulk technology (the blue discs on their belts)….
And don’t forget the expansion pack icon with the three swords…
It’s too soon to conclude this time the “Blade” concept is not important to the whole story.
Most obvious one I feel. They showed the art on Twitter and then those that follow were confirmed in the direct lol.So the NA site's Heroes section confirmed another one that I think a lot of people won't be surprised at, but I'll spoiler tag it all the same.
I feel they’ll be the one of the first honestly
HockeyBird
Villager
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Reach max level on all characters.
Master all classes on all characters.
Game's too easy. Not enough content.
Master all classes on all characters.
Game's too easy. Not enough content.
EtherPenguin
Koopa
- Pronouns
- He/Him
And people thought that character was going to die early. I'm wondering if that may actually be the first hero you get instead of Vandahm like a lot of people are thinking. It just doesn't make sense to hide Vandahm but I can understand blurring out that one.So the NA site's Heroes section confirmed another one that I think a lot of people won't be surprised at, but I'll spoiler tag it all the same.
I like how NoA keeps leaking stuff. First the with the close captioning and now this lol
Procheno
I exist sometimes
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'm not saying it's not important to the story. I know there's going to be some big crucial thing or idea tied to "blade". I'm just saying I'm surprised that the marketing for this game hasn't really mentioned it at all which is surprising compared to 1 and 2 since that was the central focus of those games + advertising.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well shit… there it is lolSo the NA site's Heroes section confirmed another one that I think a lot of people won't be surprised at, but I'll spoiler tag it all the same.
- Pronouns
- he/him
Idk, while I did consider the option, I feel like the scenes we've seen of the party fighting Ethel have been later in the game. Even presumably the first one we've seen takes place in the Eagus Wilderness, which should be after Millick Meadows, or at least after Valdi and Zeon join in Millick Meadows
Then we have the scenes in the more recent trailer of the party fighting Ethel's mech, which seems to be pretty far from any location we've seen in the game thus far (might be Maktha, not entirely sure). There's also a short scene of Ethel in the room with all the clone pods, which I can't imagine being a scene from the very beginning of the game (though perhaps that scene could also take place well after Ethel joins the party, since the party also makes their way to the pod room at some point).
In short, while it's technically feasible for Ethel to be the first Hero (maybe the scene in Eagus Wilderness happens right after the party meets up, since it is still a somewhat starter area, and the fight with her mech might be some inter-party conflict like the Ouroboros fight we've seen or someone else piloting Ethel's mech), I don't think it's terribly likely. She just doesn't feel like an early game recruit, at least not literally the very first. Vandham is honestly a fairly surprising first Hero though, imo, technically more so than Ethel. Ethel was suspected to be a Hero from basically the moment she was introduced, whereas Vandham was suspected to be a dead man walking. I'd say of the two Vandham would be by far the one I'd consider censoring (hell, they've leaked Ethel as a Hero twice now)
Then we have the scenes in the more recent trailer of the party fighting Ethel's mech, which seems to be pretty far from any location we've seen in the game thus far (might be Maktha, not entirely sure). There's also a short scene of Ethel in the room with all the clone pods, which I can't imagine being a scene from the very beginning of the game (though perhaps that scene could also take place well after Ethel joins the party, since the party also makes their way to the pod room at some point).
In short, while it's technically feasible for Ethel to be the first Hero (maybe the scene in Eagus Wilderness happens right after the party meets up, since it is still a somewhat starter area, and the fight with her mech might be some inter-party conflict like the Ouroboros fight we've seen or someone else piloting Ethel's mech), I don't think it's terribly likely. She just doesn't feel like an early game recruit, at least not literally the very first. Vandham is honestly a fairly surprising first Hero though, imo, technically more so than Ethel. Ethel was suspected to be a Hero from basically the moment she was introduced, whereas Vandham was suspected to be a dead man walking. I'd say of the two Vandham would be by far the one I'd consider censoring (hell, they've leaked Ethel as a Hero twice now)
- Status
