Christi Junior on Nostr: 8/8 But with the final battle over, we get to our ending. In terms individual scenes, ...
8/8
But with the final battle over, we get to our ending. In terms individual scenes, it’s actually superb – lots of really great, emotional character moments for all our Ouroboros pairs as they have to say their heartfelt goodbyes, and we FINALLY get the one scene we were all waiting for, Noah and Mio’s first kiss, which is just such a beautiful way to conclude the Xenoblade series’ greatest romance. Then the worlds start literally drifting apart, separating the Keves and Agnus pairs, possibly forever. We get our last moments with Melia and Nia – the High Entia unveiling a nice enough reference to Future Connected, but Nia easily has her beat with not only an amazing surprise that had me marking out, but with The Photo, which shows us what Rex really meant about loving “all you guys”. Rex as a character truly ended up benefiting tremendously from Xenoblade 3, even before Future Redeemed.
After the end credits, we get our final scene – Noah suddenly finding himself back at the very moment from Chapter 1, when time stopped and the worlds merged, only now the Aionios Moment of Eternity has ended and time again flows. We can’t be sure if Noah has retained any of his memories, but the fact that the last thing we hear is a familiar tune being played on a flute suggests that he will be reunited with Mio eventually.
While in many ways powerful and emotional, I do have a couple of major gripes with this ending. For starters, the game itself seems outright confused about what will happen once Origin reboots – do the two worlds simply separate, with Nia and Melia left to rule Agnus and Keves in the aftermath of this great upheaval, or does everything we knew outright vanish, as the two Origin halves are separated and they then recreate their respective universes as they were the very moment before they collided?
It seems obvious enough that the latter is the case, going by the final scene with Noah – but the actual characters act like it’s the former that’s about to happen, that Agnus and Keves will be separated, but that the two worlds themselves will go on existing post-Aionios. The Ouroboros pairs all act like the main issue is being separated, not that they will cease existing and lose all their memories. They even mention specific rules, like anything originating in Agnus disappearing from Keves after the worlds separate, which is why Taion gives Eunie a very considerate gift in the form of a Herbal tea recipe that’s written with paper and ink from Keves, so that Eunie can keep it even after the worlds drift apart – except she can’t, because like Noah she’s going to revert back to her 10-year old self about to watch the festival fireworks in Chapter 1!
What gives here, do the characters really have no idea what’s actually in store for them? Are they in denial, and is all their dialogue essentially performative? None of these explanations make sense, and would harshly clash with the larger themes of the story. I’ll tell you what WOULD fix this seeming contradiction – parallel timelines, one where the two original worlds are reborn, and another where the two worlds continue their existence as Keves and Agnus separated. But I’ve seen no support for that theory, and it might even have been outright debunked, though it’s hard to say given just how little we see of the worlds after they drift apart.
Indeed, the other large problem I have with Xenoblade 3’s ending is that we’re left so completely in the dark about what actually HAPPENS to our main characters after the credits roll. I already don’t like the fate of a single major character being left ambiguous in endings (the way Tales of the Abyss ended annoyed me for this reason), but *all of them*? WTF?! To be fair, it is implied in various ways (Noah hearing Mio playing her flute, the lyrics of the song that plays during the ending etc) that our main characters WILL eventually reunite, and Future Redeems even seems to suggest that the two worlds will again merge, this time successfully (maybe the first merger put them on the same wavelength and prevented them from destroying each other in the future, I dunno), but boy does that open up a can of worms, and neither game had any interest in actually showing the aftermath of a potential second merger, let alone *explain* it.
On the whole, I do think Monolith Soft succeeded in creating a fascinating, complex and deep story with compelling themes and a grand scope that (cautiously) connects Xenoblade 1 and Xenoblade 2, while also working as a standalone story for newcomers to the Xenoblade series. However, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel that the relative lack of legacy characters and substantial story references to past events felt like a massive missed opportunity, and even judged on its own terms, both the backstory AND the ending feel messy, confusing, maybe even contradictory. My inner fanboy wants to resort to Copes about how I’m just too tiny-brained to follow Tetsuya Takahashi’s master plan – but my critical side remembers that it would be entirely on-brand for Xenoblade 3 to have be tripped up by its own ambitions. Remember Xenogears infamous second disk, Xenosaga going from 6 games to just 3, or Xenoblade X’s forever unresolved cliffhanger ending? Xenoblade 1 and Xenoblade 2 having such solid stories and successfully wrapping up all loose ends is arguably the exception, not the rule, when it comes to this franchise.
Compare Xenoblade 3’s story to something like 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, and its flaws and failings really become undeniable. 13 Sentinels is a game whose story actually has a lot of things in common with XB3’s, including themes and even specific plot points. However, while its story is even MORE complex than that of XB3, 13 Sentinels is absolutely scrupulous about providing you with a clear timeline of events (making the puzzle pieces much easier to place than in XB3, despite the larger number of them), it shows you significantly more of what happened during its backstory, and arguably most crucially of all, it actually shows you what happens to all your favorite characters after the final battle. Because of this, the story as a whole feels much more satisfying. Xenoblade 3’s story is full of amazing moments, and in terms of those individual moments, it’s probably the best Xenoblade story ever – however, the aforementioned problems mean that its story as a whole is somewhat less than the sum of its parts.
Don’t get me wrong though – this was still an INCREDIBLE journey, and I’m not even quite done with it yet, because it turns out that Xenoblade 3’s post-game offers us some absolutely glorious surprises.
But with the final battle over, we get to our ending. In terms individual scenes, it’s actually superb – lots of really great, emotional character moments for all our Ouroboros pairs as they have to say their heartfelt goodbyes, and we FINALLY get the one scene we were all waiting for, Noah and Mio’s first kiss, which is just such a beautiful way to conclude the Xenoblade series’ greatest romance. Then the worlds start literally drifting apart, separating the Keves and Agnus pairs, possibly forever. We get our last moments with Melia and Nia – the High Entia unveiling a nice enough reference to Future Connected, but Nia easily has her beat with not only an amazing surprise that had me marking out, but with The Photo, which shows us what Rex really meant about loving “all you guys”. Rex as a character truly ended up benefiting tremendously from Xenoblade 3, even before Future Redeemed.
After the end credits, we get our final scene – Noah suddenly finding himself back at the very moment from Chapter 1, when time stopped and the worlds merged, only now the Aionios Moment of Eternity has ended and time again flows. We can’t be sure if Noah has retained any of his memories, but the fact that the last thing we hear is a familiar tune being played on a flute suggests that he will be reunited with Mio eventually.
While in many ways powerful and emotional, I do have a couple of major gripes with this ending. For starters, the game itself seems outright confused about what will happen once Origin reboots – do the two worlds simply separate, with Nia and Melia left to rule Agnus and Keves in the aftermath of this great upheaval, or does everything we knew outright vanish, as the two Origin halves are separated and they then recreate their respective universes as they were the very moment before they collided?
It seems obvious enough that the latter is the case, going by the final scene with Noah – but the actual characters act like it’s the former that’s about to happen, that Agnus and Keves will be separated, but that the two worlds themselves will go on existing post-Aionios. The Ouroboros pairs all act like the main issue is being separated, not that they will cease existing and lose all their memories. They even mention specific rules, like anything originating in Agnus disappearing from Keves after the worlds separate, which is why Taion gives Eunie a very considerate gift in the form of a Herbal tea recipe that’s written with paper and ink from Keves, so that Eunie can keep it even after the worlds drift apart – except she can’t, because like Noah she’s going to revert back to her 10-year old self about to watch the festival fireworks in Chapter 1!
What gives here, do the characters really have no idea what’s actually in store for them? Are they in denial, and is all their dialogue essentially performative? None of these explanations make sense, and would harshly clash with the larger themes of the story. I’ll tell you what WOULD fix this seeming contradiction – parallel timelines, one where the two original worlds are reborn, and another where the two worlds continue their existence as Keves and Agnus separated. But I’ve seen no support for that theory, and it might even have been outright debunked, though it’s hard to say given just how little we see of the worlds after they drift apart.
Indeed, the other large problem I have with Xenoblade 3’s ending is that we’re left so completely in the dark about what actually HAPPENS to our main characters after the credits roll. I already don’t like the fate of a single major character being left ambiguous in endings (the way Tales of the Abyss ended annoyed me for this reason), but *all of them*? WTF?! To be fair, it is implied in various ways (Noah hearing Mio playing her flute, the lyrics of the song that plays during the ending etc) that our main characters WILL eventually reunite, and Future Redeems even seems to suggest that the two worlds will again merge, this time successfully (maybe the first merger put them on the same wavelength and prevented them from destroying each other in the future, I dunno), but boy does that open up a can of worms, and neither game had any interest in actually showing the aftermath of a potential second merger, let alone *explain* it.
On the whole, I do think Monolith Soft succeeded in creating a fascinating, complex and deep story with compelling themes and a grand scope that (cautiously) connects Xenoblade 1 and Xenoblade 2, while also working as a standalone story for newcomers to the Xenoblade series. However, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel that the relative lack of legacy characters and substantial story references to past events felt like a massive missed opportunity, and even judged on its own terms, both the backstory AND the ending feel messy, confusing, maybe even contradictory. My inner fanboy wants to resort to Copes about how I’m just too tiny-brained to follow Tetsuya Takahashi’s master plan – but my critical side remembers that it would be entirely on-brand for Xenoblade 3 to have be tripped up by its own ambitions. Remember Xenogears infamous second disk, Xenosaga going from 6 games to just 3, or Xenoblade X’s forever unresolved cliffhanger ending? Xenoblade 1 and Xenoblade 2 having such solid stories and successfully wrapping up all loose ends is arguably the exception, not the rule, when it comes to this franchise.
Compare Xenoblade 3’s story to something like 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, and its flaws and failings really become undeniable. 13 Sentinels is a game whose story actually has a lot of things in common with XB3’s, including themes and even specific plot points. However, while its story is even MORE complex than that of XB3, 13 Sentinels is absolutely scrupulous about providing you with a clear timeline of events (making the puzzle pieces much easier to place than in XB3, despite the larger number of them), it shows you significantly more of what happened during its backstory, and arguably most crucially of all, it actually shows you what happens to all your favorite characters after the final battle. Because of this, the story as a whole feels much more satisfying. Xenoblade 3’s story is full of amazing moments, and in terms of those individual moments, it’s probably the best Xenoblade story ever – however, the aforementioned problems mean that its story as a whole is somewhat less than the sum of its parts.
Don’t get me wrong though – this was still an INCREDIBLE journey, and I’m not even quite done with it yet, because it turns out that Xenoblade 3’s post-game offers us some absolutely glorious surprises.