Christi Junior on Nostr: 2/3 Based on this trailer, I found Xenoblade 3’s concept tremendously exciting – ...
2/3
Based on this trailer, I found Xenoblade 3’s concept tremendously exciting – continuing the story of not one, but TWO of my favorite games of all time, and boldly taking them into some dark, uncharted territory. Some fans, burned by franchises like Star Wars, might balk at seeing the happy endings of the first two games seemingly reversed, and fan favorite characters possibly turned into villains, but personally, I always had complete, almost naïve faith in Tetsuya Takahashi and Monolith Soft, and fully expected them to do right by their characters and their universe. Meanwhile, the dramatic possibilities presented by this new setting had the potential to deliver us the most powerful and heartbreaking Xenoblade story yet, continuing and possibly concluding a tale that began back in 2010 (or arguably even 1998). Suffice to say, I was all onboard the Xenoblade 3 hype train.
A little over 2 months later, we got a second major Xenoblade 3 trailer to sink our teeth into. This one was almost 3 minutes long, showed a ton of new characters, and maybe most notably, gave us an extensive look at the new combat system: Your entire party would be on the battlefield and fighting simultaneously, pairs of party characters would be able to fuse (insert E;R Steven Universe sex reference here) and transform into massive monsters, and your main party would be bolstered by 1 additional Supporting character who I assumed could either be changed out at will, or was tied to particular sections of the story. Oh, and the release date changed, I guess September 2022 proved a little too ambitious after all, and therefore the new date would be…JULY!!!?? This colossal GOTY contender wasn’t actually being delayed after all, it was releasing EARLIER than originally planned? When the fuck does this even happen?
While obviously incredibly exciting, this new trailer did raise a few red flags for me. The combat system, while superficially fun and undeniably quite the spectacle did seem like a potential mess, with up to 7 party characters fighting at once. I personally prefer 3-person JRPG parties to even 4-person ones – your choice of characters just seems way more impactful in the former, and allows for much more meaningful team building, where each character truly feels important. So you can imagine me being iffy on a battle system with at least SIX party characters always being active. Where’s the room for customization in terms of team building, and how do you ensure that the player-controlled character still has a large, meaningful impact on the battle without making the CPU party characters completely retarded? It didn’t help that the latest Xenoblade “game”, the Future Connected epilogue to Xenoblade Definitive Edition, easily boasted the worst combat system in the series thus far, essentially combining the worst aspects of all previous Xenoblade combat systems.
A lesser concern about Xenoblade 3 was that the new character designs (the main party excluded, those designs were top-notch) seemed like a step down from Xenoblade 2. They were still fine designs overall, they just weren’t quite as attractive or unique as in Xenoblade 2, feeling more like generic anime JRPG characters. Speaking of characters, no additional returning characters besides Melia and Nia were being shown in this trailer. Assuming Xenoblade 3 was indeed set roughly 100 years after Xenoblades 1 and 2, there should still be plenty of characters that would be expected to return due to not being limited to human lifespans, including Pyra and Mythra, so the lack of returning heroes seemed odd. We already knew that the main cast would be 6 brand new characters, but surely this epic Xenoblade Crossover wouldn’t ONLY rely on new characters + Melia and Nia, right?
Based on this trailer, I found Xenoblade 3’s concept tremendously exciting – continuing the story of not one, but TWO of my favorite games of all time, and boldly taking them into some dark, uncharted territory. Some fans, burned by franchises like Star Wars, might balk at seeing the happy endings of the first two games seemingly reversed, and fan favorite characters possibly turned into villains, but personally, I always had complete, almost naïve faith in Tetsuya Takahashi and Monolith Soft, and fully expected them to do right by their characters and their universe. Meanwhile, the dramatic possibilities presented by this new setting had the potential to deliver us the most powerful and heartbreaking Xenoblade story yet, continuing and possibly concluding a tale that began back in 2010 (or arguably even 1998). Suffice to say, I was all onboard the Xenoblade 3 hype train.
A little over 2 months later, we got a second major Xenoblade 3 trailer to sink our teeth into. This one was almost 3 minutes long, showed a ton of new characters, and maybe most notably, gave us an extensive look at the new combat system: Your entire party would be on the battlefield and fighting simultaneously, pairs of party characters would be able to fuse (insert E;R Steven Universe sex reference here) and transform into massive monsters, and your main party would be bolstered by 1 additional Supporting character who I assumed could either be changed out at will, or was tied to particular sections of the story. Oh, and the release date changed, I guess September 2022 proved a little too ambitious after all, and therefore the new date would be…JULY!!!?? This colossal GOTY contender wasn’t actually being delayed after all, it was releasing EARLIER than originally planned? When the fuck does this even happen?
While obviously incredibly exciting, this new trailer did raise a few red flags for me. The combat system, while superficially fun and undeniably quite the spectacle did seem like a potential mess, with up to 7 party characters fighting at once. I personally prefer 3-person JRPG parties to even 4-person ones – your choice of characters just seems way more impactful in the former, and allows for much more meaningful team building, where each character truly feels important. So you can imagine me being iffy on a battle system with at least SIX party characters always being active. Where’s the room for customization in terms of team building, and how do you ensure that the player-controlled character still has a large, meaningful impact on the battle without making the CPU party characters completely retarded? It didn’t help that the latest Xenoblade “game”, the Future Connected epilogue to Xenoblade Definitive Edition, easily boasted the worst combat system in the series thus far, essentially combining the worst aspects of all previous Xenoblade combat systems.
A lesser concern about Xenoblade 3 was that the new character designs (the main party excluded, those designs were top-notch) seemed like a step down from Xenoblade 2. They were still fine designs overall, they just weren’t quite as attractive or unique as in Xenoblade 2, feeling more like generic anime JRPG characters. Speaking of characters, no additional returning characters besides Melia and Nia were being shown in this trailer. Assuming Xenoblade 3 was indeed set roughly 100 years after Xenoblades 1 and 2, there should still be plenty of characters that would be expected to return due to not being limited to human lifespans, including Pyra and Mythra, so the lack of returning heroes seemed odd. We already knew that the main cast would be 6 brand new characters, but surely this epic Xenoblade Crossover wouldn’t ONLY rely on new characters + Melia and Nia, right?